there are tons of fake concert posters of this nature with similar appearance for concerts of the 50s and 60s, which usually show up in gift shops and seldom are passed off as genuine. i've seen Beatles, Rolling Stones, and 1966 Grateful Dead shows, 60s Dick Clark tours, TAMI Show, and various other poorly-polychromed posters in the Bay Area, typically in t-shirt and head shops. the dead giveaway on this sort of thing is that posters for regular concerts NEVER, EVER date by year unless they're for New Years' Eve shows. the fakes always have the same style of typography as the example above, even for mid-60s examples where that type style is obsolete.

people also weren't typesetting in Arial in 1957, or using that many horizontal-scaled variations of one typeface either. they were typesetting that kind of stuff by hand in cold type--it wouldn't have been economical to do a poster like that in Linotype--and the kerning (spacing between characters) would vary. look at how perfect the letter spacing is in the lines of type under the photo of Fats.

I have a similar poster. It's worth about $5.00. It's about 25 years old. Looks cool in a frame.

people also weren't typesetting in Arial in 1957, or using that many horizontal-scaled variations of one typeface either. they were typesetting that kind of stuff by hand in cold type--it wouldn't have been economical to do a poster like that in Linotype--and the kerning (spacing between characters) would vary. look at how perfect the letter spacing is in the lines of type under the photo of Fats.

No doubt it's a contemporary production, but I don't think that that is Arial, although it's hard to be sure - the tail of the capital R in Arial extends further to the right than the rest of the letter, and that doesn't appear to be the case.

Other sans-serif fonts were in use in the 50s, and that aspect of the poster might be period-correct. Definitely 21st century is the moronic, lone, quotation mark after Bo Diddley's name.

that's what i get for trying to type-spec without looking at a guide...i'm standing by my gut feeling that it's a post-50s typeface, though.

the Eddie cover looks like it could have come from Jamaica

Has anyone EVER seen a real poster that had the year on it? I haven't.

Great point seadevil! I don't recall Fats having an orchestra either. Old memory.

I have seen a few here and there. Mostly small venues. I have an original Glenn Miller poster with the year on it. I'll take a picture when I find it. But it does happen. Not often.

Concert posters generally didn't have the year printed on them either. Just the month and day.

Funny. I have a fake concert poster from a gig featuring the Sex Pistols, Johnny Thunders, the Clash and the Damned at the 100 Club. That concert really happened, under the banner of "the Anarchy Tour". It was in December, 1976. The poster got it close, except it listed the date as December 16, 1977. Oops. By then, the Pistols were getting ready for their band-ending US tour.

But, I paid $10 for the poster and that's about what it's worth. But even though it's an obvious fake, it's still a cool poster and hangs on my wall.

One of my dad's good buddies is an expert on this stuff. Here's his website.

http://www.postercentral.co...

AHH. All I could remember was a couple of saxes and drummer.