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Splatt Gallery's History of Michigan Concert Posters
Volume Five - 1969 - Page Twelve
Full-page ad in the June 7, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine for the Stevie Wonder single “My Cherie Amour” on Motown Records.
Stevie Wonder – My Cherie Amour (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjufjv4rH0s
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The third summer of Ann Arbor free concerts kicked off with this show in Gallup Park, June 8, 1969. The blurb in The Sun took note of the name of the band Kraack, “Killer band from Cleveland, the Kraackkkkkk, bizzaro as hell!!! And anyone with that name has gotta have something happening.” Poster by an unknown artist.
The sixth big Michigan rock festival in the summer of 1969, the Kalamazoo Rock Revival with Bob Seger, Frost, Smoke, Plain Brown Wrapper, Rationals, Savage Grace, Red, White & Blues Band, All The Lonely People, and Brownsville Station, on June 8, 1969, poster/handbill by Dave Baker.
A newspaper article dated June 8, 1969 promising great things for Bob Seger. It would just take seven or eight years.
An ad for Ungano’s in NYC with John Lee Hooker appearing with Raven, June 8-11, 1969.
A slice of life from mid-1969. For two bucks you could buy a party package from the Yellow Pages, with everything you could need for a far-out blast. After you got tired of the record that came with it (looks like it was called “Stoner Record Party” by the Yellow Pages), you could put on this current top-ten hit.
Tony Joe White – Polk Salad Annie (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRF24LY5pvw
Ads for the Whisky A-Go-Go on the Sunset Strip in North Hollywood, California, mostly by artist Len Masse, with appearances by Junior Walker & the All Stars, June 10-15, 1969 and a quick return, August 12-17.
Newspaper ad for Ungano’s in NYC with the final night, June 11, 1969, of the Amboy Duke’s eight-night engagement. MC5 appearing about a week after.
Poster by an unknown artist for Savage Grace with The Meat at The Cave in Lake Orion, Michigan, June 13, 1969, Friday the 13th, the earliest known show at The Cave, a show that is missing in the database.
Poster by an unknown artist “Kivari” for The Loft in Leonard, Michigan, June 13, 1969, with Teegarden & Van Winkle and the Tea. Includes quite a verbose enticement and a nice map.
Poster and handbill for E.T. Hooley, with drummer K.J. Knight, opening for Bo Diddley at the Rose Palace in Pasadena, California, June 13-14, 1969 (not 1968). And here is the third of three tracks that the band recorded with Slim Harpo while in California.
Slim Harpo with The Case of E.T. Hooley – Dynamite (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufHDeD8d3c8
Flyer/ad for Parliament at Club Bluenote in Toronto, Canada, June 13-15, 1969.
The headliners appear to be the King James Version (?) with supporting acts Tommy James & the Shondells and the Rationals at Olympia Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, June 14, 1969. Apparently, we’re not the only ones who do not know who KJV is, it was reported that only 300 people attended the show inside the cavernous Olympia.
Poster by an unknown artist for the Olympia Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, June 14, 1969, this would be for the show by the King James Version with supporting acts Tommy James & the Shondells and the Rationals.
When we last saw Tommy James & the Shondells, they had scored a #1 hit with their first record “Hanky Panky” in 1966. A string of hits followed over the next two years, but the choice of songs had led the band to being described as part of the “bubblegum pop” genre, which Tommy James hated. They began writing their own material, leaning more towards psychedelic music, and the hits continued, as with this title track to their sixth album, which was released in January 1969. This is the album version, which is a full two minutes longer than the single release.
Tommy James & the Shondells – Crimson & Clover (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LGD4MiSlEs
A full-page Motown Records ad in the June 14. 1969 issue of Billboard magazine, and a performance on the Ed Sullivan TV show.
Diana Ross & the Supremes – No Matter What Sign You Are (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0cILYSpaCg
The MC5 used the advance from signing to Atlantic Records to move out of the Hill Street houses in Ann Arbor to their own farm in Hamburg, Michigan, and to launch another short tour of the East Coast. While in Boston, June 16-18, 1969, for this run of shows at The Ark, they hooked up again with Danny Field’s friend Jon Landau, and agreed to have Landau come to Michigan to produce their second album. Poster by Emmanuel.
An ad for Ungano’s in NYC with the MC5 on top, June 19-22, 1969.
For the first time in its history, the Grande Ballroom was closed for a weekend, in fact it was closed for two weekends in a row from May 30 through June 8. It reopened with three shows, June 13-15, 1969, with Vanilla Fudge headlining two nights, supported by Frost and Savage Grace only on the second night. For the Sunday night show, Frost and Savage Grace returned to the stage.
A newspaper ad for Vanilla Fudge at the Grande Ballroom, June 13-14, 1969, and for Black Pearl on the following weekend. “The Frat” was likely a misinterpretation of the Frost and Savage Grace apparently took the place of Third Power.
Stuart Cosgrove’s Soul Trilogy convincingly traces the movement of the center of influence in soul music from Detroit ’67 to Memphis ’68 (and next to come, Harlem ’69). Of course, there had been a strong back-and-forth connection between the cities, ever since Martha Jean Steinberg gave up her household hints for housewives radio show in Memphis and came to Detroit to become The Queen of Detroit soul radio in 1963. And we’ve seen many of the Motown cast-offs, hopefuls, and even up-and-rising talents, such as Don Davis leave the Motor City to find success, or give it a try, at the studios of Stax Records and just a little further south to Muscle Shoals.
Don Davis began playing guitar in jazz combos after graduating from Detroit’s Central High School, moving into session work for Golden World, Ric-Tic, and Motown, eventually becoming a producer when he moved to Memphis and had a quick success with his song “Who’s Making Love” with Johnnie Taylor in 1968.
Isaac Hayes was a multi-instrumentalist session musician at Stax Records, and also a songwriter with a growing list of hits starting with “Soul Man”, recorded by Sam & Dave. The label had given him a shot at an album under his own name, “Presenting Isaac Hayes” in 1968, but it sold poorly and Hayes was considering a return to behind-the-scene writing and production, but at the same time he was experimenting with a new style of stage act on weekends at the Tiki Club in Memphis, backed by the Stax house band, The Bar-Kays, stretching unlikely song choices such as Glen Campbell’s “By the Time I get to Phoenix” into twenty-minute extended jams with long spoken sections that delved into the background and motivations of the song’s protagonist, seducing rowdy audiences into rapt (pun intended) attention.
Hayes convinced Stax to give him one more album, totally under his instinctive control, and had the Bar-Kays record a replicated version of the Tiki Club act in the studio. Don Davis felt that he knew exactly what the raw, primal tracks needed and he took them back to Detroit where he worked with arranger Johnny Allen to add the lush orchestration and engineer Russ Terrana at Tera Shirma to produce the final mix, utilizing techniques pioneered down the road by Artie Fields.
The result of this Detroit-Memphis collaboration, released in September, 1969, was ground-breaking soul, with only four long songs on the album, it was hot buttered but also stone cold classic.
Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul – (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNRNCzq7Jrw
A weathered newspaper ad for Sonny & Cher appearing across the Detroit River, at the Elmwood Casino in Windsor, Ontario, Canada on June 19, 1969.
A full-page ad in the June 19, 1969 edition of the Ann Arbor Argus newspaper in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announcing the signing of the MC5 to Atlantic Records. The quote comes from Hubert Saal in the May 19, 1969 issue of Newsweek magazine.
An ad for the first Free 1969 Summer Dance Concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan with the Tate Blues Band and Popcorn Blizzard on June 20, 1969, along with a couple of ads for the Esquire Burlesque Theater in Toledo, Ohio, featuring “Ann Arbor’s Friendly Neighborhood Freak as Pat – the Hippy Stripper”.
Poster by an unknown artist for The Rascals at Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan, June 20, 1969.
Poster by an unknown artist using a Punch Andrews publicity shot for the Bob Seger System with The Rush at Lake Lansing Park in Haslett, Michigan, June 20, 1969.
Newspaper ad for the 140th weekend at the Grande Ballroom, June 20-22, 1969, with the only Michigan appearances by the band Black Pearl. The new lettering of the Grande Ballroom looks like the work of Dave Baker, and with no further posters to come for the Grande in 1969, this lettering will be used frequently in the newspaper ads.
The Bonzo Dog Dooda Band from England failed to show, as did the band called Falcon (and also the band Raven on the earlier ad). Golden Earring and Black Pearl performed the three nights.
The Jethro Tull shows also failed to materialize; sources show them at the Fillmore East in NYC on July 3, 1969.
An ad for Bill Graham’s Fillmore East in New York City with the Buddy Miles Express, featuring Detroit guitarist Jim McCarty, opening for the Grateful Dead and Savoy Brown, June 20-21, 1969.
Posters for the “Newport 69” festival, in Northridge, California, June 20-22, 1969, headlined by Jimi Hendrix and featuring just one Michigan artist, Marvin Gaye. With attendance estimated at 200,000 people, it was the largest music festival up until the time.
The elusive ads for Peter Cavanaugh’s first “Wild Wednesday” at the Sherwood Forest in Davison, Michigan, June 21, 1969.
Wild Wednesday, supposedly named after a popular carbonated beverage, although we can find no evidence of that, was planned as a family-day event with local vendors ranging from jewelry to auto parts, food, rides, and almost as an after-thought, a patio with live bands. Reports from this event tend to get confused with “the first” Wild Wednesday that launched the rock and roll spectacular it was to become in 1971. We have not found a poster or other announcements from the 1969 event, even though it reportedly was “heavily promoted” for months on WTAC.
The Outsiders are the only band named, but in addition there were "25 Other Bands".
Poster by Gary Grimshaw for “Notes on the Summer Solstice”, June 21, 1969. Unfortunately, the only image that we’ve found for this fascinating piece.
Telling it much better and more completely than we can, ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Michigan-based, ZZ Top implicated, tale of THE FAKE ZOMBIES:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/danielralston/the-true-story-of-the-fake-zombies-the-strangest-con-in-rock?utm_term=.bykzqNyO1#.qqG98R6JE
The story of the Fake Zombies in 1969 is one our favorite posts, here is the story straight from one of the boys in the band:
http://fakezombies.blogspot.com/
Actually, there were two fake Zombies groups, the guys from Texas, who later became ZZ Top, and a Michigan band, formerly known as The Excels, both concocted by Delta Productions in Bay City, Michigan. Here is the definitive story:
https://www.michiganrockandrolllegends.com/dr-js-blog/272-michigan-s-fake-zombies
If you followed the link in the previous post, you read that in addition to Delta Productions shady business with the fake groups, they were busted for selling pot from a house they rented as the living quarters and party house for the band Dick Rabbit. Mark Farner lived there briefly, while The Pack was being managed by Delta, but he became concerned with all the drug activity and had moved out just before the bust.
This photo of the Dick Rabbit band, posting bond after the arrest was published on the front page of the Bay City newspaper. The charges were dropped, as described in the story, but for some reason, this made-for publicity shot was not used to its fullest potential and band of the Thayer brothers seems to have faded away, leaving behind a handful of singles.
Dick Rabbit – You Come on like a Train (1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVIqogksRlI
Dick Rabbit – Trip (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDFFqzcPTu0
A May 12, 1969 article in The Detroit Free Press was re-printed in the June 25, 1969 issue of the SUN newspaper in Ann Arbor, which also added this cartoon by Gary Grimshaw. The article was about a study on the public’s use of obscenities conducted by a Wayne State University professor who tape-recorded conversations in eighty places of work and leisure around Detroit.
They found that “Damn” was the most frequently spoken word, excluding pronouns such as you, I, she, or it, and that ten percent of all words spoken in leisure settings were a profanity. In the workplace, damn was the seventeenth most uttered word and profanity accounted for 3.5% of the conversations.
There were two commonly used words that were so taboo that the Free Press could not publish them, but they were the seventh and eighth most common words in leisure conversations and ranked 27th and 29th for words spoken on the job.
Incidentally, the professor who conducted the research was kicked out of his department by the University who were dubious about his methods and his rush to publicity. We wonder what he had to say to that.
An unknown artist began creating posters for the Silverbell Hideout in Auburn Hills, Michigan, using simple, clean geometric designs, starting with this June 21, 1969 show by the Amboy Dukes and the Sunday Funnies.
A 1969 national survey found that 84% of Americans believed that marijuana was dangerous and should be illegal.
But John Sinclair was feeling confident that he was going to beat the rap on the long-standing charges against him still stemming from his January 1967 arrest. Over the past two-and-a-half years, his legal team had managed to file motions, make bail, and further litigate, in addition to filing a constitutional challenge to the state of Michigan’s marijuana laws. They lost the constitutional argument in April, 1968, but they were successful in reducing the sales and possession charges to merely possession.
The June 24, 1969 court appearance ended with in a mistrial when the state’s witness was proven to have lied to the jury and the judge set a new date in order to assemble a new jury.
Commander Cody & his Lost Planet Airmen moved out to Berkeley, California in July, 1969, after these farewell appearances at Mark’s on William Street in Ann Arbor, June 24-25, 1969, and one final free concert in the park that Sunday. The artist for this poster was the Commander’s brother, Chris Frayne, who would continue to design and produce album cover artwork and future posters for the band.
Commander Cody & his Lost Planet Airmen – Seeds and Stems (Again) (1971)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7hvDnWeswc
Ad for the girl band from Chicago, The Chips, at The Dells in Lansing, Michigan, June 25-29, 1969, and this is how they sounded:
The Chips – When You Hold Me Baby (1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42Ta9iEESo0
Terry Sharbach illustration in the June 26, 1969 issue of the State News newspaper, advertising the final weekend of another long stay by the Sunliners at Grandmother’s in East Lansing, Michigan. This stint had begun on June 16th and ran through June 28th.
Poster for Alice Cooper opening for Chicago Transit Authority in Boston, Massachusetts, June 26-28, 1969.
Posters from the Eastown Theater in Detroit, Michigan are so rare that even a fairly nondescript flyer, such as this one by an unknown artist for Buddy Miles, Amboy Dukes, and Rush (not the Canadian Rush) on June 27-28, 1969, is a real treat.
An ad for the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan with Slim Harpo appearing June 27-29, 1969, opening for Chuck Berry for two nights. Also appearing both nights were the Red White & Blues Band, although the band Sky appears to have not made the show. It also appears that the Sunday show, on the 29th, was cancelled.
On the 142nd weekend, July 3-5, 1969, Savoy Brown headlined two shows, skipping over the Fourth of July to perform at the Rock and Roll Revival No, 2 at the Mount Clemons Raceway. The other bands for those two nights were All The Lonely People, Pentangle, and the Sun.
Meanwhile, out in California, a cool poster for the Temptations at The Forum in Inglewood, June 28, 1969, visualizing the title of their hit “Cloud 9”. They claimed that the cloud was not the smoke that 84% of the country feared, but do those smiles belie the claim?
Newspaper ad for the Temptations with Gladys Knight & the Pips at the Forum in Los Angeles, California, June 28, 1969.
A grainy photo and nearly impossible to read newspaper article that confirms a show by the MC5 at the Black Dome in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 28, 1969, a show that is missing from the Gateway timeline.
The Sunday Free Concert in West Park, Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 29, 1969, the final appearance by local favorites Commander Cody & his Lost Planet Airmen before they moved out to Berkeley, California. Poster by an unknown artist.
Volume Five - 1969 - continues - HERE
