Put ramekins on a baking sheet. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until puffed and golden. Remove from oven, and let stand for 5 minutes. With a flexible spatula, remove strata to
When Larry Sprinkle walked onstage at the Charlotte Motor Speedway on August 10, 1974, the widespread hum from the crowd turned into a roar of exhilaration. August Jam was about
When Larry Sprinkle walked onstage at the Charlotte Motor Speedway on August 10, 1974, the widespread hum from the crowd turned into a roar of exhilaration. August Jam was about
In 1974, one of the largest music festivals ever held in the Southeast broke records — and fences — at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Decades later, fans recall August Jam with fondness.
When Larry Sprinkle walked onstage at the Charlotte Motor Speedway on August 10, 1974, the widespread hum from the crowd turned into a roar of exhilaration. August Jam was about to begin.
Sprinkle worked at the WAYS and WROQ radio stations in Charlotte at the time, and he’d been running on-air commercials for the event for the past few months. He’d thought that he would watch the show from backstage. But now, holding a slip of paper with the first band’s name scribbled on it, he was at the center of it all. He looked out and saw people in tents. To the right, people sat atop a chain-link fence. His gaze wandered up, and, yep, they were there, too — that day, the top-tier overhangs of the speedway doubled as box seats. The crowd was a sea of bell bottoms and bare chests.
The 1974 August Jam festival — emceed by Wolfman Jack (left, with band Foghat) — would go down in history as the Woodstock of the Southeast. photograph by BRYANT MCMURRAY, COURTESY OF J. MURREY ATKINS LIBRARY, UNC CHARLOTTE
August Jam brought a gathering half the size of Woodstock to Concord. With an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 attendees, it made its mark as the largest concert in the history of the state — and, at that time, one of the largest in the country.
Almost 50 years later, Sprinkle sits in his office at WCNC Charlotte between on-air weather reports and imitates how he amped up the crowd at the beginning of the festival. He still emcees every now and then, and it’s apparent once he puts on his announcer’s voice: Are you ready to rock ’n’ roll? I can’t hear you! Are you ready?!
• • •
Minutes before stepping in front of the massive crowd, Sprinkle stood behind the railroad tracks that supported the stage and soaked it all in. A self-proclaimed “low on the totem pole” disc jockey, he’d joined his colleagues to represent their radio stations and hang out for a day of music. He and his station manager left early to beat the traffic, and it’s a good thing they did: U.S. Highway 29 became clogged for miles with vehicles coming from small communities like Merry Hill and Littleton and as far away as Mississippi and Illinois. Cars were parked on the side of the highway for nearly five miles southwest of the speedway.
Jay Thomas, a prominent morning DJ at WAYS, was scheduled to kick off the event alongside the main emcee, renowned raspy-voiced disc jockey Wolfman Jack. But Thomas wasn’t exempt from the congestion.
The speedway was so full of people during August Jam that spectators found whatever vantage point they could — even sitting on fences …<br><span class="photographer">photograph by BRYANT MCMURRAY, COURTESY OF J. MURREY ATKINS LIBRARY, UNC CHARLOTTE</span>
… and on the sunshades over the grandstands.<br><span class="photographer">photograph by BRYANT MCMURRAY, COURTESY OF J. MURREY ATKINS LIBRARY, UNC CHARLOTTE</span>
“All right,” a crew member told Sprinkle, “Jay isn’t going to make it, and we’ve got to get this show on the road. Larry, you’re the only one here [from the station]. You’ve gotta do it.”
Sprinkle had worked in radio since he was a preteen, so he was no stranger to emceeing. He’d worked with The Jackson 5, interacted with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page while working one of the band’s shows, and stood stageside for Three Dog Night. The biggest crowd he’d emceed until then was about 20,000. August Jam would add another zero to that number. “I wasn’t apprehensive at all,” Sprinkle recalls. “I just knew that anything I said was going to be accepted and loved, and whatever I did was great.”
• • •
A surge of eager fans tore down part of the chain-link fence surrounding the speedway. A crowd more than twice the venue’s capacity awaited a lineup the likes of which the mid-Atlantic states rarely saw, all for just $12 per ticket — or for free with the fence-hole route.
Sprinkle introduced the first acts, including PFM, Grinderswitch, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, and The Marshall Tucker Band; later, Wolfman Jack introduced Foghat, Black Oak Arkansas, The Allman Brothers Band, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The Eagles, included on the poster, were a no-show.
Fences couldn’t stop fans from getting to the stage — those who didn’t want to pay the $12 ticket made their own makeshift entrance. photograph by BRYANT MCMURRAY, COURTESY OF J. MURREY ATKINS LIBRARY, UNC CHARLOTTE
When Black Oak Arkansas hit the stage, front man Jim “Dandy” Mangrum ran out, his long blond hair flowing across a white sleeveless shirt with matching flares as the group struck the chords of “Hey Y’all.” Keith Emerson of ELP played bound to his piano seat as he and the instrument rose off the stage and spun upside down as if it were riding a loop on a roller coaster. The Allman Brothers Band finished out the night with “Mountain Jam.”
Those who were there became part of a community, united through the music that blasted out of the quadraphonic sound system. “By today’s standards, the sound equipment was fairly prehistoric, but it all sounded great [to us],” attendee Chris Jepsen remembers. “We didn’t know any different; we were just glad to be there.”
Jepsen and a group of his high school friends had piled into a Volkswagen van and hit the road from Kinston. They always watched for bands playing in the area, and as freshly licensed 17-year-olds, they didn’t hesitate to make the five-hour trip. They set up camp outside of the speedway for two nights; two of them slept on a homemade flip-down bed in the car, and the others stayed in a tent.
Wolfman Jack (far left) hosted America’s first syndicated rock ’n’ roll radio program, earning him star status by the time he emceed for the crowds at August Jam in 1974. photograph by BRYANT MCMURRAY, COURTESY OF J. MURREY ATKINS LIBRARY, UNC CHARLOTTE
More than 1,200 others who attended the show share similar memories in a private Facebook group. Many reflect on their teenage years listening to Foghat on the stereo and partying all day long at the speedway. Photos from that day, some in black and white and some in color, have the kind of bona fide vintage film look that people use filters to re-create nowadays. Overhead snapshots of the crowd look like a Where’s Waldo? illustration, and close-ups feature friends and strangers alike linking arms. One image captures Wolfman Jack on stage, in front of a stack of speakers so tall they’re almost his height — platform shoes included.
Sprinkle recalls Jack arriving right on schedule, by helicopter to avoid the traffic. The chopper whirred down in between sets onto a landing pad in the center of the racetrack, and the Wolfman walked onto the stage. A few days earlier, Sprinkle had interviewed the DJ over the phone about coming down from New York City to see the event, but they didn’t make their meeting handshake official until the day of the festival.
Eager fans made up a crowd that was twice the venue’s capacity. photograph by BRYANT MCMURRAY, COURTESY OF J. MURREY ATKINS LIBRARY, UNC CHARLOTTE
“Wolfman Jack was legendary,” Sprinkle says. “He was almost like this mysterious soul that people knew about — they’d seen him in the movie American Graffiti and heard all of these crazy stories about his history in radio. He was as big as any of the rock groups that were there.”
The two didn’t get much of a chance to talk due to the chaos of it all, but they did get their photo taken. Sprinkle stayed backstage for the rest of the show and just enjoyed the music, as he’d planned to all along. “I was back there watching all of the bands, and it was a spectacle,” he says. “I mean, when do you get to see something like that?”
Get our most popular weekly newsletter: This is NC
When it comes to matches made in the kitchen, North Carolinians believe in soulmates. From breakfast to dessert, dig into a few of our favorite pairings.
In Edgecombe County, the country’s second-oldest remaining town common is the gateway to its sprawling historic district. Travel these acres and blocks on a reflective trip through time.