Atlanta Pop Festival - Allmans and Hendrix - 1970

NOTE: This piece just sold but I have another one - a first printing Third State version like the one pictured - that will be shown in the Watkins Glen Exhibition opening July 27, 2023.   Contact me if interested.

Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers on the same bill - Holy smokes!

The second Atlanta International Pop Festival was held in a soybean field adjacent to the Middle Georgia Raceway in Byron, Georgia, from July 3–5, 1970, although it did not finish until after dawn on the 6th. With hundreds of thousands in attendance, it was a major break-out for the Allman Brothers who were booked as local heroes. Macon was just 14 miles down the road and though their first album had only been released 9 months earlier, they were the only band to play two days on the Main Stage, opening and closing the festival on July 3rd and July 5th, respectively.

Like Woodstock, the event was promoted as "three days of peace, love and music." Tickets for the festival were priced at $14. Also like Woodstock, it became a free event when the promoters threw open the gates after large crowds outside began chanting "Free, free, free. Music belongs to the people" and threatened to overwhelm even the biker security crew the promoters had hired. Temperatures at the festival were sweltering, surpassing 100 degrees every day. Nudity and drug use were widespread, but local law enforcement officials, who knew they were vastly outnumbered, stayed outside the festival gates and employed a general 'hands-off' policy towards most festival-goers for the event's duration.

Jimi Hendrix performed at around midnight on the 4th to the largest American audience of his career, presenting his unique rendition of the "Star-Spangled Banner" to accompany the celebratory fireworks display. Hendrix’s performance is available on a double CD called Freedom: Atlanta Pop Festival and the Allman Brothers also recorded Live at The Atlanta International Pop Festival July 3 & 5th, 1970.

This original promotional poster for the festival was one of three designed by artist Lance Bragg to advertise the three successive pop festivals promoted by Alex Cooley: the first Atlanta Pop Festival and the Texas International Pop Festival, both in 1969, and this one – all of which featured a similar design motif. The posters for both Atlanta festivals are featured in the book The Art of Rock, which states, "The success of large-scale festivals, like the two Atlanta International Pop Festivals… helped create a new image for Southern rock.”

So there were three versions of this poster that were printed before the concert and used to sell tickets to the event - therefore, all three are considered original first printing posters. They are referred to as First, Second and Third State versions:

First state:  Cardboard. 28 1/2" x 22" - The Upper left corner reads "Many More"

Second State:  Paper  22 1/2" x 17 1/2" - Same as the first state but a blue streak runs behind the base of the peace sign fingers - a printing error.  (Essentially the red background continues all the way across the center from Chambers Bros to Giant Fireworks.) 

Third State: Paper (thin) 28" x 22"  -  Error eliminated but now the peace sign fingers are outlined in black and the artist added the words "give peace a chance around the base of the hand. "Many more" in upper left  replaced with "Procol Harum” Also added to various lines are “Beautiful Day” and Ravi Shankar. Also added is Ticketron as a way to buy tickets Up North.  Printed on thin paper, we will typically get this one backed by Linen to protect it.

Help sorting this all out provided by poster expert Brad Kelly of Concert Poster Auction.