Just less than a month ahead of Labor Day weekend 1973, the Midwest Monster Peace Jubilee and Music Festival was billed as a “family-friendly” event to feature ex-Beatle Paul McCartney’s new band, Wings, Dr. Billy Graham and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at a venue just a few miles north of Benton, Tennessee.
Right from the start, the planned two-day, round-the-clock festival on 500 acres of then-Polk County Judge Dennis White’s farm on the banks of the Hiwassee River drew molten Bible-belt fire. The Vietnam War was nearing its end, President Richard Nixon was embroiled in the Watergate scandal and it had been four years since the storied Woodstock Music Festival had been held on a 600-acre New York dairy farm during the Summer of Love in 1969.
The Polkstock-that-was-not oddly pitted the Republican judge against a Democratic sheriff, but politics might not have played as much of a role as the trying times of the day.
Never heard of it? That’s because local authorities and officials successfully blocked the event that at first was expected to draw at least 100,000 people. By the time it was officially canceled just days before the music began, anticipated crowd estimates stood as high as 1 million. An Evansville, Indiana-based company called C.C. Manifest Inc. was promoting the event, according to Times Free Press archives.
At the time, the judge’s wife, June – known widely as beautician-business owner “Gemini Red” – said other acts might include T. Rex, the Edgar Winter Group, Buddy Miles, Roberta Flack, Spirit, Dr. John, the Chambers Brothers, Quicksilver, the Earl Scruggs Revue and Black Oak Arkansas, according to archives.