Keep On Truckin’ Poster

I have this hanging in my music room. I saw it on shirts, bumper stickers, and walls everywhere once upon a time. This phrase was used in a song from the 1930s called “Truckin’ My Blues Away” by Blind Boy Fuller and is the origin of this image.

In the seventies as a kid…I remember this phrase and picture everywhere. I saw bumper stickers, pics in magazines, and on patches for pants. In one local restaurant I went to as a kid they had this poster in the dining room. Fast forward to the 90s and the picture was still there. The place was sold in the 2000s and I tried to get the poster but they threw it away…arghhhh. It would have been cool to have that original one. 

Besides the smiley face…it’s one of the most iconic graphics of the 1970s. It was created by Robert Crumb for Zap Comics in 1968. The image was used many times without his permission for years. It was claimed that the Trademark symbol ™ was not on the original drawing.

Crumb went to court and the court ruled it Public Domain. The decision was later reversed in 1977. He sued many for using it including Amazon 2005. Crumb also came up with Fritz the Cat…

Quotes from Robert Crumb on the drawing.

For a while I was most well known for that [the Janis Joplin album cover, and for “Keep on Truckin’.” That was a drawing that came out of LSD trips, and the words came from a Blind Boy Fuller song from 1935. I drew it in my sketchbook and then for Zap. It sort of caught the popular imagination. It became a horrible popular thing.

Take Keep On Truckin’… for example. Keep on Truckin’… is the curse of my life. This stupid little cartoon caught on hugely. … 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 my perverse sex fantasies. It was the only way out of being “America’s Best Loved Hippie Cartoonist.”

keep.jpg

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

35 thoughts on “Keep On Truckin’ Poster”

    1. The reason I remember it is…this small local family restaurant I went to in the 70s with my family had it on the wall… My soon to be wife and I went to it in the mid nineties and there it was…hanging in the same place on the wall…. The place is gone now…Wished I would have asked for it.

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  3. R. Crumb wuz robbed. Any idea how the Amazon suit turned out? I can find articles about the suit being filed but not the end result. I have long admired his character Mr. Natural (a parody of a ’60s guru, but with wisdom like that of Yogi Berra) and have one of his cartoons in my kitchen. I may have a copy of Zap #0 stashed away somewhere.

    Crumb wasn’t my favorite underground cartoonist. That would be Fred Schrier and Dave Sheridan who wrote under the name Overland Vegetable Stagecoach.

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    1. After I read about it…I had to get Fritz the Cat…I’ve been meaning to review it.
      No I don’t know how it turned out.
      I know more about pop art artists….but I do like Crumb’s work…I’ll check out the others.

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  6. wow, a neat modern history lesson! I remember seeing that all over the place in the ’70s, never gave it very much thought but somehow I thought it was tied into the Grateful Dead somehow. Cool to find out where it was from – and good for him going after those who used it to profit without his consent

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      1. Reading other comments, maybe it was a subconscious link to the song ‘Truckin’ and they kinda somehow look a bit like the Grateful Dead dancing teddy bears. Those are some good bears!

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      2. Max isn’t that horrible how he felt he had to do something “perverse” (his adjective) in order to escape the brand. I wonder if it made him think of how he got cheated every time he saw it?

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      5. I watched it not long ago and I need to post about it. I love that era as you know so the music fits well.

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  9. Good song, never heard it before. As to the way the characters are walking, I was reading a book by Mike Douglas (the talk show host), and he was talking about it being from vaudeville, maybe, because he wanted one of his guests to walk offstage with him like that after they did a song or a skit together. Can’t remember the details exactly, but apparently it was some old show business shtick. Great iconic image.

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    1. This song I had just heard…it’s really good. I grew up with that image…it was everywhere at the time you looked.
      I go back and watch some Douglas shows…the ones I like the best are the Dick Cavett shows

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  10. It’s funny the first thought that came to my mind when I saw the title of your blog post was “Truckin” by the Grateful Dead. I wasn’t aware of the picture – I assume because it didn’t gain the same popularity in Germany. That said, I’m happy to report I knew of the smiley face! 🙂

    I also didn’t know “Truckin’ My Blues Away” by Blind Boy Fuller – cool country blues!

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  11. I definitely remember Crumb’s poster, and what a crocka he didn’t get properly compensated for it. Cool you have it in your music room. I saw a good doc on him, “Crumb” (1994) that is worth seeing. He was an eccentric sort as many geniuses are. Had no idea the image was inspired by LSD trips or the phrase taken from Blind Boy Fuller. Another artist that reminds me of Crumb is Gilbert Shelton, who did the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comix back in the 1970s. We used to have some of them but no idea where they are now. Probably in my ex-husband’s basement.

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  12. Haha! So funny, Max, that you like this – and that you’ve bought (if I read another of your comments right) Fritz the Cat! I had that book for years (in fact I just had to go through my bookcases to see if I still have it. I thought I did, but can’t find it so maybe a charity shop got lucky (or unlucky if it ended up at the Salvation Army shop!)

    Even in the UK, Crumb’s art was everywhere. So many comics had them, posters, all sorts of stuff.

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