Pete Howard is a serious collector seeking old (pre-1970) concert posters and music memorabilia, and who pays the very best prices. He lives in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Please contact him at pete@postercentral.com or (805) 540-0020.
A truly wild, but unfortunately never used, original UCLA 1966 Can You Pass The Acid Test show poster that dazzles the eye and the bends the imagination.
This thing is small… about the size of an 8×10” handbill… but all of its characteristics point toward ‘poster.’ It’s quite possible that the original artwork was larger than this and then shrunk down for printing, a very common procedure.
The attention to finely penned detail on this UCLA 1966 Acid Test concert placard is really remarkable. Someone spent many hours on it.
But unfortunately, we don’t know who that someone is. The artist did not sign their work, unless their initials were “GSA” or “KH” and appear in the very bottom line, which is a bit cryptic.
None of the participants appear on this UCLA 1966 Acid Test window card, either. There’s no mention of the Grateful Dead, the Merry Pranksters, Allen Ginsberg or any of those folks.
This takes a different approach than all the other Acid Test posters. Perhaps mimicking the brand new posters up north at the Fillmore Auditorium which had just started, this one has detailed date, ticket and venue information.
In the lower right portion of this UCLA 1966 Acid Test event announcement it states: “Saturday March 19 – UCLA Student Union, Grand Ballroom – 8:00-1:30 – Students $1.50 at door – at ticket office.”
But it’s hard to make out the meaning of the rest of the last line. It pretty clearly says “gsa” in lower case… General Services Administration, maybe? And then “asUCLA”… associated students, perhaps? And then what is “KH” before “ticket office”… the name of a Hall on campus, or perhaps the graphic artist’s initials? So many unanswered questions.
All of these elements of intrigue just make this UCLA 1966 Acid Test ticket poster all the more fascinating. If you have any answers or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
My name is Peter Howard and I reside in California’s central coast, and I’m the one narrating the video of this UCLA 1966 Acid Test event sign. I can be contacted through pete@postercentral.com or by just phoning (805) 540-0020. Please be aware that as a serious documentarian and collector, I pay the best prices in the hobby, period, for vintage Acid Test memorabilia like this.
And if awesome psychedelic posters are your thing, just slide over to this page on my Web site to see a few dandys from the sixties: http://www.postercentral.com/psychedelic.htm
A really spectacular Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 window card that’s a wonderful relic of a bygone era.
This beauty has 14 musicians crammed onto it, many of them household names and many of the songs long-time staples of oldies radio.
Check out the color scheme of this cardboard Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 poster board. In the main portion, it slides from blue at the top to green in the middle to yellow at the bottom, with a big splash of pink in the bottom center. Wow, did they have fun with this!
And then, of course, the top white portion was left blank on all initial printings, and then each tour stop’s information was filled in as the dates were scheduled. So this is known in the hobby as a ‘tour blank.’
Mickey & Sylvia and Larry Williams are the headliners of this Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 placard. Their names are huge and they get full-body pictures, from head to toe.
But they earned it: both were major stars. Who doesn’t know “Love Is Strange” to this day? And Williams, who the Beatles ‘covered’ three times on their official EMI records, was having a banner year in 1957, including the #1 R&B record “Short Fat Fannie.”
Then right below them, you have three more absolute killers gracing the Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 in-person poster – all three of them Rock ’N Roll Hall of Fame members.
Big Joe Turner, who gave the world “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” is shown with a big grinning face, the Atlantic Records name and his current single, “Love [Is A] Roller Coaster.
And then Bo Diddley and his Trio show up on this Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 billboard. The legendary Chess Records is plugged, as is one of his signature songs, “Hey, Bo Diddley.”
And Ray Charles rounds out this trio, the most legendary name found on the poster. What’s great is that Ray’s first-ever charting single on Billboard magazine’s pop charts was “Swanee River Rock” b/w “I Want a Little Girl,” and that’s the 45 plugged on here – both sides of it!
Then there’s the pink section of this Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 window poster. It’s occupied by a couple of legendary groups definitely worth mentioning.
The Dell-Vikings are shown here as “The Del Viking” for some reason, definitely a mistake as they always had an “s” on their name, even in different spellings. The name Kripp Johnson is given parenthetically below their name, to distinguish this version from a competing version of the vocal group.
And it’s wonderful that this Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 show placard has their hit song “Come Go With Me” on it. Not only was it a very important record for them, but it fits nicely into the history of… the Beatles.
Only four months prior to this show, Paul McCartney first encountered John Lennon, who was performing with his Quarry Men on a flatbed truck in Liverpool, Englad. When Paul first approached the group with his friend, the first song he heard John performing was “Come Go With Me.” That was his very first impression of Mr. Lennon.
And then you’ve got the Moonglows at the very bottom center of this Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 event poster. Sadly and unfortunately, they’re the only act on the poster that didn’t get a photograph.
But they’ve sure got a key song title below their name… “Please Send Me Someone To Love” was a Top 5 R&B hit for them earlier that year.
Roy Brown is another important element of this Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 street poster. He was near the end of his 10-year career as a charting artist, but it wasn’t over yet.
The song given for him is “Let the Four Winds Blow,” and that was a Top 5 R&B hit for Roy earlier in the year, so he was still very timely and relevant.
Along the very bottom white margin of this Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 tour placard, the management and booking agency is credited in the same size print as the Moonglows song title.
It says, “Tour Direction: Shaw Artists Corp., 565 5th Ave., N.Y.C. & 203 N. Wabash, Chicago.”
And then in much smaller print, way down in the very bottom right corner of the Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 boxing-style concert poster, it says “Globe Poster Corp. Baltimore.”
Globe not only printed these beautiful posters but also designed them. They’re probably the most enduring and popular of all concert-poster printers from the 1950s and ’60s, having produced many a gem like this.
Speaking of which, this Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 ticket poster is made of cardboard and measures the standard jumbo size of 22 inches wide by 28 inches tall.
It’s rather fragile but in excellent condition today considering its age. It was once owned by the late and legendary poster collector Hank Thompson, and Hank had it restored when he first acquired it in the early 1990s.
I forgot to mention that taken verbatim, the identifying line across the blue portion says exactly, “Danceland Attractions Presents – Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 – Fall Edition.”
I don’t know how many other editions of this tour were organized back then, but I’m certain this is the king of the posters representing them. It’s just the cat’s meow.
This Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 street sign has also been seen with the big white ovals appearing in Day-Glo red, not white. So that tells us at least two different versions of this tour blank were made.
But that’s not unusual… quite often the home office would slightly alter some information on a tour-blank poster like this, and then run off a few hundred more for use going forward. And while doing so, they’d sometimes change a color out, too.
This Fantabulous Rock ’N Roll Blues Show of 1957 concert advertisement is shown to you today with enormous pleasure by long-time poster collector Pete Howard. That’s me, and I can be reached by using either pete@postercentral.com, or the old-fashioned way thru (805) 540-0020. Please know that I pay the very best prices in the hobby for this or any other vintage rock & roll / rhythm & blues concert poster(s).
An alternate FD-2 Salute to Hongo Ishi concert handbill that was either shelved and never used, or distributed very sparingly at best.
The FD-2 that everyone knows is called “King Kong Memorial Dance” and features a photograph of a large gorilla as its centerpiece. That is the design that Family Dog promoter Chet Helms ultimately went with.
But this Salute to Hongo Ishi flyer had already been designed and even printed, either in tiny quantities or in a normal quantity that was then mostly thrown away when the simian took over.
I’ve already video-blogged the King Kong Memorial Dance poster in this space, so you can jump over to see that for reference if you like. That’s considered the “real” FD-2 poster and flyer, whereas this was basically the original concept, back when all these dance-concerts were given names.
Why does this Salute to Hongo Ishi concert flier carry that name, you may ask? Well, Hongo Ishi was the name of the newborn baby of Big Brother & the Holding Company’s guitarist James Gurley. And BBHC was on the bill this evening.
I don’t know more details than that, but it all ties together neatly. Perhaps that nickname for this dance was dropped simply because it was too “insider” for anybody in the public to understand.
The Grass Roots from Los Angeles were a part of this evening’s bill, but their name appears nowhere on the Salute to Hongo Ishi handout. So they were probably the last group booked, which also rendered this design obsolete.
The Grass Roots would go on, of course, to amazing Top 40 commercial success down the road, so it’s a good thing at least their name wound up on the King Kong Memorial Dance posters and flyers.
It was all pretty incestuous, in a good and innocent way… notice how the Great Society and Big Brother dominate the Salute to Hongo Ishi leaflet. They were managed, respectively, by John Carpenter and Chet Helms.
Well, Carpenter and Helms were also the two business partners running the Family Dog enterprise. Hmmm. Perhaps explains why their two bands dominated the flyer’s artwork.
This Salute to Hongo Ishi show bill was designed by the esteemed Wes Wilson, the man who simply drew up the first 10 Family Dog concert posters and 45 of the first 50 Bill Graham ones.
For some reason, he didn’t sign this artwork template when he was finished. Tribal Stomp and King Kong both have his name on there, but for some reason, this one doesn’t.
On first blush, one might think that the Salute to Hongo Ishi handbill is a Janis Joplin collectible, because Big Brother & the Holding Company were part of the bill.
But no, Janis would not join her famous stable mates for a few more months… they were without a female lead singer at this point.
This Salute to Hongo Ishi piece of Family Dog concert memorabilia is shown and explained to you today by Bay-Area music historian Pete Howard. Yes that’s me, and my contact info is as follows: pete@postercentral.com or (805) 540-0020. Please remember that I pay the best prices in the hobby, period, for vintage S.F. psychedelic music collectables like this.
One of the finest Johnny Cash concert posters I’ve ever seen in my life, from the year of 1961 and hailing from Eugene, Oregon.
Credit goes to Tilghman Press out of Oakland, California in designing and printing this gem. It very much has their trademark look about it.
This Johnny Cash show poster features three colors on a white background, changing from top to bottom: red, blue and then green.
The designer worked it out so that each element occupied 1/3 of the poster, and so therefore got its own color: the venue info, Mr. Cash himself, and the opening acts.
Laverne Mylllicent and Gil McElroy are the opening acts listed on this Johnny Cash tour poster. The former even gets her photograph on there, but not the latter.
And then below them, it says, “Have Fun – Go Dancing.” That’s another trademark of Tilghman, and was added to the bottom of many of their posters.
The top of this Johnny Cash broadside proclaims, in red ink, “Auditorium Fairgrounds – Eugene. Friday June 23rd. From 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. Admission $2.00. Show and Dance.”
And then the color turns to blue for the Man In Black information, and then on to green for the support acts. Even the Tilghman Press credit at the bottom is in green.
One strength of this particular Johnny Cash window poster is the headliner’s photo. It’s an uncommon picture of Johnny, not one you see everywhere else. His western-themed tie really tops it off nicely.
And the two different fonts used for his name carry remarkable impact… the hollow letters for his first name, and then the big arc for his four-letter last name. It’s just very visually effective.
This Johnny Cash concert placard measures about 14” wide by 22” tall, which was very much a standard for the day. It was constructed on heavy, durable cardboard, another Tilghman standard.
Making paper concert posters never would have been a good idea in this era, because the natural weather elements would have just eaten them up if they were posted outside.
In this video, I show you three other Johnny Cash appearance posters from this exact same year, 1961. You can look at those photos, and this one from Eugene, and decide which you like the best.
But for my money, this is the one. I just love its basic simplicity, before he grew into the multi-faceted “Fabulous Johnny Cash Show” of later years.
This Johnny Cash telephone-pole poster is presented today by music historian Pete Howard. That’s me, and if you wish to chat, I can be reached thru pete@postercentral.com or by jingling (805) 540-0020. Please know that I pay the best prices in this hobby for vintage Johnny Cash tour placards and other cool concert memorabilia.
And speaking of which, to see a Johnny Cash boxing-style concert poster from 1956 plus a few other great C&W ticket posters, just slide right over to this page: http://www.postercentral.com/country.htm
An amazing First Annual International Palm Beach Music & Art Festival poster from November 28, 29 and 30, 1969, that is weighted down with some of the best rock talent of the 1960s.
You’ve got the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, the Chambers Bros., Sly & The Family Stone, Jefferson Airplane, The Byrds, Steppenwolf, Spirit, Pacific Gas & Electric, Sweetwater, Country Joe & The Fish, Johnny Winter, Rotary Connection, Grand Funk Railroad, The Rugbys, King Crimson “plus 10 more famous groups” on here.
Among those other 10 groups not mentioned were The Band and The Moody Blues. How great it would have been with their names on there, too!
But some collectors would ignore all the extra bands and just call this a 1969 Rolling Stones poster. That’s because there just aren’t many Stones concert posters from their 1969 trek of the Americas, whereas they are relatively plentiful for, say, Janis Joplin.
I’m aware of just the well-known David Byrd “woman in flowing robe” tour blank poster, which actually wasn’t used that much at all, and then a one-off concert poster for the Stones’ Auburn, Alabama 1969 show.
And then others would focus just on the two biggest superstars, and call this a Rolling Stones & Janis Joplin poster, acknowledging that all the others appeared on concert posters a lot through the early ’70s.
But I call it a 1960s music festival poster, because this was the era, and a lot of other fun ones exist: Woodstock, Monterey Pop, the Atlanta Pop Festival… there are many, and they all used posters.
Graphic artist Royce Emley is the person who designed this Palm Beach Music & Art Festival concert poster, and his name is in small print down in the lower right-hand corner.
In the lower left-hand corner it says, “For information contact” and then gives a Post Office box you can write to. No phone number.
I like the way Emley stuck with pastel colors on his 1969 Rolling Stones concert poster. The red, light green, light blue, black and white make for a nice, warm five-color presentation.
Did you notice he got the peace sign wrong, though? He forgot the bottom stem! So it looks like a Mercedes-Benz car logo.
Emley corrected that on all subsequent reprints – after the event – so if you want an original that was printed before the show to sell tickets, you need to have the incorrect peace sign on there. Funny!
Call it whatever you want, but this Rolling Stones & Janis Joplin concert poster was happily presented to you today by collector Pete Howard. (I attended my first rock concert in 1969, but didn’t see the Stones until their next tour, 1972.) I can be written to at pete@postercentral.com or called on 805/540.0020. And I don’t own this poster, I was shooting a friend’s, so please be aware that I’d pay the best prices in this hobby, period, to get one of these, or any cool, vintage 1960s & older concert posters.
And while you’re here on my site, to see a few more vintage & rare Rolling Stones concert posters even older than this, just slide over to http://www.postercentral.com/rollingstones.htm
PosterCentral.com 