Aug 2, 2024
Rock and roll icon Chuck Berry was the headliner at a concert at Bush Stadium in 1972, the first of a long-forgotten series of music festivals at the former baseball stadium in Indianapolis. A poster for that 1972 concert is now part of the collection of the Indiana Music History Project.
So are rare vinyl LP's and 45's featuring Indiana musicians. And so are four Indiana University yearbooks from each year that Hoagy Carmichael was a student in the 1920s, although the music history project generally focuses on the "vinyl era"; that's usually defined as stretching from 1950 to 1990.
The 1972 poster, vinyl LP's and yearbooks are among more than 5,000 pieces of memorabilia, ranging from a record player, photos and cassettes to flyers for concerts, that have been donated during the last year to the music history project, an initiative of the Indiana Entertainment Foundation.
So Rick Wilkerson, the executive director of both the entertainment foundation and the music history project, will return to share updates since he was Nelson's guest last July about the vinyl era of Indiana music. Rick, who formerly owned vinyl record stores in Indianapolis, attended the Chuck Berry concert in 1972, although the poster was donated by musician and photographer Neil Sharrow.