Freddie Salem Outlaws Playin’ to Win Tour Book, Photos & Ephemera COA Freddie Salem

Presented are items from Freddie Salem’s personal collection. The collection includes his scheduling calendar; custom designed Outlaws binder (Playin’ to Win Tour) with tour information; photos (Bachman); Rolling Stones backstage sticker pass and other ephemera (magazines etc.).

Salem was part of the legendary The Chambers Brothers Band as their lead guitar player then went on to join the Outlaws when he was 23 years old. These days, Salem spends much of his time in the studio, working sessions (“Just another day at the office,” he says) and producing other acts. It took several decades to amass these rare treasures from the rock n’ roll world.

Salem started performing professionally at the age of 16 as he played with various bands from the Midwest before joining The Chambers Brothers Band as their lead guitar player. He recorded and toured with the Brothers for a year and a half. And it was a great learning experience at a young age. In 1977, Salem joined the popular southern rock-n-roll band, The Outlaws. For six years Freddie played lead guitar for ‘The Florida Guitar Army’ and wrote many songs on their albums which sold over 10 million copies worldwide, earning Freddie platinum and gold albums with Arista Records.

The Outlaws did manage to make an imprint on the mainstream market courtesy of a series of album rock standbys, “There Goes Another Love Song,” “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” and “Green Grass and High Tides,” as well as the fact they were the first signing to Clive Davis’ Arista Records label. Given Davis’ reputation as a credible hitmaker during his fabled ’60s tenure as president of Columbia Records, the band should have excelled to a greater degree. (According to legend, Davis first spied them opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd and was subsequently told by the band’s Ronnie Van Zant, “If you don’t sign The Outlaws, you’re the dumbest music person I’ve ever met — and I know you’re not.”).

“Of course, nothing compares with my tenure with The Outlaws,” Salem says in hindsight. “It was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful part of my career, which I will never forget. Rolling back the hands of time and then rolling forward until now, that version of The Outlaws would still be extremely vibrant in today’s market.