A grand tradition at the Grandstand
continued from page 11
and Ron Howard all took the stage. In the late 1960s, the focus began to shift more toward musical acts, though some musical performers like Jimmy Dean and John Davidson were also popular television stars when they appeared in Springfield.
Eventually, the Grandstand became a music-centric venue, and the list of big music acts to take the stage in the past 52 years reads like a who’s-who of famous performers. There were country starts like Patsy Cline, Roy Acuff, Dolly Parton, Roy Clark, Johnny Cash, June Carter, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams Jr., Eddy Arnold, Brooks & Dunn, Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood, Tammy Wynette, Charlie Daniels, George Strait and a host of others. Rock legends like Iron Butterfly, Cheap Trick, Chicago, Def Leppard, Foreigner, Boston, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nazereth, Neil Young, REO Speedwagon, Velvet Revolver, ZZ Top and Ted Nugent have shown Springfield a good time from the Grandstand stage – the same stage that has held jazz, soul and blues artists like B.B. King, Earth, Wind and Fire, The Commodores, Dave Brubeck, Pete Fountain and Ray Charles. Acts that may elicit a nostalgic laugh now were once major attractions at the fair – acts like Liberace, Engelbert Humperdinck, Captain and Tennille, Hall and Oates, The Bay City Rollers, Sonny and Cher and The Osmonds. Rock pianist Jerry Lee Lewis played at the Grandstand in 1971, but canceled in 1979 and 1982. There is even evidence that Elvis Presley might have played at the Grandstand stage, though not during the State Fair.
Fair manager Amy Bliefnick and Grandstand manager Carol Faires have worked together on Grandstand booking since 2005, though both women were involved with organizing the fair for several years before taking over their management posts. They say planning for a fair sometimes starts while the previous year’s fair is still going.
“The hardest part is figuring out who’s going to be a one-hit-wonder and who’s going to go all the way,” Bliefnick says. “Somebody that’s big now may fizzle out by next summer. We pay attention to industry studies, we scour other venues and we listen to our agents, but sometimes we just have to take a chance.”
When country musician Garth Brooks took the Grandstand stage in 1990, Faires says, he was still a relatively small-time performer. Brooks’ first album, named after himself, had just been released in April of that year, but it wasn’t until right after his Grandstand performance that Brooks’ career really took off, Faires says.
“We hurried and booked him again for the next year,” she says. “He sold out immediately.”
Sometimes, booking the big names doesn’t work out as planned, Bliefnick and Faires say. They recall booking pop artist Fergie for the 2008 fair, expecting ticket sales to go wild, but attendance at that concert was way below average, they say. Timing is another factor to juggle, Bliefnick says, because prices sometimes rise rapidly. She says the fair had been in negotiations to book R&B singers Rhianna,
