Monterey was the first major rock festival in the world and became the model for future festivals, notably Woodstock — although unlike Woodstock it was not a profit-making venture, and Monterey’s various audio and visual products still earn income for the non-profit Monterey Festival Foundation.
 
The festival was the subject of an acclaimed documentary movie entitled Monterey Pop by D. A. Pennebaker. It has been released on DVD by the Criterion Collection. Also, many albums have been released of performances from the festival. Most notable are those featuring the sets by Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and Ravi Shankar. In 1997, a four CD box set was released featuring performances by most of the artists.
 
Although Monterey was the first major music festival to predominantly feature rock music, the idea of large-scale outdoor festivals held over several consecutive days was not new. In America, the famous three-day Newport Jazz Festival had begun in the 1950s and had provided some immortal moments, including fabled performances by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk and Muddy Waters. Its sister event, the Newport Folk Festival, was an annual fixture for the folk movement during the early Sixties, until it was poleaxed by Bob Dylan’s watershed electric performance in 1965. Following the Newport model, there were also regular folk and jazz festivals on the west coast, held at Monterey in California.
 
Bron: en.wikipedia.org