FD-27 Janis Joplin, Howlin' Wolf 1966 Ltd-Ed Silkscreen Signed by Mouse & Kelley (AOR-2.14)....

Description

A FULL PAGE IN "THE ART OF ROCK" GIVEN TO THIS RARE GEM

FD-27 Janis Joplin, Howlin' Wolf 1966 Ltd-Ed Silkscreen Signed by Mouse & Kelley (AOR-2.14). An original 1966 oversized silkscreen print, done by Stanley Mouse and an associate at Mouse Studios in San Francisco, of the famous Mouse/Kelley poster FD-27, nicknamed "Howlin' Wolf." And gloriously, this specimen was signed by both Mouse and his designing partner Alton Kelley, possibly the only one that exists with both of their signatures.

This poster is so rare that Eric King, the author of The Collector's Guide to Psychedelic Rock Concert Posters, Postcards and Handbills 1965-1973, a book that everyone in the hobby uses, didn't even know about its existence until about 10 years after the fact. And King was right there, in San Francisco in the mid-60's, collecting S.F. psych posters, a true pioneer in the hobby.

So how many were made? "My guess is that 25 or 30 were done," King tells Heritage. "And there's probably no more than 10 of them that still survive. That's a guess."

The TRPS ("The Rock Poster Society") Festival is held every October in San Francisco, in Golden Gate Park, and is attended by most serious psychedelic concert-poster dealers and collectors. You see everything there, many items not for sale but just displayed for bragging rights. Or other hush-hush items carried around in clandestine portfolios, revealed only to the lucky, prestigious few.

We asked King if he'd ever seen one of these at the TRPS show. "Never," he told Heritage. "There's very few of them, and the people who have owned them have been the apex collectors."

Stanley Mouse is a mainstay at the TRPS Fest, always in the same booth, always signing posters all day long, usually with a waiting line. And yet Mouse told Heritage that he's never signed one in all the years at TRPS - and doesn't own one himself.

"I've agented the sale of three of them total, but nothing in the last 10 years," King adds. "And I have no knowledge of one changing hands within the last seven to 10 years." We asked King if he's ever seen another double-signed one. "I don't think so," he said. "It may be that this is the only one."

This is not an official Family Dog advertising poster, per se. "Stanley did this sort of as an extra," King tells Heritage. "This was not something to substitute [for the regular poster]. The press runs by that point were at least 2,500. And you can't silkscreen 2,500 posters. But he did this just to see what it would look like in Day-Glo colors, etc." Nonetheless, the Art of Rock book deemed it worthy of a full page, which was kind of unfair because almost no collectors ever get a shot at buying one. It sits way up high, on a pedestal.

Mouse actually had an associate get his hands dirty and pull the screens back then. "There's a guy in my studio who had a silkscreen table," Mouse told Heritage in September. "And at night he would put his sleeping bag on it and sleep on it! He did some silkscreens for me, like the Western Front poster and a couple of others."

Notice how the green isn't always solid, and the colors not totally consistent throughout. This is the unique charm of the silk-screening process, and one that adds greatly to its appeal in many art-collectors' eyes.

Addressing its rarity again, we wondered out loud why only 25 or 30 were done. "I know why that is," Eric King tells us. "Stanley did a number of silkscreens before this, on his own, when he was in Detroit. But they tended to use crappy screens that clogged up quickly. They would last somewhere between 25 and 30 uses. At that point, they would scrap the screens."

While we had him on the line, we asked Mouse about his studio in those days, where this piece would have been made. "It was an old, horse-drawn-buggy fire department building," he says, "It had a large downstairs where Big Brother & the Holding Company practiced. This guy had his silkscreen thing there, and other things went on there. I lived upstairs, using it as my studio and living space." We assumed it was torn down by now? "I thought they had made apartments out of it, but I drove by it the other day and it's still there. But it's closed up."

Since this oversized edition of the FD-27 is not a regular poster, we asked Eric King of its importance. "This is one of the most historically significant pieces in the canon," he says. "This is an extremely valuable item. From a wonderful era." So... the value, in his mind? "I think it's worth around $100,000. It may do more, and it may do less.

"It was the greatest party since the fall of the Roman empire, and I got to go. I was there."

This first-ever Heritage offering measures 23" x 29" and grades to repaired Very Good condition. COA from Heritage Auctions.

Literature: See Grushkin, Paul, The Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk, Abbeville Press, New York, 1987, p.105 (full-page illus.).

More Information: Chameleon Restoration addressed a few edge and corner issues, mending pinholes, eradicating surface blemishes and greatly reducing any creasing it might have had. The result is a wonderfully satisfying piece with little or no evidence of past damage. Verso has a bit of uneven toning as well as random splotches of green Day-Glo ink, obviously a printer's anomaly.


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