BB King, Boston Tea Party, 1969

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The posters don’t get much simpler than this one advertising BB King and Fire & Ice. This simple style was part of the Boston Tea Party’s aesthetic – the spare, anti-psychedelic style that has led to their poster being highly unique and desirable.

B.B. King, was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, shimmering vibrato and staccato picking that influenced many later blues electric guitar players. AllMusic recognized King as "the single most important electric guitarist of the last half of the 20th century.”

In the late 1960s, new manager Sid Seidenberg pushed King into hippie rock and roll venues type of venue as blues-rock performers like Eric Clapton, and Paul Butterfield were popularizing an appreciation of blues music among white audiences. He was enthusiastically received and played several times at the Tea Party King gained further visibility among rock audiences as an opening act on the Rolling Stones' 1969 American Tour. King won a 1970 Grammy Award for his version of the song "The Thrill Is Gone.”

Jazz pianist and local Tufts University student Don Grolnick formed the jazz-rock band Fire & Ice with Ken Melville on guitar and Stuart Schulman, his friend since childhood, on bass guitar. They were the opening act for B.B. King, The Jeff Beck Group, and the Velvet Underground at Boston clubs like the Boston Tea Party and The Ark. This was Grolnick's first foray into rock and blues as a performer, and he began to write within the medium as well. They never recorded an album.