Beach Boys 1963 Sacramento, CA Christmastime Jumbo Concert Poster....

Description

ROCKIN' AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE IN 1963

Beach Boys 1963 Sacramento, CA Christmastime Jumbo Concert Poster. A large cardboard window card advertising "A Gala Christmas Concert" starring The Beach Boys in California's state capitol on Saturday evening, December 21, 1963. Features the key line, "This Concert will be Recorded for future release as a Capitol Album!!!" And indeed, promoter Fred Vail's spoken introduction of the band on stage this night kicks off the group's live album Beach Boys Concert, which was their first #1 album on Billboard's LP chart the following year.

There are a couple of fun Wilson touches to this poster as well. It was Beach Boy Carl Wilson's 17th birthday... only seventeen, can you believe it, and the group had already scored three Top 10 singles! Those being "Surfin' U.S.A.," "Surfer Girl" and "Be True to Your School." Also, group leader, producer and main composer Brian Wilson definitely played at this show, perhaps because of the live-album recording. He was already starting to "sit out" other concert appearances by the band.

Very compelling yellow & red coloring on this jumbo board, and lots of fun wording as well. Did you notice tickets were only a couple of bucks? And they were sold at five fun locations listed along the poster's bottom, including Tower Books, which was an offshoot of Tower Records, the new & upcoming record-store chain that was born in this very city.

This poster is even a little bit rarer than its 'sister poster' from three months earlier, the green one that we sold last auction (April 2020) for $8,750. They're both very difficult to find, though, and certainly this is the first time Heritage has ever been able to proudly offer this one for sale.

Measures 20" x 28" and grades to Very Good condition. COA from Heritage Auctions.

More Information: As mentioned, this poster could be considered the sister poster to the green one we sold last auction, also from the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, from three months earlier. That one showed the band in suits and skinny ties; this one has a photo of the hot-rod-loving, car-club Beach Boys. Poster collectors often refer to the September poster as "big green" and this one as "big yellow."

Thanks to promoter Vail, the band actually broke their live career out of Sacramento, doing more shows there and selling out more often than any other city in California. In fact, this was their third appearance at the Sacramento Memorial Coliseum, all of them in 1963. So any early Sacramento Beach Boys concert poster has special cache, and you know it was an adoring audience.

A lot had transpired since the September concert, by the way. The band had racked up two more national Top 10 hits since the September concert, "Surfer Girl" and "Be True to Your School." Guitarist David Marks was no longer a member of the band by this point. And sadly, President Kennedy had been assassinated just a month before this show.

Due to technical difficulties in the recording, the entire concert could not be used for the Capitol live album Beach Boys Concert. From this show on December 21, however, three things did make the album: Fred Vail's stage introduction, and the group's covers of "Long Tall Texan" and "Johnny B. Goode."

Condition detail: Poster has a couple of surface creases and scratches, which don't show on the yellow but are visible on the red printing. Most noticeably over the "mas" in "Christmas" and in all three words of The Beach Boys' name. There are also some light remnants of water or liquid having run down the front of the poster, starting in their picture and continuing to the bottom. These mild vertical streaks cover only about three inches across, for example only going through the "CH" in "Beach Boys." They're very light, and barely a factor. The board also has a seven-inch diagonal crease in the upper right corner area, barely touching the tip of "T" in "Concert." The four white margins have standard toning, wear, handling and bumping expected on a piece of this vintage, and one small tape lift to the right of the Colby printing credit. No tape residue or even pin holes, however, in any of the margins. Verso has some old bits of masking tape and some harmless tape lifts.