I am running the PA system for this Saturday's Mount Baker Car Show (the seventh annual!) Been doing them since they started and each year is better and better. Last year had about 190 cars.
Up until two years ago, we had a band come to play music for the show and it was a lot of fun. Last year, they bailed at the last moment and we went with someone's walkman. It turned out to work really well as people didn't really miss the live music and for me, it was a lot easier to do announcing (which I do a lot throughout the show). No more hand signals and running across to where the band was. Wait until the song is done, fade out, hit pause and I was ready to roll. We decided to not use the band this year.
Been collecting songs about cars and I already have a bunch of basic rock and roll digitised from my own collection but it was all 1970's and later - nothing from the 50's and 60's.
I was looking around and found the Crusin Chrome Series of ten disks of classic Rock and Roll from the same era as most of the cars on display. These were new disks without the display packaging so over all about $40 including shipping for ten disks and we are ready to go.
If you haven't already, and the venue does not already have it sorted out as some sort of annual cover, you should make sure that the event sponsors have arranged a music license via BMI or ASCAP