Moondoggers

Photo © Peter Hastings, All Rights Reserved

Alan Freed's original Moondog Coronation Ball, which was shut down a few minutes into the first set by the Cleveland Police on March 21st, 1952, is the stuff of Rock legend. Some historians, confusing later events in Freed's career after he moved to NYC and popularized "Rock 'n' Roll" among white teenage listeners, have claimed that the crowd that night was "mostly white." But in fact it was almost entirely black, though many surviving photographs are too small or blurry to confirm this. A few years ago, I was able to track down the man who took these original photos, the late Peter Hastings. At the time, he was a freelancer, though his services were later retained by the Cleveland Orchestra, where he was their  longtime official photographer. When I spoke with him on the phone, he recalled the evening as chaotic, and the light was so dim inside the Cleveland Arena that he used a long exposure; he was only able to get off a few shots before everything 'went crazy.' The image above is a digital scan of a new print, and any copyright in it is retained by him -- but I thought it worth sharing online, as clear images of that night are so rare. You can see the guys in their fedoras and porkpies, the gals in their dancing dresses, and what I believe to be the first (and only) act, Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams, on stage. The dancers are moving too quickly for the slow exposure, and appear as blurs, or images connected by blurs -- this could be thought a flaw, but I think it underlines the kinetic, ephemeral nature of that evening, and evening that was about to come to a premature end only moments after this fleeting photograph was taken.

A Few Talking Machine Records

This steroeview, part of a promotional set offered by the Sears, Roebuck Company to illustrate the plenitude and variety of its store offerings in 1906, shows how 78 rpm phonograph records were stored; before shipping or sale, a paper sleeve would be added. The long shot emphasizes the vast array of disks available, just waiting to be shipped to your front door. Note that the employee in this photo is wearing a special, shoulder-length glove on his left hand, to avoid scratching the discs! You can view an entire set of these stereoviews in this Flickr album, starting with card no. 1 -- Mr. Sears himself, of course!

From Nightclubs to Christ

Dr. Jack Van Impe was certainly an impassioned preacher in his younger days -- so impassioned that at several points on this early recording he's completely overcome with zeal, and the words seem to tumble from his mouth faster than he can assemble them into sense. The best segments here are his rants against  Rock music, which he declares is "more dangerous than heroin, LSD, or any drug you can name." There's a comparison to Pavlov's dogs ("the beat means eat!") and a warning that by 1973 this "dirty, lascivious, filthy rock mucic" will have kids "committing sex openly on the street." It was a DJ sampling classic for ages, and was used by (among others) Rage Against the Machine, DJ Shadow, and Pizzaman (the last of whom hired an actor to lip-synch the reverend's lines in his video). The LP is long out of print, and clips are still surprisingly hard to find online (doubtless Van Impe and his current ministries are not pleased), but at least one long segment is on YouTube.

Boddie Records

The photo above shows Tom and Louise Boddie, whose Boddie Records recording studio and pressing plant was a platform for independent music in Cleveland back in the heyday of vinyl. Boddie recorded every kind of music imaginable; of course there was a healthy dose of R&B and gospel, but also Hungarian folk music, Bar Mitzvah '45's, sermons, country music, and the world's first (and last) Punk-Bluegrass crossover single, the Hotfoot Quartet's cover of Devo's "Mongoloid," which I produced there in 1980, along with my own two solo guitar LP's in 1979 and 80. We're fortunate that, although the business has been closed for some years since Tom's death, Louise is still going strong, and thanks to her and the Numero Group, you can get either a three-disc boxed set of Boddie recordings, or the one-CD Local Customs: Pressed at Boddie (which includes a track from my second LP, A Stone's Throw). You can read more about the Boddies on this extensive post at Cleveland.com

The Jives of Dr. Hepcat

Dr. Hepcat" -- real name Lavada Durst -- was a highly successful DJ on KVET out of Austin, Texas in the 1940's and 1950's. He spun platters (played music), called Negro League baseball games, and mastered his own brand of "jive," to which he published this guide in 1953. The best parts of this little booklet are the 'lessons' that come before the word-list -- in one dialogue, when a college professor asks his students 'What are the major problems that confront us in community welfare and organization?" they are to reply "Prof, we must definitely pick upon a head knock to manipulate the controls, one that's in the know, one that all the squares and ickies believe that his knowledge-box is hitting on all eight cylinders." Hopefully, the Prof had a copy of Durst's guide handy -- you can get yours here.

Hans Conried does Dixieland

One of the strangest LP's I can remember stumbling upon at a used record shop in many years of browsing, this LP features the inimitable Hans Conried narrating, of all, things, a Dixieland version of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf." I rather suspect that rarely, since Conried's turn as "Dr. Terwilliker" -- the mad piano teacher who condemned "screechy violins" and "nauseating trumpets," did he -- or his listeners -- have quite so much musical fun.

Dear Music Sender

Back in 1978, after I'd finished recording an album's worth of solo guitar compositions, the first place I thought to send a tape was the legendary Takoma Records, home to my guitar hero John Fahey. Alas, my demo tape was rejected -- with a letter addressed to "Dear Music Sender" no less! -- but happily, I persevered, and released two LP's on my own Black Snake Records label; keep an eye out for the re-issue of the second of these, coming later in 2018!

Vout

News that linguists have discovered a new language being spoken in northern Australia made me think at once of Slim Gaillard, the hip jazz guitarist and songwriter who employed his invented language "Vout" in many of his hits ("Yep-Roc-Heresay," "Arabian Boogie"). In the tradition of Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary and Lavada Durst's Jives of Dr. Hepcat, he even issued his own "Vout-o-Reenee Dictionary." Curiously, although most of the entries, e.g. "chicken feed" for corn or "the track" for a dance floor, are similar to other sources such as Calloway's, "Vout" in Gaillard's actual practice meant a mish-mash of Arabic, Yiddish, brand-names and nonce-words created by putting "Mac" at the beginning of a word and "Vouty" or "o-reeny-mo" at the end. He was once introduced by an MC as a man who "speaks seven languages -- Arabian, Hindu, Greek, Egyptian, Spanish, Hebrew and Vout ... and what's more, Slim is now studying an eighth language -- Slim, what is this eighth language you're studying?" Without missing a beat, Slim replied, "English."