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Splatt Gallery's History of Michigan Concert Posters
Volume Five - 1969 - Page Eighteen
A newspaper events calendar with the 150th weekend at the Grande Ballroom, September 5-6, 1969, with two shows by Johnny Winter and Sky.
Other events of interest, Chuck Mitchell with Fabulous Thunders at the Chess Mate, Silverbell has Savage Grace, Third Power, and Brownsville Station, and at Wampler's Lake the Bob Seger System was joined by the intriguingly named Night Face.
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Yep, this is the reason we opened a poster gallery – it’s Wall To Wall Money! - at least according to this ad in the September 6, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine.
Carl Lundgren poster for Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard at Cobo Hall, Detroit, Michigan, September 6, 1969. The database has this show listed in both 1969 and 1975, both years had September 6th falling on a Saturday, however the “WKNR Presents” on the poster indicates that it is probably 1969, since WKNR Keener-13 signed off the air on April 25, 1972. In addition, a Little Richard tour website has the 1969 date, but does not have the 1975.
The 1969 Cobo Hall show looks like the only time these two founding fathers of rock and roll performed together in Michigan, but each of them had an interesting history of visits to the state. Lewis first came through Michigan as part of Alan Freed’s 1958 Big Beat Show, appearing in Grand Rapids, Flint, Lansing, and Kalamazoo as part of that tour. He headlined two nights at Cobo in May 1961, and then found a home at Joe Bathey’s Club in Detroit, performing there four times in 1966 and 1967.
Little Richard appeared at the Madison Ballroom at the peak of his ascendancy, and at the end of the Madison Ballroom’s run, in 1957. It would be eight more years before he returned, playing eleven times at Phelps Lounge in Detroit in 1965 and 1966. There is a mysterious run of thirteen dates in October 1967 at an “Unknown Venue in Hazel Park” (listed the same on his tour website), and then there was the two-week, fifteen shows at Vertigo West in Detroit in May 1969, which we chronicled earlier.
A really nice poster that is surprisingly quite scarce.
The SUN newspaper became the Ann Arbor SUN in February 1969, although it remained a cheap mimeograph publication through the September 6, 1969 issue.
A full-page Motown records ad in the September 6, 1969 issue of Billboard magazine putting “Here I Go Again” by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles up against “Baby I’m For Real” by the Originals in a race up the charts.
The Originals reached #1 on the Billboard Soul Singles chart and #14 on the Hot 100 chart, while the Miracles peaked at #15 and #37 on the Soul Singles chart and the Hot 100, respectively.
Boxing-style poster for Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, and Martha Reeves & the Vandellas, in San Francisco, California on September 7, 1969.
Poster for the Stooges, opening for Ten Years After, at the Boston Tea Party in Boston, Massachusetts, September 9-11, 1969.
A pretty cool poster/ad by an unknown artist for Sam & Dave with Chicago at the University of Windsor in Windsor, Ontario Canada, just across the river from Detroit, Michigan on September 11, 1969.
The 151st weekend at the Grande Ballroom, September 12-13, 1969, featured one of the strangest line-ups of the venue’s history, the pop music of The Turtles combined with the psychedelic folk of the pre-T-Rex, Tyrannosaurus Rex from England. Local support by the Sun and Thomas Blood. The ad also hints at a “New Grande” which would be the Riviera Theater a few blocks away.
Record company ad for the British band Tyrannosaurus Rex with tour dates for their first US tour, including their first Michigan appearances, at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, September 12-13, 1969. They shared the bill with The Turtles, who were making their second Michigan appearances.
The tour was the end of the two-piece configuration of Tyrannosaurus Rex, Marc Bolan and Steve Peregrin Took. Bolan expanded the band to a four-piece rock group and shortened the band name to T-Rex. Took became involved with the British underground rock scene with the band Pink Fairies and others, and appearing with the MC5 during their British tour.
The pairing of Tyrannosaurus Rex with the American pop band The Turtles at these Grande Ballroom shows was not as odd of a combination as it might seem. Ex-Turtles Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan later sang back-up on T-Rex’s first #1 UK single “Hot Love” in 1971, as well as the follow-up “Get It On”, and the albums “Electric Warrior” and “The Slider”.
The was also a show at the Grande Ballroom on September 18, 1969, with Chuck Berry, but no with additional information.
A sample of the rock and roll gossip around town in Mike Gormley’s column in The Detroit Free Press, September 12, 1969.
Teegarden & Van Winkle returned to their hometown Tulsa, Oklahoma for a show at Oiler Park, September 12, 1969, making note of accomplishments since moving to Detroit, a “Janis Joplin Tour”, and a “London Pop Festival”, no mention that they had also released two albums. The London Pop Festival was in Ontario, Canada, not England.
It’s unusual that his name is not on this, maybe he was using some discretion while in exile, but it certainly must be a concert ad by Gary Grimshaw for a September 13, 1969 show by Commander Cody in Berkeley, California. Another ad by Gary Grimshaw for the Chaldea store in Berkeley that is signed “Feather”.
With less than a week before show time, it looked like the Toronto Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival would be cancelled. Although promoter John Brower had successfully managed the Toronto Pop Festival just three months earlier, in June, tickets were not selling for the Revival and Brower’s financial investor told him to pull the plug. In the true sense of a “revival”, Brower had booked an impressive list of rock and roll originators, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, and Jr. Walker, along with up-and-coming acts, Alice Cooper, Cat Mother, and Tony Joe White, plus star-power draws, Chicago and The Doors. Brower had also gotten notorious weirdo Kim Fowley to be the MC.
Fowley had already arrived in Toronto ahead of time, so Brower met with him to give him the bad news and to put a stop to the mounting hotel bill for his entourage, but Fowley didn’t want to give up so easily and he suggested that Brower call up John Lennon. It was not as ludicrous a suggestion as it might seem today and Fowley instructed Brower to give Lennon’s receptionist only the list of names of the veteran rockers, especially Gene Vincent who was a big hero of the Beatles, and not to mention The Doors or the other half-dozen acts so that Lennon would not be intimidated by overly-large line-up.
To Brower’s surprise, the list he gave to the receptionist got Lennon himself on the phone, and to his further surprise, Lennon agreed to participate, but only if his band could also perform. Brower gasped, thinking he was referring to The Beatles, but Lennon told him, no, he would assemble a new group, to be called the Plastic Ono Band.
Brower immediately called his financial investor, told him that John Lennon was now on the bill, and the investor was back in. Brower then called the Toronto radio station CHUM to announce the news, in these pre-Internet days the radio was, by far, the best way to quickly spread late-breaking information, but Brower had a bit of a credibility problem.
Earlier in the year, Brower was one of a select group of promoters who had been granted access to the Beatle’s film “Magical Mystery Tour” which was being brought to movie theaters city by city, much the same as a concert tour. Brower had done well with the film in a couple of Canadian cities, but for some reason, tickets for a showing in Ottawa were just not selling. On the promise of a dozen free tickets, Brower got a waitress at an Ottawa restaurant to call the local radio station and report that she had just served dinner to George Harrison. With the prospect of a visiting Beatle appearing at the showing, tickets sold out fast, but Brower had made the mistake of later bragging about the ruse to his friends at CHUM, so when he called to tell them that he had booked John Lennon for the Revival, the station laughed at him.
Brower called back to Lennon’s office and this time he tape recorded the conversation, during which the receptionist told him the band members had been selected and dropped the bombshell that the guitar player would Eric Clapton! Brower took the tape back to CHUM, but they still didn’t believe him, claiming it was someone with a fake English accent doubling down on the fantasy by adding Clapton, what was next, Mick Jagger on vocals?
At his wits end, Brower called his friend in Detroit, Russ Gibb. Gibb asked Brower if he had spoken directly with Lennon and when Brower affirmed it, Gibb went on his radio show with the news. Demonstrating the power of radio in those days, lines started forming at ticket outlets and 10,000 tickets were sold in the Detroit listening area.
At the show, MC Kim Fowley asked the crowd to give Lennon a warm welcome by holding up lit matches and lighters. When John Lennon peered out over the crowd from the stage that night, September 13, 1969, he saw the sea of a thousand points of light that would become a rock concert ritual, the first time such a thing had happened.
Here is a track that John Lennon had written the previous time he had visited Toronto, Canada, during his “Bed-In” with Yoko Ono in March of 1969.
John Lennon – Give Peace a Chance (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkZC7sqImaM
Before we leave the 1969 Toronto Rock & Roll Revival behind, we should mention that it was the scene of Alice Cooper’s infamous “chicken incident”. The alleged true, true story is recounted here by bassist Dennis Dunaway, where he describes that the story starts at their shows at the Eastown Theater with their Detroit friend Larry the Chicken Man.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-how-alice-coopers-infamous-chicken-incident-really-happened-20160308
Poster/flyer for the Toronto Rock ‘N’ Roll Revival in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 13, 1969, the show with Alice Cooper’s infamous “chicken incident”.
An ad from The Michigan Daily newspaper in Ann Arbor for a Sunday Free Concert on September 14, 1969, with the UP, The Bad Experience, and Passion.
The 17th Michigan music festival of 1969, yes, Toledo is in Ohio, but as you should recall from a previous post, it really belonged to Michigan, plus, look at the line-up with Michigan artists MC5, Amboy Dukes, Alice Cooper, Frost, SRC, Pleasure Seekers, Rationals, Savage Grace, and Frut.
Again, the band Rush is not the Canadian band, but likely one of the two Detroit bands named Rush that we’ve found before, although we seem to recall seeing something somewhere that suggested this is yet a third band named Rush, maybe from Ohio.
The Turtles were fresh off their two night stand at The Grande Ballroom and seem even more out of place here.
The poster for this September 14, 1969 show was made by CREEM magazine artist, Linz.
Poster/ad for the People’s Festival in San Francisco, September 13-14, 1969, looks like the work of Carl Lundgren, maybe even a Lundgren – Gary Grimshaw collaboration.
The concert database does not begin to list any shows at Mr. Flood’s Party in Ann Arbor, Michigan until 1971, but this ad by an unknown artist from the September 17, 1969 issue of The Ann Arbor Argus shows it was in operation, as a “folk bar” at least, two years earlier.
Life-affirming poster, Little Richard, by Al Shamie (Bad Dog), September 17, 1969.
The infamous Washtenaw County Sheriff Douglas Harvey, sworn enemy of the hippies, a night in the Washtenaw county jail, the “Harvey Hotel”, typically resulted in a shaved head. Poster by Al Shamie (Bad Dog), September 17, 1969.
An ad for the Parliaments “Parliafunkadelicment Thang” at the Esquire Showbar in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Their early tour history is not well documented, but these shows likely took place around the time of their September 19, 1969 appearance at the Dawson College in Montreal.
An ad for Mandrake’s in Berkeley, California with Commander Cody appearing on September 19, 1969, and returning again two nights later.
The 152nd weekend at the Grande Ballroom, September 19-20, 1969, and the return of the MC5 to the ballroom for the first time in four months (other than a July 23 benefit for Legal Self Defense, the last time had been opening for Sun Ra in May – which was also the last Grande Ballroom show with a decent poster). Charlie Musselwhite and Wilson Mower Pursuit also performed both nights.
Charley Musslewhite had performed at the Ann Arbor Blues Festival a month earlier and this appears to be his first Detroit appearance, which is odd considering how he was such good friends with John Lee Hooker. Hooker was the best man for Musslewhite’s third marriage, and Musslewhite convinced Hooker to move to California to join him after Musslewhite left Chicago and found admiration from the hippies in San Francisco.
Charley Musslewhite – Christo Redemptor (1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUplSejUHmk
The Grand Opening of Jim Tarbell’s Ludlow Garage in Cincinnati, Ohio, September 19-20, 1969, featuring Grand Funk Railroad.
Technically, not a poster, which is a shame that the Eastown Theater never saw fit to pursue, this ad for the September 19-20, 1969 shows with the Kings, B.B. and Albert, is by Al Shamie (Bad Dog), who is becoming our leading choice for 1969’s Detroit Rock Poster Artist of the Year. Also lists an upcoming show by Eric Burdon.
An ad for Discount Records in Ann Arbor, Michigan by Al Shamie (Bad Dog) for a sale that ended on September 20, 1969.
A very cool poster by an unknown artist for a September 20, 1969 show at Punch Andrews’ Silverbell Hideout in Auburn Hills, Michigan with Brownsville Station and Sunday Funnies.
We can read some of the speech balloons and they are quite intriguing. The largest one seems to poke fun at the current festival craze, “Hamtramck Pop Festival was cancelled due to a theft of the accordion – shucks”.
Another balloon seems to take a jab at Punch Andrews, “Did you here (sp) about that (indecipherable), Punch?”
One of the marchers near the back is singing the Seger song “Noah”.
“Hey Stella, is there any (indecipherable) there?” gets the answer, “Don’t be silly, that’s (indecipherable).”
Great stuff that could fit in with the humor of the Sunday Funnies band, possibly a member of the band made this gem.
Newspaper ads for the Four Tops with the Rotary Connection at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, September 20, 1969.
An awesome poster by an unknown artist for the Bob Seger System, Frost, and Floating Circus in Saginaw, Michigan on September 20, 1969.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Labor Temple was their version of the Grande Ballroom, a dance hall that had been popular in the 1940’s and had fallen into un-use for a decade until promoter David Anthony started renting the upper floor for Sunday night psychedelic rock shows, the first one was the Grateful Dead on February 2, 1969.
The following link provides an excellent, complete show history of the Labor Temple, along with many great posters by their main poster artist Juryj (“George”) Ostroushko (brother of musician Peter), although, unfortunately, the above poster for The MC5 on September 21, 1969 is not one of his. The list also shows a cancelled MC5 show in October, 1970, and the very last, final show was Michigan bands Amboy Dukes and Alice Cooper on November 8, 1970.
http://twincitiesmusichighlights.net/venues/labor-temple/
A second poster and a newspaper ad for the MC5 at the Labor Temple in Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 21, 1969. John Lee Hooker following a couple of weeks later with Dr. John.
A poster that came as a detachable portion of the album cover for the “Together” album by the Supremes with the Temptations, released on September 23, 1969.
Full-page Motown records ad in Billboard magazine for the “Together” album by the Supremes with the Temptations.
A poster from Japan for the “Together” album by the Supremes with the Temptations, released on September 23, 1969.
Diana Ross on the cover of the September 23, 1969 issue of Look magazine, one of the two great photo-journal magazines, the other, of course, being Life magazine. Both magazines were started in the late 1930’s, with Life starting a few months earlier, giving it the claim of America’s first all-photography magazine. Both have only a few more years of existence, Look will cease publication in October 1971, and Life will end in December 1972.
Poster by Milton Glaser for Stevie Wonder and Hugh Masakela at the Lincoln Center in New York City on September 26, 1969.
Poster for Diana Ross & the Supremes in Providence, Rhode Island on September 26, 1969.
A newspaper ad for the 153rd weekend at the Grande Ballroom, September 26-27, 1969, with Frost and the Bonzo Dog Band performing both nights.
Poster/handbill by an unknown artist for Punch Andrews’ Silverbell in Auburn Hills, Michigan, September 27, 1969. Bands were Savage Grace and Poetic Justice, photo looks like Pablo Picasso.
Poster/ad for the single “Helpless” by Jackie Wilson which peaked at #21 on Billboard magazine’s Best Selling Soul Singles on September 27, 1969.
Jackie Wilson – Helpless (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq51s6AuStM
Ad by an unknown artist “JD” for a Sunday Free Concert, in the city park behind the bus depot in East Lansing, Michigan, September 28, 1969, with Plain Brown Wrapper and Ormandy.
A poster for Diana Ross & the Supremes at the University of Maine in Orono, Maine on September 28, 1969.
Two ads for the Free Spirit community of boutiques in Lansing, Michigan that may be the earliest ones that were signed by Dennis Preston. The one on the right is September 29, 1969 and the one on the left is October 3, 1969.
Technically their second album on their self-named label, and their third overall, the album “Get Ready” by Rare Earth was released on September 30, 1969. The entire second side was a 21-minute version of their live set closer and title track. A three-minute edit of the song was released as a single in February 1970, reaching #2 on the Cash Box Top 100 and at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, the song also peaked at #21 on the R&B chart. The distinctive label logo was designed by an unknown artist.
In the fall of 1969, Rare Earth released their second album on the Rare Earth label. As an odd surprise, the label also re-issued the “S.F. Sorrow” album by England’s Pretty Things.
The Pretty Things – Baron Saturday (1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZyNaqg27dA
The first album released by Rare Earth on the Rare Earth label was actually a soundtrack album for the movie “Generation”, released in 1969 with what would prove to be one of their best album covers. The album quickly withdrawn after the film failed commercially, with only a small number of copies sold. Several tracks were remixed and included on the next Rare Earth album, Ecology, in 1970.
Following the MC5’s cover on the September issue, the cover of the October 1969 issue of Circus magazine had the headline for the follow-up story “Detroit is Alive: Dig the Stooges and MC5”.
Volume Five - 1969 - continues - HERE
A record label ad from September 1969 with the lead single “God Gave Me You” from the forthcoming debut album by Frijid Pink. The album and the break-out third single “House of the Rising Sun” will be released in January 1970.
