A few days ago on his blog, ChopperDave posted up a couple of David Mann's paintings that were part of the RM Auction for the Brucker Bros., held at the Peterson Automotive Museum on May 13, 2006. The auction was titled The Originators - Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, Von Dutch, Robt. Williams - The Brucker Collection.
As part of the auction, the Bruckers put up for bid the entire collection of original David Mann paintings that Mann had done for Ed Roth, which in turn Roth turned into his well-known series of chopper posters.The Bruckers acquired the painting from Roth when he went to work in the Brucker's Cars Of The Stars, and Planes Of Fame (later, known as Movie World) museum from '70-'75, in Buena Park, CA.
There were a total of 17 Mann paintings that Roth turned into posters over the run, and the Bruckers offered up 16 of those - missing from the collection/auction (previous sale?) was the Outlaw Motorcycle Parade-Springfield Il. painting. In addition, the Bruckers offered the painting that Mann had done in '67 for Roth's catalog cover (the full painting wrapped around the cover), and 2 paintings Mann did for Roth that Big Daddy never used for posters - Dade County, and Ride Together-Die Together. In ChopperDave's blog post, he was bemoaning the fact that he didn't have a clear shot of the Ride Together-Die Together painting to post, so I dug one up for him, and you can see it below. In every one of the paintings Mann did for Roth, there is a hidden "Dave Mann" signature on each one of them. This painting has Mann's signature hidden below the gas tank, on the backbone - look hard, and you can see it.
I made a comment on ChopperDave's blog that the green bike in the center of RT-DT was based on a bike that was built by a friend of David Mann's named Sonny Rogers, from Kansas City, MO. Sonny's bike was also featured in the August '69 issue of Roth's Choppers Magazine, with the words and photos coming from David Mann himself. I scanned in the feature for you here, to go along with the painting.
You'll have to forgive the quality of the scans, and anybody who owns any of the Roth Choppers Magazines will tell you, the original printings were "less than stellar". The layouts were sometimes crooked (as on the 1st, and 2nd pages), the mass of black on the pages is splotchy, photo reproduction varied with each shot, and in this issue, the text is partially cut off from the page when the printed pages were cropped (page 3). Plus, this magazine is a little more than 43 years old to boot! But hey, it was a first of its kind, so we can cut ol' Big Daddy Ed some slack, right?
You know, a "Little Bird", that lives in Burbank once told me he was up at the Brucker Ranch years ago, and in the basement below one of the buildings up there, along with a lot of the other stuff (read Roth and Von Dutch artifacts) that went to the RM auction, were all of the Mann poster paintings hanging down from the upper floor joists. He told me that Brucker offered him the paintings at about 1/6-1/8 what they went for at the RM auction, but finances prevented him from pulling the trigger on them. "Such is life....." .
Hey, check out the cherry '56 Chevy Nomad parked in the driveway, in the background of the shots on pages 3, and 4? That was probably a $1,500.- 2,000. car back then in '68, even though it's a Nomad, and in as pristine a shape as it looks.Did you catch the fully functional double-barreled 12ga. shotgun mounted to the back of the seat/sissybar on page 2 ???
...add in a little ER70-s for flavor, and voila! We have a 2 into 1 collector for my CFL project.
It's 14" long on the "muffler" section, although I doubt it'll muffle anything. Now, if Paughco will just ship my Shovelhead BYOP pipe kit, we can finish this exhaust system. I think the whole motorcycle parts world is on backorder........
