Inspired by America 250, Monterey 1000 broadens the lens to recognize histories that long predate the founding of the United States. Over the coming year, this ongoing series will explore those stories, starting with some of the earliest chapters and connecting them to what makes the destination distinctive today.
Today, music fans know Monterey County for the Monterey Jazz Festival, the world’s longest continuously operating jazz festival, and the Monterey Pop Festival, which helped pioneer the modern rock music festival and launched the careers of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding.
But the region’s musical history stretches well beyond those landmark events. For generations, Monterey County’s stages, fairgrounds, and natural settings have hosted jazz, classical, folk, rock, and other forms of music.
The Monterey Jazz Festival Begins
The story of Monterey’s modern music legacy begins in the 1950s, when Monterey jazz DJ Jimmy Lyons saw the potential of the Monterey County Fairgrounds as a venue for an ambitious outdoor music event.
“He saw the fairgrounds and said, ‘Hey, this could be a cool place for a jazz festival,’” says Timothy Orr, Marketing & Archives Manager for the Monterey Jazz Festival. “All of the clubs were dark and smoky. He thought the fairgrounds would be a nice place to have an outdoor jazz festival.”
Lyons had already found an appetite for jazz on the Monterey Peninsula after staging a series of concerts at Carmel’s Sunset Center. Artists who performed there included Ella Fitzgerald, Carl Tjader, Vince Guaraldi before his Peanuts fame, and Erroll Garner, whose recording of his Carmel performance became the hit 1955 album Concert by the Sea.
“That kind of proved that there could be something that happens here, and that there was an audience for it,” Orr says.
To create the inaugural festival in 1958, Lyons teamed up with San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph Gleason, who would later co-found Rolling Stone magazine with Jann Wenner.
The first Monterey Jazz Festival featured a staggering lineup of legendary musicians, including Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck, and Billie Holiday, who died just nine months later.
“It’s when giants walked the earth,” Orr says.
Over the next nearly 70 years, the Monterey Jazz Festival has hosted nearly 3,000 performances featuring some of the most respected musicians in any genre, including Miles Davis, Tony Bennett, B.B. King, Janis Joplin and The Roots.
“There are so many moments over the years that get to people emotionally,” Orr says.
From Monterey Jazz to Monterey Pop
The success of the Monterey Jazz Festival helped set the stage for another event that would change music history: the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival.
The connection between the two festivals began the year before. In 1966, Ralph Gleason persuaded Jimmy Lyons to book a new psychedelic rock act, Jefferson Airplane, and the Chicago-based Paul Butterfield Blues Band, featuring guitarist Mike Bloomfield, for the ninth Monterey Jazz Festival.
Music impresario Alan Pariser attended the concert and was so inspired by the music and the venue that he teamed up with record producer Lou Adler, publicist Derek Taylor, and John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas to produce a rock version of the jazz festival at the Monterey Fairgrounds.
The three-day Monterey Pop Festival helped create the template for the modern rock festival. Its legacy was further cemented by the 1968 documentary Monterey Pop, directed by D.A. Pennebaker.
“That’s an iconic, watershed moment in rock history that took place right in Monterey,” Orr says.
The festival also became a defining moment for several artists, with performances by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and others helping establish Monterey as an important destination on the national music map.
A Musical Tradition Beyond Jazz and Rock
Monterey County’s music history extends well beyond the Monterey Jazz Festival and Monterey Pop.
The Carmel Bach Festival began in 1935 to celebrate the 250th birthday of German composer Johann Sebastian Bach. The festival originally featured four days of performances at the Sunset School Auditorium and the Carmel Mission Basilica.
Today, the festival continues that tradition with performances at venues throughout the area. The 89th Carmel Bach Festival took place over two weeks in July 2026, with concerts at the Sunset Center, Carmel Mission, Pacific Grove Natural History Museum and local libraries, among other venues.
Further south, the Big Sur Folk Festival brought a very different musical sensibility to the region.
The festival ran from 1964 to 1971 at Big Sur’s Esalen Institute, except in 1970, when it took place at the Monterey County Fairgrounds. Folk singer Joan Baez, who lived in Carmel Valley at the time, and Esalen employee Nancy Carle organized the low-key festival.
Performers included Judy Collins, Arlo Guthrie, The Beach Boys, Kris Kristofferson, Linda Ronstadt, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Baez was the only musician to play every year.
Though less influential than the Monterey Pop Festival, the Big Sur Folk Festival has been preserved in the documentary Celebration at Big Sur and the live album Big Sur Festival: One Hand Clapping.
Together, these festivals reflect the variety of musical traditions that have found a home throughout Monterey County, from classical music in Carmel to folk music in Big Sur and jazz and rock in Monterey.
A Legacy of Live Music
The Monterey Jazz Festival and Monterey Pop Festival proved difficult acts to follow, but the Monterey County Fairgrounds continued to host a succession of music festivals over the decades.
The Tribal Stomp Festival featured reggae legend Peter Tosh, King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and English punk band The Clash, just weeks before The Clash released their landmark album London Calling.
In 2007, the Monterey Music Summit brought alternative rock and hip-hop acts, including The Roots, Cake, and G. Love & Special Sauce, to the fairgrounds. A few years later, the First City Festival turned the venue into an indie-rock showcase, featuring Modest Mouse, MGMT, Beck, The National and more in 2013 and 2014.
The 50th anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival was also celebrated with a three-day concert at the Monterey County Fairgrounds featuring headliners Leon Bridges, Jack Johnson and Norah Jones. The event included performances by alumni of the original festival, including Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, Booker T, Eric Burdon, and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and Papas.
These events may have differed in style and era, but they shared a common setting with the festivals that came before them—and helped keep live music at the heart of Monterey County’s cultural identity.
A Festival That Keeps Evolving
What makes the Monterey Jazz Festival particularly remarkable is not simply its longevity, but its ability to evolve while remaining connected to its roots.
Orr believes the festival has lasted nearly 70 years because of the quality of the music and the devotion of its fans.
“I think we have been able to endure for so long because jazz is such a timeless art form and yet it’s always changing throughout the years,” Orr says. “It’s never the same, but it’s connected to the history of the genre.”
“And, of course, the people who love this art form and come to the festival every year are why we’ve been able to do this since 1958. We are grateful for their support and devotion to good music.”
That tradition continued in 2026, when the Monterey Jazz Festival returned to the Monterey County Fairgrounds from September 25–27. The lineup included jazz greats Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock and Charles Lloyd, alongside newer voices including multi-genre singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello, surrealist blues poet Aja Monet and author Amy Tan, who performed with Indonesian jazz pianist Joey Alexander.
More than six decades after the first Monterey Jazz Festival, the music continues.
And perhaps that is the most enduring part of Monterey County’s musical history: the festivals change, the artists change, and the sounds change, but the setting remains a place where music can take root, evolve, and become part of the story of Monterey.
Stuart Thornton
While researching an edition of his Moon Monterey & Carmel Guidebook 10 years ago, Stuart Thornton took a guided history tour at Monterey State Historic Park. That one-hour walk opened his eyes to the richness of Monterey County’s past and inspired him to join the interpretive crew at the park. These days, Stuart works as a Monterey State Historic Park Guide and authors Moon Travel Guides. He loves to find little-known stories from Monterey’s history to share with park visitors or to write about in various publications. To view more of Stuart’s writings, please visit www.stuartthornton.com.
