What's newFrank Johnson knows 47 years of festivals
Frank Johnson has always had music in his blood, having hired acts for Army bands during World War II and playing the drums himself.
Frank Johnson
Thus, it was only natural that Johnson would spend his 47 years on the Lodi Grape Festival and Harvest Fair’s Board of Directors focusing on bringing entertainment to the annual festival.
One of the biggest names to grace the state at the Grape Festival was the late jazz singer Billy Eckstine, whom Johnson booked one year.
“He had the smoothest voice I ever heard,” Johnson said.
Johnson has seen a lot of changes at the festival since he joined the board in 1957 (he stepped down last year).
Johnson, 82, recalls the days when the festival booked bigger acts for a variety show that was held at the Grape Bowl. Festival directors, however, eventually opted for lesser-known acts on the festival grounds. Moving the variety show to the Grape Bowl took people away from the festival itself, Johnson said.
What’s turned out to be popular at the festival in recent years are the tribute bands, such as Rain, a four-member group that imitate the Beatles, he said. (Rain will once again be performing at this year’s Grape Festival)
However, music isn’t really the main focal point of the festival, Johnson points out.
“People come to the festival to meet the friends they haven’t seen since last year,” Johnson said.
Lodi’s growth and the changing times have made the Grape Festival a little less personal than it was in earlier days, Johnson said. For example, the annual Grape Festival parade was canceled in 2003, he said, primarily because it became increasingly difficult to get people and community organizations to build floats and ride in the parade.
Service groups, schools and churches are active participants in the annual Parade of Lights each Christmas season, but they stopped participating in the Grape Festival parade, Johnson said. For example, the grape farmers, for whose efforts the festival celebrates each year, are too busy because the festival comes during their harvest, he said.
Johnson, a retired Army colonel, recalls an old tradition from the late 1950s and ’60s when a bagpipe band from Sacramento would parade past his house near Emerson Park at Elm and Hutchins Street.
You might say that Johnson gave the bagpipe band some extra encouragement by leaving his front porch, giving the drum major a shot glass filled with scotch and returning to his porch to watch the rest of the parade.
Every year, the drum major would raise his hand and yell, “Col. Johnson — here, here.”
In the 1950s, the Grape Festival was more of a community activity, he said. “There are more professional people who are doing this for a living.”
With modern technology like TV and computers to take up leisure time, fewer people are offering to man the food booths operated by service clubs, Johnson said. These booths are being operated more and more by private companies.
But some traditions die hard.
“People still like to go out and have a beer and corn dog,” Johnson said. “I always get a hamburger from the Clements-Lockeford Lions Club.”
Contact reporter Ross Farrow at rossf@lodinews.com.
