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Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry 1958 Alan Freed "Big Beat" Waterloo, IA Concert Poster.

Currency:USD Category:Memorabilia Start Price:3,600.00 USD Estimated At:40,000.00 - 60,000.00 USD
Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry 1958 Alan Freed  Big Beat  Waterloo, IA Concert Poster.
Buyer's Premium Per Lot: This auction is subject to a Buyer's Premium of 25% on the first $300,000 (minimum $49), plus 20% of any amount between $300,000 and $3,000,000, plus 12.5% of any amount over $3,000,000 per lot.
Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry 1958 Alan Freed "Big Beat" Waterloo, IA Concert Poster. Up for auction is this true monster of a rock 'n' roll concert poster, topped by impresario Alan Freed who owned rock 'n' roll at the time, and featuring the musical talents of Buddy Holly The Crickets, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Lymon after leaving the Teenagers, Danny The Juniors, The Diamonds, Larry Williams, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and many others.

Heritage Auctions sold our first one of these extreme rarities last summer, and got great results. Now we're proud to offer up Bobby Vee's personal specimen, which the late singer had in his possession for decades. Vee's biggest tie to 50's rock 'n' roll came when he stepped into the 1959 Winter Dance Party tour as a substitute musician, after Buddy Holly perished midway through that tour.

This window card has so much going for it that it's hard to know where to start. Alan Freed, who many credit with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll," presides over 16 acts that are splashed all over the poster, with a photo for every one and song titles for most. And look at those amazing tunes: "Rock n Roll Music," "Peggy Sue," "Great Balls of Fire," "Maybe Baby," "Sweet Little 16," "Oh Boy," "Breathless," "At the Hop," "Bony Moronie," "I Put a Spell on You," "Rock 'N Roll Is Here to Stay"... could you ask for a concert poster better representing 1950's rock 'n' roll?

Buddy Holly the Crickets were still on their big initial roll of four early Top 20 hits: "That'll Be the Day," "Peggy Sue," "Oh, Boy!" and "Maybe Baby." The poster slips in "I'm Gonna Love You Too," his latest single on Coral Records from February which didn't chart. "Rave On" had just been released as his new single, literally days before this show.

Jerry Lee Lewis " Band" find themselves in the pole position here, and The Killer couldn't be hotter. In '57 he had changed the world with "Whole Lot of Shakin' Going On" and "Great Balls of Fire," and for this concert he was in between two more classics: "Breathless" (also a Top 10 hit) and "High School Confidential."

Chuck Berry never needs a set-up, of course, but it's great to see his previous two singles listed under his name: "Rock Roll Music" and "Sweet Little Sixteen." His brand new single, which had just entered Billboardmagazine's charts? Oh, not much, just "Johnny B. Goode."

The poster's second row is rounded out by 15-year-old Frankie Lymon, late of the Teenagers, who sputtered as a solo act but was surely thrilling audiences on this tour with his seminal "Why Do Fools Fall in Love"; and the Diamonds, who had a world-beater with "Little Diamond" in '57 and also produced two Top 10 pop hits this year, "Silhouettes" and "The Stroll" (the latter on the poster).

The poster's design gets a huge credit here. The four colors (white, red, dark blue, yellow) are distributed marvelously, with a great deal of forethought... Jerry Lee Lewis's band name gets two colors, and his and Buddy Holly's song titles even get two colors. The designer's old-fashioned arrangement of rectangles, ovals and banners is very eye-catching in this completely symmetrical design. The layout just screams "1950's" and yells "rock 'n' roll."

Alan Freed was at the peak of his powers right now as the figurehead for teenagers and rock (Elvis Presley aside, who was always his own island). At this point, Freed had appeared in the seminal motion pictures Rock Around the Clockand Rock Rock Rock(both 1956), and Mister Rock and Rolland Don't Knock the Rock(both 1957). He had a short-lived national primetime TV show the previous year called The Big Beat, and went on to host a show of the same name on WNEW-TV in New York, his home base. But his bubble was just about to burst when the radio payola scandal broke and essentially took down his career in 1959.

This rare board is a timepiece, a masterpiece and even a Smithsonian piece, and just think - nearly all of them were just thrown away right after the shows. Thank goodness at least a couple were accidentally saved. No museum has one of these, not even the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and none of them are in Europe, to the best of our knowledge; they're only in the collections of a few fortunate American collectors.

We told you last summer that only about five of these posters are known to exist, and yes, Bobby Vee's is one of those five. Our August 2020 sale was the only appearance ever of a Freed Big Beat poster in an auction setting, other than eBay once in the 1990's. It's no wonder Heritage realized $118,750 last year, as the value of the crème de la crème continues to rise. Measures 17" x 22" and grades to restored Very Good condition. COA from Heritage Auctions and repair work by Chameleon Restoration.