Bobby Vee’s personally-owned vintage color 17 x 22 window card poster for “Alan Freed presents the Big Beat,” a musical showcase held at the Hippodrome Auditorium in Waterloo, Iowa, on April 22, 1958, featuring a host of legendary acts like Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Frankie Lymon (after leaving the Teenagers), Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Danny & The Juniors, The Diamonds, Larry Williams, Screamin’, and others. Designed by Shaw Artists Corp. and printed by the Murray Poster Printing Co., this sensational poster features eye-popping color and a wonderful cast of influential artists, all of whom are pictured, with the majority listed with their respective hit singles, such as ‘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,’ and ‘Rock 'N Roll Is Here to Stay.’ Expertly restored to fine condition, with some unobtrusive light creasing. Big Beat Freed posters are exceedingly rare, with examples only surfacing at auction within the past few years. Our research indicates that this is purportedly one of just five surviving examples of an authentic Big Beat poster, with all other examples stashed away in private collections.
This poster derives from the personal collection of Bobby Vee, whose 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.
Buddy Holly and 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 1957 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 Billboard magazine's charts, was the rock classic ‘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 1957 and also produced two Top 10 pop hits this year with ‘Silhouettes’ and ‘The Stroll.’
In 1958, Alan Freed was at the peak of his powers as the figurehead for teenagers and rock. He appeared in the 1956 and 1957 movies Rock Around the Clock, Rock Rock Rock, Mister Rock and Roll, and Don't Knock the Rock, and he had a short-lived national primetime TV show the previous year called The Big Beat, going 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. Freed passed away in 1965, but his legacy remains strong. Posthumously, he was a first-ballot inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, he was made a member of the National Radio and National Rhythm & Blues Halls of Fame, he received the Grammy's Trustee's Award, and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles.
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