1968 Flatt & Scruggs The Story of Bonnie & Clyde Columbia Records LP Promo

Date: 1968
Artist: Mediate  
Size (in): 33” x 22”
Size (cm): 83.8 x 55.9
Condition: B+
Linen backed: No 

This is a vintage original record store promotional poster for the 1968 Flatt & Scruggs Bluegrass album The Story of Bonnie & Clyde.  This album was released on the Columbia label to capitalize on the surging popularity of Bluegrass music that followed director Arthur Penn’s acclaimed 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.  

Bonnie and Clyde was nominated for nine Academy Awards and featured the Flatt & Scruggs instrumental Foggy Mountain Breakdown throughout the film as fast-paced background music for the gang’s frantic car chases, robbery and getaway scenes.  While the film’s use of Bluegrass music was anachronistic that mattered little in propelling the music into the mainstream of American popular culture.  The Bluegrass genre of American roots music developed in Appalachia in the 1940s while Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow’s crime spree came to an end the decade before in a hail of police bullets near the sleepy hamlet of Gibsland, Louisiana on May 23, 1934. 

This poster would have been used to in record stores and other retail locations to promote the sale of Flatt & Scrugg’s 1968 album The Story of Bonnie & Clyde.   The lower margin is printed “Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. Columbia Special Products”.  This vintage original poster is free of tape or pinholes and shows light to moderate handling wear including some slight bumping to the edges in places and some slight toning from age. There is a small bit of what looks like insect damage along the upper left edge near the upper corner but this is minor and doesn’t really detract much.  Overall condition is very good.