Hard Hitting Blues: Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It?

Of course, the most telling connection between blues and boxing was the bluesmen themselves, who had also been fighters. But evidence of this association can be found elsewhere if you look in the right places. If you’re lucky, there it is, staring you straight back in the face, just like the early blues and R&B posters do.

The “boxing style” posters (as they are affectionately known) were fashioned after the “Fight Night” posters of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. The printers that were employed had already been producing the fight posters, so they used the same motif for the concert posters. The music industry began using that poster style for blues musicians in the mid-1950s.