Original flyer for a benefit performance at Baltimore's Famous Ballroom on December 26, 1971

Baltimore: Ray Pino Presents / Famous Ballroom, 1971. Vintage flyer for a performance by the Herbie Hancock Septet, presented by Ray Pino, for a sickle cell anemia benefit at the Famous Ballroom in Baltimore on December 26, 1971.

Ray Pino was a long time jazz promoter in New York and Baltimore, and was the director of the 1967-1968 Laurel Jazz Festival, as well as serving as the advisor to the Interracial Jazz Society and the Left Bank Jazz Society.

Advertising executive and local promoter Louis Shecter opened Baltimore's Famous Ballroom in 1947. For over 40 years the venue hosted the likes of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane, among many others. The club was one of the first spaces in Baltimore to attract an interracial audience. Beginning in 1967 the space became a long term residency for Baltimore's Left Bank Jazz Society, and on May 7, 1967, it hosted the final professional appearance by Coltrane, two months before he died of liver cancer. The club would close in the late 1980s.

Having been heavily influenced by Miles Davis' 1970 release "Bitches Brew," Herbie Hancock was beginning to experiment with electronic instruments in 1971. Hancock's sextet (which included Hancock, Buster Williams, Billy Hart, Eddie Henderson, Julian Priester, and Bennie Maupin) was made a septet with the addition of Patrick Gleeson on synthesizers. The newly formed septet completed "Mwadishi" in 1971, the first release in Hancock's experimental "Mwadishi" trilogy, followed by "Crossings" in 1972, and "Sextant" in 1973.

8.5 x 11 inches on green paper. Very Good plus, with some light edgewear, and very faint toning to the extremities.