DALLAS—Over three days and more than 700 lots of rich music history, Heritage Auctions realized nearly $2.1 million in a wide-ranging music memorabilia event Nov. 18-20 that was led in part by some of America’s most beloved musicians. The sale featured significant concert posters and a unique portrait painting of the king of parrotheads, Jimmy Buffett.
Courtesy of Heritage Auctions
Top honors in the event go to a 1959 concert poster that marks Buddy Holly & the Crickets’ next-to-last performance and the band’s last performance for which a poster was made. The historic “Winter Dance Party” poster, which sold for $250,000, is the only known surviving poster from this performance.
It boasts a line-up of young hit-makers still on the ascent playing the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay, Wis., on Sunday night, Feb. 1, 1959 – two days before Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were killed in a plane crash on their way to the next show in Moorhead, Minn. That 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 at $447,000. And the poster that topped Heritage’s most recent event is the third most valuable concert poster.
“Expectations were high, but we were pretty blown away that our Winter Dance Party became the third highest-priced concert poster in the history of the hobby,” Pete Howard, Heritage’s Director of Concert Posters, said. “A quarter-million dollars is such rarified air, but this poster totally deserved it.”
Courtesy of Heritage Auctions
The second highest price realized in the event came compliments of another truly unique offering: A beloved Jimmy Buffett painting, made for the 2011 New Orleans Jazz Fest, not only sold for a whopping $137,000 but proceeds from the sale go to the medical treatment for a six-year-old with a rare medical condition. Garland Robinette, a gifted artist and beloved New Orleans media personality, painted a mustached Buffett into that Crescent City canvas because of its central place in the singer-songwriter’s origin story.
As Buffett put it in his 1998 biography, A Pirate Looks at Fifty, “The time I spent working and living in the French Quarter in 1967 changed my entire life,” and he described being “a hippie and a musician,” busking for spare change on street corners, smoking dope and losing his virginity. In the painting, a figure lurks in the background, walking past and glancing back — 2011 Jimmy checking in on his younger self. Even official prints made from this image sell for big bucks, and the painting was celebrated upon its debut as Jazz Fest’s poster in 2011.
For complete auction results, go to ha.com.
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