Why no Elvis Presley or Johnny Cash at Woodstock at all?

Sh*t, both Elvis and Johnny woulda brought the house down, are ya kiddin' me ?? Baez wasn't what you would call a 'rocker' either but she was amazing ! People appreciate true talent.Don't forget, many of the people at Woodstock cut their rock teeth on Elvis, Chuck etc.Grace Slick was only a few years younger than Elvis.
Ya didn't see Sha Na Na get booed off the stage did ya ? In fact, they got a pretty good applause (although, personally, I never cared for their music). I was a teenager at the time of Woodstock (lived a few miles down the road) and I wouldn't have been thrilled hearing 'Elvis' was up next ... by this time I was gettin' into harder rock BUT, had he performed, I know damn well I woulda been blown away - that is if he chose an appropriate set that is. I thought of Cash as a 'redneck hick' at that time (and age) also but again, given the right set, he woulda brought the house down also.
Hell, Elvis met with 3 of the members of Zep (his request), he wasn't so lame that he didn't appreciate what was up and comin' talent. Plant and Page said they were blown away by this meeting. Now if either of them started talkin' 'Get a hair cut and take a bath...' :-)
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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=892549344141830&set=gm.477777935751976&type=1

^ Possibly further evidence ? ^

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That's right, and there was also the fact that, as someone else said, Elvis was a narc. Shoot, the guy posed with Tricky Dicky Nixon (a president who was hated by many of the concertgoers) in that famous photo, despite the fact that Elvis was loading himself up with the drugs that led to his death. The King was basically a conservative, so there's no way that he would have played Woodstock.

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Cash was not a rock and Roll star.He had a prime-time network country music variety show in 1969.

The fact that you mention that Cash was "heavily into drugs and booze" is pretzel logic. He would not have "fit right in". He was more like the shooter in Easy Rider, than the bikers.

You couldn't be more wrong here. Cash was played on country radio, but for the most part he shied away from the Nashville establishment throughout his career, beginning in the '50s when be was based out of Memphis, to the early '60s when he mostly stayed in California, to the '70s and '80s when he associated himself with the outlaws of country music like Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, and even into his final years when he was embraced by the alternative rock crowd far more than the country establishment. By the time of Woodstock he'd played the Newport Folk Festival several times appearing alongside Dylan, Baez, Ochs, and others. He'd recorded an album of songs empathizing with Native Amerit and it's lead single was banned by many country stations and he was branded a "race traitor." He'd recorded with Dylan the previous year.

His variety show was not a "country variety show" either. While he did have plenty of country acts on the show, the music presented truly was a variety. Dylan and Joni Mitchell were the first guests and over the years he had on Creedence Clearwater Revival, Derek and the Dominoes, Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young, etc. A casual glance at a few of the guests shows a true melting pot of music: Louis Armstrong, Neil Diamond, Mahalia Jackson, George Jones, Roy Orbison, Bill Monroe, Odetta, Stevie Wonder, Tony Joe White, Merle Haggard, and Pete Seeger in his first television appearance since the controversy he caused on the Smothers Brothers show.

Also very interesting is the fact that you equate Cash with the shooter in Easy Rider given that he actually had Dennis Hopper on his show to read poetry.

He would have played Woodstock if asked and if this video of Cash playing a college around the same time is any indication, he would have won the crowd over: https://youtube.com/watch?v=t51MHUENlAQ

Some more videos that may be of interest:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FQq0dw7rmtc A (very stoned) Johnny Cash discusses and sings about the plight of Native Americans alongside Pete Seeger in 1964 or '65

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5HFUSft_I9s Cash speaks a bit about the "hippie movement" and performs a song he'd written about them. He performed the same song for Richard Nixon at the White House.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=EQAXTvcMoMA Cash's thoughts on Vietnam in song.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AM4lxPcUozw Studio recording from the height of the Civil Rights movement

And finally Cash on MLK and RFK https://youtube.com/watch?v=KjCm9ZnDTMc

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Presley was 34, Cash was 37. Urban youth did not relate with them.

Although I understand your point about youth, much of the Woodstock audience assuredly was not "urban."

Presley and Cash were older than the rock-and-roll heroes of the day, but they were contemporary and certainly not too old to be appreciated by young people. Woodstock was not just about rock music—a few of the festival's performers fell outside the genre or existed only on the margins of the genre—but, yes, Presley and Cash were not quite in the orbit that the festival had targeted.

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Colonel Parker controlled Elvis's professional appearances. He woulda killed his Grandma before he would've allowed Elvis to participate in the festival. And considering the majority of the crowd, it would not have been a welcoming environment for Presley.
"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"

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Johnny Cash was probably more anti-establishment than most of the people at Woodstock. Lets face it, the hippies were basically your trustafarians of the day. Partying, protesting, and sowing their wild oats until it came time to get a haircut and real job in a few years. Johnny Cash on the other hand was performing for the dregs of society, prisoners, working class, and poor country folk, people who had little to no future.

I concur with your overall argument, except to note that many of the people protesting the Vietnam War were indeed at risk of being drafted and shipped to Vietnam, in which case they definitely may have had little-to-no future ...

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Elvis and Cash are 50s leftovers, they seem big in retrospect, but in late 60s when things were changing waay too quickly they were dinosaurs. Woodstock hippies would probably boo them off the stage.

Re: Why no Elvis Presley or Johnny Cash at Woodstock at all?

They did not represent the "flower-power generation," but Presley and Cash were big figures at the time and would be even bigger in the 1970s. Presley had enjoyed his big comeback the previous year and was still proving capable of delivering big radio hits.

The Woodstock hippies, I sense, would have been open-minded enough to appreciate their performances, although I am not sure if Presley would have wanted to perform with those acoustics at that point in his career. Even Jim Morrison, who definitely would have been embraced by that audience, nixed a Woodstock performance by The Doors because he no longer wanted to sing outside.

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