DALLAS, TX.- It's standard practice for teens of any generation to pepper their walls with the photogenic pop stars of the hour, but those posters are designed for thumb tacks and fleeting crushes. Concert posters, conversely, were initially designed to simply get people to live-music gigs. Now, they're often celebrated as works of art, and artists design them with longevity in mind in hopes of being saved and collected. One thing that hasn't changed: Each creation potentially marks life-changing performances or even milestone events like first concerts, first dates or, in the case of Heritage's July 11–12 Concert Posters Auction, the birth of an art form.


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The two-day event boasts a range of prints of a certain age, a.k.a. the time frame when concert posters began to grab a new kind of attention and spotlight. These are posters for psychedelic art fans as well as intrepid followers of acts like the Doors, Otis Redding, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones and B.B. King — not to mention committed Deadheads.


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Like film posters, vintage concert posters were borne of a need for advertising an event. But historically, while film posters were often sent back to the studio after films completed their run, music posters were a bit different.

"With most vintage concert posters, my estimate is that 99 percent of them were torn down and thrown away after the show," says Pete Howard, Heritage's Director of Concert Posters. "The exception came with the advent of psychedelic concert posters in the Bay Area in the 1960s, which started to be saved in numbers shortly after starting to appear."

Which brings us to our first "trip" back in time: An original and rare cardboard poster advertising "A Tribute to Dr. Strange," the first dance concert of the San Francisco psychedelic era held at Longshoremen's Hall in San Francisco on October 16, 1965, with a lineup including the nascent Jefferson Airplane with Signe Anderson, the Great Society with Grace Slick, the Charlatans not long after their Virginia City, Nevada stint, and the Oakland band The Marbles. The legendary artwork was designed by Alton Kelley (the Kelley of Family Dog Productions fame) and the little-known Ami Magill.

"My favorite San Francisco psychedelic concert poster of all time just happens to also be the first one that was ever made," says Howard of the work. "This jewel manages to be both intricately psychedelic and naively simple at the same time."

And for psychedelia enthusiasts who crave the simple and boldly colorful — and incredibly rare — there's the breathtakingly early November 6, 1965 San Francisco concert poster for "A Tribute to Ming the Merciless" advertising Zappa and his Mothers, and the Charlatans, straight from an elite collection. This show pre-dates any Bill Graham concert, any Fillmore Auditorium or Avalon Ballroom rock concert, any Mime Troupe benefit and any Grateful Dead… anything.

If Heritage's own specialists are stunned, bidders certainly should be. "When David Swartz told me he was consigning a Ming to us, I pulled out a pair of pliers and pinched myself," says Howard. "This seminal Family Dog poster is so rare that most collectors have never even been in the same room with one." A tiny number of these posters were hand-curated in different colors, and the example Heritage offers sports sublime dark-grey letters (still glittering after 60 years) on powerful dark red paper.

More than ten years older than the above and still holding fast is a lot featuring a performer who nimbly crossed genres between blues, rock, pop and R&B. Before he was "The King of Blues," B.B. King was "The Blues Boy," as seen on this early concert poster from 1954, a first-time Heritage offering. "This poster is ridiculously rare, cool and historic," says Howard. "These are drop-dead graphics for such an early poster by an American postage-stamp musician, and the only one known to exist." The red-and-yellow color theme (and historical significance) continues with this jumbo Globe cardboard window card for The Rolling Stones, The Vibrations and Patti and the Blue Belles from 1965. "Only about half a dozen are known to exist in collector's hands, and finally getting one for a Heritage auction after six years of waiting is a dream come true for me," says Howard.

But it wouldn't be a full trip down melody lane without acknowledging the folk genre. On offer is a 1962 window card with sophisticated graphics advertising "The Traveling Hootenanny" playing at Town Hall in New York featuring Bob Dylan, Ian and Sylvia, John Lee Hooker, Judy Collins, Lynn Gold and Sandy Bull. As the first concert poster known to feature Dylan's name and with only one specimen known to still exist, what more could a Dylan or folk completist ask for?

While the auction is packed with high-value rarities, it's also a fabulous opportunity for collectors at every level to find joy in the hobby. There are Grateful Dead gems from the First Printing "Skeleton & Roses" to Wes Wilson-signed designs to the first-ever poster to declare the band's name. These are joined by an early Beatles-potato chip ad, an iconic and enduring graphic out of San Francisco and a Fleetwood Mac print so gorgeously contemporary it could've been designed today.

"For anyone browsing to consider their first bid, I would recommend they follow their heart," says Howard. "If you're excited about a concert poster for any reason, that's a great gauge. Or if you love the music. Then you'll have something you'll always treasure."