SANTA FE, N.M. — John Morris, who helped organize the Woodstock Festival of Art and Music during the summer of 1969, died Friday. He was 84.

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According to his obituary, Morris died at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after a long illness. No cause of death was given, but his family told the Los Angeles Times that he had battled cancer and suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for years.

“One of the things that I always loved most about John is that he was one of the most egalitarian people you would ever meet. He would think nothing of putting a plumber next to the Queen of England at a dinner party and it would be fun -- that’s just the way he was. He saw people for who they were,” Luzann Fernandez, Morris’ partner of 33 years, told the newspaper. “He was an adventurer, I had amazing adventures with him. He had a great sense of humor. I used to love teasing him about how he was semi-famous.

“He had friends all over the world from all walks of life and he always stayed in touch.”

Morris produced rock concerts during the late 1960s for acts like the Doors, the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane, the Times reported.

Heading east, Morris put together shows at New York City’s Anderson Theatre and began working at the Fillmore East in 1968. He produced shows for B.B. King and Janis Joplin, according to the newspaper.

Because of his success, Morris was named head of production for the Woodstock festival, which was held in upstate New York from Aug. 15 to Aug. 18, 1969.

Morris was captured in Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary, “Woodstock,” telling the nearly 400,000 fans gathered at the venue that the festival had been converted into “a free concert,” the Times reported.

“This is one thing that I was going to wait awhile before we talked about, but maybe we’ll talk about it now so you can think about it, because you all, we all, have to make some kind of plans for ourselves,” Morris told the audience. “It’s a free concert from now on. That doesn’t mean that anything goes. What that means is that we’re gonna put the music up here for free.

“What it means is that the people who are backing this thing, who put up the money for it are gonna take a bit of a bath, a big bath. That’s no hype, that’s truth, they’re gonna get hurt. But what it means is that these people who put this thing here, have it in their heads ... that your welfare and their welfare is a hell of a lot more important than the music is, than the dollar.”

According to his obituary, Morris was born in New York City on May 16, 1939, in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan. His father served during the Korean War.

He studied theater at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh and had a brief career as a lighting designer for off-Broadway productions and also on London’s West End.

Morris is survived by Fernandez; a brother, Mark Morris, of Sneden’s Landing, New York; several nieces and nephews, and several grandnieces and grandnephews.

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