As the proprietor of postercentral.com, I, Pete Howard, fully confess that this is a pet niche of mine that perhaps few others care about.  Certainly not with the passion that I do.  I was fascinated with rookie baseball cards as a kid in the 1960s, and I remain thrilled to this day to find concert posters with future stars listed down on the bill – the more they’re an afterthought, the better.  I’ve got photos of over 50 concert posters where yesterday’s under-card turned into tomorrow’s headliner, and will share them with postercentral.com visitors on a rotating basis.   So check back often, and by all means, please send me your image of anything that qualifies for this category! 

Golliwogs – Holy cow, it’s future mega-platinum hitmakers Creedence Clearwater Revival in their 1966 incarnation as The Golliwogs.  Believe it or not, those four silly men in white wigs are brothers John and Tom Fogerty plus Stu Cook and Doug Clifford – the entire original CCR band.

James Brown – Don’t blink or you’ll miss one of the biggest pop stars in history in Michael Jackson as he started out with The Jackson 5, for only 99 cents no less!  This 1969 Chicago poster therefore features the two biggest titans in the history of R&B.

ABC Theatre – The Kinks are way down the bill on this small 1964 British concert poster.  Even “Adrienne Poster,” whoever she was, crushes them in prominence.

Big Beat Sessions – This is a well-documented 1961 gig, written up in many of the Beatles reference books, where only 18 people attended, and there’s photographic proof of that.  Paul McCartney himself once stated, decades later, “this is the night we couldn’t get arrested.”

Ryman Auditorium – Wow, blues legend Muddy Waters billed down below Al Hibbler – who was no slouch, but still, we’re talkin’ MUDDY.  A very unusual, almost unique-looking and colorful concert poster from 1955.  (And a printer’s error omitted Hibbler’s picture.)

Faron Young – Patsy Cline was riding high with her first hit, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” at the time of this 1957 show, but still – she had to be “explained” at the bottom of the poster, which was probably printed before her single had entered the charts.