The Only Known Surviving Poster From One of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens’ Final Performances Debuts at Heritage in November

Feb. 1, 1959, Winter Dance Party placard takes the stage alongside more than 100 psychedelic posters from David Swartz’s historic collection DOWNLOAD DIGITAL PRESS KIT DALLAS, Texas (Oct. 27, 2023) — “The Winter Dance Party of 1959,” it was called, this concert tour boasting a line-up of young hit-makers still on the ascent. Among the roster’s ranks: Buddy Holly, at the time only 22 but already the father of modern-day rock. Ritchie Valens, singer of “La Bamba” and “Donna.” Dion and the Belmonts, then mere teenagers in love. And J.P. Richardson, a singing, songwriting DJ from Texas called The Big Bopper. The Winter Dance Party was supposed to rave on for 24 days through the Midwest, beginning Jan. 23 in Milwaukee. But they would only play 11 shows: On Feb. 3, 1959, Holly, Valens and Richardson were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa, on their way to a show in Moorhead, Minn. It was The Day the Music Died. The few tangible keepsakes from that ill-fated tour, a scant handful of posters advertising the Winter Dance Party, have become among rock’s most sought-after treasures. One sold at Heritage last year to become the world’s most valuable concert poster. For only the third time, Heritage will offer a Winter Dance Party during the poster-packed Nov. 18-20 Music Memorabilia & Concert Posters Signature® Auction. It’s the only known placard promoting the Feb. 1, 1959, concert at the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wis. Some 30 hours after that show, Holly, Valens and Richardson died in that plane crash. And it’s the last poster from a concert during which Holly, Valens and Richardson performed. The show in Clear Lake was a last-minute addition to the tour, so no posters, handbills, programs or even tickets were printed. There was only a solitary ad in the local newspaper. This stunning poster survives only because of John Daughtery, who attended the Green Bay show with some friends. The following day, he pulled into a gas station and noticed another customer had a small stack of the Riverside Ballroom posters in his back seat. Daughtery asked the man if he could have two of the posters as keepsakes. The man handed them over because there was no point in keeping advertisements for something that had already happened. One of the posters has been lost to time; the other, which Daughtery held on to, is in this auction. It serves as both an extraordinary memorial to rock’s lost legends and a marvelous time capsule. “The Winter Dance Party posters remain arguably the best and most coveted — and rarest — concert posters of all time,” says Heritage’s Director of Concert Posters, Pete Howard. “The few that exist are at the absolute top of the hobby: They’re in only the most elite of collections, and they come to auction so seldom that it should be treated as a major event every time.” In 2020, Heritage offered what was then the first-known surviving poster advertising the Winter Dance Party, from the Jan. 25, 1959, show in Mankato, Minn. In November 2022, another poster bearing the names and faces of its young immortals made its auction debut at Heritage — from the scheduled Feb. 3 Moorhead Armory concert, which, the UPI reported, took place “before 2,000 subdued teen-agers...despite the deaths of three of their stars in a place crash” hours earlier. It sold for a record-setting $447,000. Unlike its predecessor, the Feb. 1 poster top boasts a printed venue box at the top, which promises cheap tickets — a whole 90 cents if purchased before the 8 p.m. start time, a whopping $1.25 afterward — and warns its teen attendees not to wear blue jeans or slacks. Here, too, is the heads-up that “NO (Intoxicating Beverages) will be Sold.” No such warning appeared on the iconic “Skeleton & Roses” poster advertising the Grateful Dead’s Sept. 16-17, 1966, stint at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom; even now, you get a buzz just looking at psychedelia’s most famous image. That’s especially true of this first-printing poster available in the November event: a “Skeleton & Roses” graded 9.8 Near Mint/Mint by Certified Guaranty Company, among the most stunning examples of the poster Heritage has ever offered after setting the record, time and again, for this Family Dog masterpiece by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley. The Dead delight hails from the renowned collection of celebrated poster collector David Swartz, who has spent years tracking down posters featuring psychedelic bands and venues. As he told The New York Times in 2017, “Posters document and frame specific moments in history, which, when you look at them, bring you back to a time that’s gone. What I collect is the soundtrack to the most exciting period of the 20th century.” Heritage is thrilled to again present more than 100 centerpiece offerings from Swartz’s collection, which is so extensive and admired they were the sole posters displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2019 “Play it Loud” exhibit. Among his historic offerings are such profoundly iconic posters as the 1968 “Flying Eyeball” promoting the Jimi Hendrix Experience, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and Albert King’s four February 1968 shows at the Fillmore Auditorium and Winterland ballroom. It’s signed by its designer, Rick Griffin, and graded a smashing CGC Near Mint Plus 9.6. In fact, most of the posters in this collection are near-mint, with many of them autographed by their famed designers, including this Who and Hendrix double bill at the Fillmore in 1967 signed by Bonnie MacLean; this 1966 “Frankenstein” for the Grateful Dead signed by Stanley Mouse; and this 1977 Pink Floyd “Flying Pig” Oakland concert poster signed by Randy Tuten. This auction, rich in visual feasts celebrating rock royalty, is a rare opportunity to acquire a treasure from Swartz’s collection, the likes of which collectors may never see again. Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States, and the world's largest collectibles auctioneer. Heritage maintains offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Heritage also enjoys the highest Online traffic and dollar volume of any auction house on earth (source: SimilarWeb and Hiscox Report). The Internet's most popular auction-house website, HA.com, has more than 1,750,000 registered bidder-members and searchable free archives of 6,000,000 past auction records with prices realized, descriptions and enlargeable photos. Reproduction rights routinely granted to media for photo credit. For breaking stories, follow us: HA.com/Facebook and HA.com/Twitter . Link to this release or view prior press releases . Hi-Res images available: Robert Wilonsky, VP Public Relations and Communications 214-409-1887 or RobertW@HA.com