August 27, 1964 :

“The Beatles”  Performed at Cincinnati Gardens...

By Ken Stewart / LifeOnTheWestSide -

Arriving directly from their performance in New York “The Beatles” took Cincinnati by storm as part of their very first American tour. I was assigned by a local TV station to cover the event and to shoot 16mm sound film for the 11 p.m. news.

Prior to their stage performance The Beatles held a press conference organized by the “Good Guys”, a group of promoters who were disk jockey’s from WSAI radio, including Dusty Rhodes, who is still on local radio (WDJO) but now he owns the station.

Arriving at The Cincinnati Gardens, fashionably late, the “Fab Four” were ushered into a very over crowded hockey team locker-room to meet the press. The scene was chaotic. The local press turned out in droves, they were joined by the national press and also in that very small room were all the WSAI  bosses, their secretaries, a number of security guards, policemen, wives, friends, and of course members of the local Beatles Fan Club. The TV lights were hot, the crowd very pushy and it was extremely noisy, and a bit overwhelming for us and for the Beatles. Through it all I did manage to record my sound film before the camera was knocked over and I also grabbed a few still pictures with my personal 35mm camera..  The negatives have been sitting in a drawer since 1964. This is the very first time they have been published ! ..... Enjoy !

   Photos by Ken Stewart ©copyright 1964-2007

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of individual illustrations

On October 8th 1862 eighteen thousand Confederate soldiers clashed with twenty thousand Union troops on the hills outside of Perryville Kentucky. It was one of the Civil War's bloodiest battles, 7500 were killed or wounded in a single day. It was the Commonwealth's largest battles, and it is one that is almost forgotten. Each year in an attempt to keep the memory alive  "The Forgotten Battle of Perryville" is reenacted on a small scale.  In 2002 the this battle was chosen as the National Reenactment Event of the year and was huge.  More than 10,000 uniformed re-enactors came to Perryville with their horses and cannons, their tents and rifles, and, dressed in period costumes, formed ranks to show what the real battle may have been like. It was said that it was a battle where "blood flowed like rivers" as Union cannons fired point blank into the thousands of "Rebels" as they stormed the Union's position's on Parson's Ridge and Starkweather's Hill. The Confederate's failure to attain a decisive victory kept Kentucky in Union hands for the remainder of the war.  I was there that day, 5 years ago, to make photographs for a number of major publications. While my photos showed the event... the images were too colorful, they were too crisp, the faces of the reenacting soldiers were too prominent... My photos were just a recording of a reenactment...   I felt that to try and show what the original battle must have really been like, it would have to be "illustrated" to reflect the mood and the scale. Using my original photos as reference I have created the series of 7 digital illustrations shown above. An eighth, "The Surrender", is nearing completion and two more are in the planning stage. At the right is a portion of one of the illustrations to show the detail of the digital paintings. 

145 years ago 7500 soldiers were killed, or wounded, in a single battle at Perryville Kentucky Oct. 8,1862