Yes, it’s hard to believe that Pollstar.com has been serving up date, city and venue for acts like Supertramp and Bryan Adams for 70 years. And as we reflect upon the past, we’re reminded of some of the people that have made this company the tour date monopoly it is today.

It seems like only yesterday that our founder, Festus Pollstar, first stumbled out of that southbound freight car in Fresno, California, thus ending his historic journey from Montreal after being deported from Canada for desecrating the Stanley Cup. He was a young man with databases on his mind, and after he successfully cataloged all the bordellos, gin joints and bail bondsmen in this raisin paradise, he turned to his life-long vision of collecting and distributing tour dates via digital electronic networks.

Of course, not everyone in 1930 shared in Festus’ dream, and his ranting about bits, bytes and bandwidth, not to mention his incoherent screams about Brian Wilson, Slayer and Stereophonics, eventually led to the townspeople turning their backs on him as well as hustling their children off of the street whenever he approached.

But like all great men, Festus refused to accept defeat, choosing instead to embrace it like stink on a skunk, and hardly a day went by when the local folk didn’t see him sprawled on his face in the gutter, scratching out the routings for Percy Sledge and Pat Boone with a piece of chalk that he’d stolen from two girls playing hopscotch, all the while cursing booking agents and corporate sponsorships. He was a success story waiting to be born.

Which happened on that fateful day in 1931 when Festus woke up in the local jail and found his cellmate to be an 18-year-old Jimmy Hoffa. Perhaps it was their shared fondness for denatured alcohol or maybe it was their common obsession that success could only be achieved through the use of goons with baseball bats that brought the two visionaries together. No matter, with Festus in the driver’s seat and Jimmy bustin’ heads in the middle of the night, Pollstar.com was born. And we continue to this day to operate in the manner in which it was founded, bringing tour dates for Creed, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Ronan Keating to countless billions throughout the world.

Later this week, we’ll spotlight Festus’ first surviving male child, Chester Pollstar, his friendship with Richard Nixon, and how he testified against his father during the McCarthy hearings of the 50s, as we celebrate our 70th anniversary at Pollstar.com.