May 2001

Satchmo posters go marching out - Numbered prints gone already

Times-Picayune
By Lynne Jensen, Staff Writer 

Hotter than the music at this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is the official 2001 Jazzfest poster of Louis Armstrong. By the end of the festivities Friday, the opening day, the last of the numbered prints by artist James Michalopoulos had danced out of the Fair Grounds, leaving a line of would-be buyers singing the blues on Saturday and Sunday. 

"It's the first time on the first day that we sold out of the numbered edition," Jazzfest spokesman Louis Edwards said Monday. 

Gone is the limited edition of 10,000 unsigned posters for $65 a pop, and the 3,000 signed ones for $265, sales tax included. 

Some of the 750 Armstrong prints hand-marked along the border by Michalopoulos for $595 apiece are still available, as are the remainder of an edition of 300 copies of the Armstrong image on canvas for $895. 

The pieces may seem pricey, Edwards said, but they "may actually be cheaper" than the cost of a numbered poster "when it hits the open market again." 

In recent years, the posters have lasted at least through the opening weekend. This year about half of the poster inventory was gone before the festival gates had swung open, either wholesaled to art galleries or sold over the Internet, said poster publisher Bud Brimberg, owner of Art 4 Now. 

Festgoers who buy at the Fair Grounds and Internet users, who began buying on Feb. 8, are limited to one poster per purchase, he said, by way of denying that Internet buyers had cornered the market by making bulk purchases. 

"It's not a perfect system," said Brimberg, who also sells a line of BayouWear clothing at the fest. "I'm not sure what to do about it. Someone is always disappointed." 

Weekend sellouts became reality in the 1980s, said Brimberg, who launched the poster idea in 1975. Popular images, such as artist George Rodrigues' Blue Dog and Michalopoulos ' poster of Dr. John, have sold out the second day of the festival, he said. 

"When you have a popular piece, it's the nature of a limited edition that they sell out," Brimberg said. 

But this year's Armstrong image "hit high C," he said. "It's the fastest-selling poster we ever had." 

On the centennial of Satchmo's birth, the 32nd Jazzfest is dedicated to the New Orleans native who went on to become the world's most famous jazz musician before his death in 1971. 

Michalopoulos ' poster, in rich tones of orange and blue, captures Armstrong standing on a French Quarter corner with his signature handkerchief in his left hand and his horn in his right. 

"Everybody looks at the poster and melts," Brimberg said. " Michalopoulos nailed this subject. It's got it all."