Keep on Truckin'

Robert Crumb poster Keep on Truckin' poster 1967 headshop poster

Robert Crumb

 

Keep on Truckin', 1967

 

Silkscreen Headshop Poster, Near Mint condition

 

Framed dimensions: 24 1/4" tall x 36 1/4" wide

 

$$

Close-up of frame

Frame at angle

Description

This is brilliantly colored silkscreen is an officially licensed Personality Poster from late 1967.  The Keep on Truckin’  image is part of a one-page cartoon by Robert Crumb, published in the first issue of Zap Comix in early 1968. A visual burlesque of the lyrics of the Blind Boy Fuller song, "Truckin' My Blues Away", the cartoon consists of an assortment of men, drawn in Crumb's distinctive style, strutting across various landscapes.

 

 

The perpetually tortured Crumb discusses the piece here:

 

 

“I became acutely self-conscious about what I was doing. Was I now a "spokesman" for the hippies or what? I had no idea how to handle my new position in society! ... Take Keep on Truckin... for example. Keep on Truckin'... is the curse of my life. This stupid little cartoon caught on hugely. There was a D.J. on the radio in the seventies who would yell out every ten minutes: "And don't forget to KEEP ON TR-R-RUCKIN'!" Boy, was that obnoxious! Big feet equals collective optimism. You're a walkin' boy! You're movin' on down the line! It's proletarian. It's populist. I was thrown off track! I didn't want to turn into a greeting card artist for the counter-culture! I didn't want to do 'shtick'—the thing Lenny Bruce warned against. That's when I started to let out all of my perverse sex fantasies. It was the only way out of being ‘America's Best Loved Hippy Cartoonist’”

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