A very colorful and collectible Les Brown concert poster from the summer of 1950 from two different cities, just three days apart.

The first one I show you hails from Ontario, Canada, and the second one comes from the Carrolltown, PA area.

This type of Les Brown poster board was called a “tour blank,” meaning the color portion was used for weeks or months, but the venue information at the top was changed day-to-day.

Sometimes the venue info was very busy, crowded with dozens and dozens of words of detailed information for ticket buyers.

Or in the case of this particular Les Brown broadside, it’s very scant and simple – five words. It was all a matter of what the local promoter wanted.

You’d think a happy medium would be in order, because for the Crystal Beach poster I show you, people knew nothing but the date and venue.

But that’s where the second Les Brown window card in my video comes in… at the Sunset (Ballroom, I assume) on Route 219 near Carroltown, PA.

That one tells us the price of admission (including tax), and the hours of the show… from 9 PM until 1 AM. It even specifies Daylight Savings Time, which might have been unnecessarily overkill.

You gotta love the way this Les Brown concert placard mentions the Bob Hope Show along the bottom. Hope was about the biggest star in the world at this point, so it was quite a feather in Brown’s cap.

Right next to that, it says, “Columbia Records Exclusively.” Once again, a super-well-known entity in Columbia Records.

And then there’s the NBC microphone right in the middle of this Les Brown show poster. Yet another major brand or company present on the poster, which is chock full of them.

Let’s not forget “The Band of Renown” above Les’s name… the catchy nickname he gave his big-band orchestra.

This Les Brown window poster – both of them – are shown to you today by Peter Howard, a long-time music collector residing in California’s central coast. That’s me, and if you wish to write me, I can be reached thru pete@postercentral.com, or by phoning (805) 540-0020. Please just know that I pay the best prices in the world, period, for the best old big-band tour posters like this.

And to see some more way-cool big band cardboard window cards like this, just visit this page next door: http://www.postercentral.com/bigbandvocalists.htm