Ephemera....

First off, here's a picture of the book I was describing yesterday. 



Now, today, I didn't get much time to sit and enter new books because as the day before I leave for a book fair, there's lots of errands to run, including a trip to Oakdale to pick up some Aram Sandwiches for the other book dealers.  (It's one of my weird but hopefully wonderful habits that I bring to the Sacramento Book Fair --  I always have M&M's at my booth for customers, but for the Sacramento Fair, the second year I ever exhibited there, I wanted to bring some food along to share as there's NO catering on the set up day and very few options for eating in the vicinity, close options, I mean. So every year I bring two big aram sandwiches for dealers.  Hopefully to put them in a mood for buying.... and because I get the munchies.)

I did take a few minutes to look up an item that I got in the same day as the Eric Carle book -- it's an ephemeral item.

Now I'm NOT an ephemera dealer.  I know very little about paper items / things that are by their nature supposed to be thrown out, but every once in a while I find something that calls to me.

here's one:

I  admit it looks a bit plain.  When I first picked it up, I wasn't too impressed either. However, you open it up and it turns out this is a concert brochure (for lack of a better word) for a gig that happened in Watts, CA in 1972.

The Watts connection is what caught my eye.  Watts -  LA - Riots...

First go-round, I can't really find anything on it.

I put it down for a while and tried to add a small bunch of books to the pile for the fair.

Then I thought I'd take another stab at it.   It's a good thing I did.

Wattstax'72 (that's the title on the front, just in case you can't see it.) was a huge concert in the Watts area of Los Angeles, CA  held on August 20, 1972 which featured all of the acts represented by the Stax Record company.  All the acts were African Americans and several of them were big name headliners.  With a bit of searching, I found out that this particular gig / festival is now considered the equivalent of the black Woodstock. The proceeds of the festival were to raise money for the Sickle Cell Disease Foundation, the Martin Luther King Hospital in Watts and for any future music festivals that might take place.

The festival was opened with an invocation by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and featured acts such as Isaac Hayes, the emotions, Rufus Thomas, Billy Eckstine, David Porter and the Rance Allen Group.  A young and upcoming Richard Pryor was the featured comedian.

I plan on taking this item with me to Sacramento, just in case there's some interest, but frankly, I'd like more time to put in doing some research on it.  

Fascinating stuff.  

 

So far I haven't found any real ephemeral items listed anywhere for this, though there are lots of copies of the sound track (if that's what you'd call it) and for the movie from 1973 which is a docu-drama about the festival itself.

 

And this was just another one of those things I picked up because it kept shouting Pick me!  Pick me!

I learn something new every day with this job. And that's one of the reasons I like it so much.