DALLAS, TX.- An exceptionally rare concert poster featuring a "who’s who" of 16 of the top 1950s musical acts will find a new home in Heritage Auctions’ Aug. 8-9 Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Signature Auction.

This Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry 1958 Alan Freed "Big Beat" Rare Concert Poster brings together many of the decade’s top hitmakers from rock-n-roll and do-wop music, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and The Crickets, Chuck Berry and Frankie Lymon. The stable of stars appears on the poster under the name and photo of Alan Freed, the hugely popular American disc jockey and promoter who some have credited with coining the "rock-n-roll" name.




"This is an incredible poster, and the quality is matched by its rarity," Heritage Auctions Entertainment & Music Memorabilia Consignment Director Pete Howard said. "This poster comes from a tour of shows that featured so many of the greatest musicians from that era, many of whom ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They made music that our parents loved, and that is still loved today."

The poster is extraordinarily rare, one of just five known to exist – one each from five different shows on the Big Beat tour, including this one trumpeting a concert at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin. The five remaining posters are understandably elusive; the one offered here is the first to be made available to the public in this century.

Each act is listed along with the name of one or more of its greatest hits, many of which remain extremely popular more than six decades after, including Jerry Lee Lewis’s Great Balls of Fire, Buddy Holly & The Crickets’ Peggy Sue, Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen and Danny and the Juniors’ At the Hop.

Freed died in 1965, but he has remained a powerful presence in the music world. He was a first-ballot inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, is a member of the National Radio and National Rhythm & Blues Halls of Fame, received the Grammy Awards’ Trustees Award and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles.