Venue Info Color Variations

Promoters could use any color they wanted when printing in their venue info, often done at the last minute. Here are two sets of examples of three different colors being used on the same poster. The three Summer Dance Party posters are all within a week's time in 1958, and utilize black, red and green venue info. (This jaunt was the promoter’s precursor to Buddy Holly’s tragic Winter Dance Party tour six months later.)

The three Ray Charles examples are from a decade later, 1968, and utilize black, red and purple venue info, the latter nicely matching the poster’s primary color. Notice how any promoter could get creative with all the white space available… the first promoter put his name above “The All New,” and the second promoter squeezed it in at the very top. The original tour-blank design consisted of just 15 words and the Ray Charles sketch; everything else you see was custom information added for just that one concert.

Frankie Avalon, Jan and Arnie (later to become Jan and Dean), Dicky Doo and the Don’ts, Link Wray and his Ray Men, and the Kalin Twins on the Summer Dance Party tour, at the Sleepy Hollow Ranch between Pennsburg and Quakertown, PA, July 13, 1958; at the Masonic Temple in Scranton, PA, July 17, 1958; and at The New Pleasure Beach in Bridgeport, CT, July 20, 1958.

The All New Ray Charles and his Raeletts Show at the University of North Dakota Field House, Grand Forks, ND, May 7, 1968; at the Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum, Winston-Salem, NC, May 17, 1968; and at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Oct. 18, 1968.