[Large Advertising Display for Pearl Beer Featuring Legendary Swing Band Leader, Cab Calloway]

San Antonio: San Antonio Brewers Association, 1950. Seven-color lithograph including reproduced photographs of Calloway and a bottle of Pearl Beer, measuring 19.25 x 23.75 inches. Minor edge wear, faint dampstain along bottom edge, else a really nice example. Very good. An evocative piece of midcentury advertising art featuring Swing Band leader Cab Calloway pitching Pearl Beer of San Antonio, Texas. The text of the advertising piece reads: "Join the Swing to Pearl. Xtra Dry. Xtra Light. Xtra Mellow. The 3 X's of Texas - Swing Master Cab Calloway says 'Join the Swing to Pearl' Say...Bottle of Pearl, Please." The advertisement is artfully illustrated by a banner of piano keys, musical notes, a bottle of Pearl Beer, and a small outline of the state of Texas, with a half-length portrait of Calloway enjoying a tall glass of Pearl at right. Calloway is dressed in an all-white tuxedo and holds a baton in his other hand. The famous band leader’s career as a pitch man included, among others, Rheingold Extra Dry Beer around 1960, Hula Hoops crackers in the late-1980s, and Gap turtleneck sweaters as late as 1993, the year before he passed away. No examples of any Cab Calloway Pearl Beer-related material found in OCLC. A striking example of African American midcentury advertising in which the most famous band leader of Harlem’s Cotton Club hawks beer made in San Antonio, Texas.