Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker 1962 New York City "Traveling Hootenanny" Concert Poster. ...

Description

THE EARLIEST KNOWN "BOB DYLAN" CONCERT POSTER

Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker 1962 New York City "Traveling Hootenanny" Concert Poster. An original cardboard window card advertising "The Traveling Hootenanny" playing at Town Hall in New York on Friday evening, October 5, 1962. The six musicians given are Bob Dylan, Ian and Sylvia, John Lee Hooker, Judy Collins, Lynn Gold and Sandy Bull. This is the one & only known copy of this poster that all serious Dylan and poster collectors have ever seen.

This is no less than the earliest known Bob Dylan concert poster... that spelled his name correctly. You might recall that Heritage has previously auctioned off a University of Michigan Folk Festival poster from April of this year, with his name spelled "Dillon." There is no known Dylan concert poster in the six months between the two; Dylan was usually playing clubs rather than concerts.

This poster has more charisma than most folk-music posters of the day, with a cool graphic of an acoustic guitar on an old-fashioned carriage. Has a nice array of type fonts and sizes, and the orange color gives it a real snap. Unusual wording, too... people from the audience selected to perform? How fun. This first-ever Heritage offering measures 14" x 22" and grades to Very Good Minus condition. From the David Swartz Concert Poster Collection. COA from Heritage Auctions.

More Information: Dylan was pretty unknown then, as the show fell exactly halfway between the release of his first two albums, Bob Dylan and The Freewheelin'. He performed "Talkin' New York" from his first LP, "Talkin' John Birch Blues" and "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" from Freewheelin', and even "Ballad of Hollis Brown" which wouldn't come out until his third album in early '64. And although he didn't perform it, he had already recorded "Blowin' in the Wind" for the Freewheelin'.

It can playfully be argued that this poster dates from the exact month Bob Dylan first "went electric." Really. And here you thought it was on "Subterranean Homesick Blues." (smile) It was during this month, October 1962, that Dylan went into a Columbia Records recording studio with five musicians and attempted to cut "Mixed Up Confusion." You know, that rollicking little ditty which became his first single. He didn't produce the final take, but he did turn out the final released version of "Corrina, Corrina" with back-up musicians. So there you go.

John Lee Hooker was a blues legend that the others surely bowed down to, so it's hard to figure why he's listed third. Then more thought reveals that the six musicians are listed alphabetically by first name.

Although the wording implies this "Traveling Hootenanny" was going to be the first in a series, there's no evidence that any others ever took place.

Condition details: There's a horizontal crease across the poster's center, which lightly breaks color along the way. There's another horizontal crease across the blank white area at the bottom, barely touching upon the Murray printer's credit. The board's bottom edge has a clean ½" vertical tear down from "Center 110," and a 1/8" one down from "5987." Up top, there's a surface crease over the "A" in "Hootenanny." There's also a pair of those small vertical tears on the upper edge off to the right. There is general scuffing and grime over the upper white margin, "The Traveling Hootenanny" and the two sentences below.

The board's edges have small bump marks right up from "ELI" in "Traveling" and on the right, over from the very top of the guitar. There's a yellow surface blemish to the left of the guitar top, and a small bit of foreign material lodged on the guitar neck to the left of "Lynn Gold." The poster's upper left corner has a 2" diagonal crease which touches no lettering or art. All the poster's corner tips are a little bit scrunched. And the verso has a couple of dark blemishes.


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