Moondog

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Moondog
Birth name Louis Thomas Hardin
Born May 26, 1916(1916-05-26) in Marysville, Kansas, U.S.
Died September 8, 1999 (aged 83) in Münster, Germany
Genre(s) Avant-garde
Jazz
Minimalism
Occupation(s) Vocalist
Percussionist
Composer
Instrument(s) Keyboard, percussion, vocals
Website moondogscorner.de
This article is about the American-born avant-garde composer. For other uses, see Moondog (disambiguation).

Moondog was the pseudonym of Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916–September 8, 1999), a blind American composer, musician, cosmologist, poet, and inventor of several musical instruments. Although these achievements would have been considered extraordinary for any blind person, Moondog further removed himself from society through his decision to make his home on the streets of New York for approximately twenty of the thirty years he spent in the city. Only in the final decades of Moondog's life did the public begin to appreciate the extent of this man's talents, primarily because of his stubborn refusal to wear anything other than his own home-made clothes, all based on his own interpretation of the Norse god Thor. Indeed, he was known for much of his life as 'The Viking of 6th Avenue'.

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[edit] Early life

Born in Marysville, Kansas, he started playing a set of drums that he made himself from a cardboard box at the age of five. Hardin was blinded in a farm accident at the age of 16. After learning the principles of music in several schools for blind young men across middle America, he taught himself the skills of ear training and composition. Principally self-taught, he studied with Burnet Tuthill and at the Iowa School for the Blind. He had a particular interest in Native American music.

[edit] Street musician

From the late 1940s until 1974, Moondog lived as a street musician and poet in New York City, busking mostly on 53rd Street and 6th Avenue in Manhattan. In addition to his music and poetry, he was also known for the distinctive Viking garb that he wore, which included a horned helmet. He partially supported himself by selling copies of his poetry and his musical philosophy. Because of his street post's proximity to the famed 52nd Street nightclub strip, he was well-known to many jazz musicians and fans.

Moondog's work was early championed by Artur Rodzinski, the conductor of New York Philharmonic in the '40s. He released a number of 78s, 45s and EPs of his music in the 1950s, as well as several LPs on a number of notable jazz labels, including an unusual record of stories for children with actress Julie Andrews in 1957. For ten years no new recordings were heard from Moondog until producer James William Guercio took him into the studio to record an album for Columbia Records in 1969. The track "Stamping Ground", with its odd preamble of Moondog saying one of his epigrams[1], was featured on the sampler double album Fill Your Head with Rock (CBS, 1970). The melody from the track "Bird's Lament (In memory of Charlie Parker)" was later sampled by Mr. Scruff as the basis for his song "Get a Move On", which was then used in commercials for the Lincoln Navigator SUV.

A second album produced with Guercio featured Moondog's daughter as a vocalist and contained song compositions in canons and rounds. The album did not make as large an impression in popular music as the first had. The two CBS albums were re-released as a single CD in 1989.

The English pop group Prefab Sprout included the song 'Moondog' on their seminal album Jordan: The Comeback released in 1990 as a tribute to Hardin.

[edit] Inventions

In a search for new sounds, Moondog also invented several musical instruments, including a small triangular-shaped harp known as the "Oo", another which he named the "Ooo-ya-tsu", and (perhaps his most well-known) the "Trimba", a triangular percussion instrument that the composer invented in the late 40s. The original Trimba is still played today by Moondog's friend Stefan Lakatos, a Swedish percussionist, to whom Moondog also explained the methods for building such an instrument.

[edit] Germany

Moondog had an idealised view of Germany ("The Holy Land with the Holy River" — the Rhine), where he settled in 1974. A young German student named Ilona Goebel hosted him, first in Oer-Erkenschwick, and later on in Münster in Westphalia, Germany, where he spent the remainder of his life.

Moondog visited America briefly in 1989, for a tribute in which Phillip Glass asked him to conduct the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, at the New Music America Festival in Brooklyn, stimulating a renewed interest in his music.

He recorded many albums, and toured both in the US and in Europe — France, Germany and Sweden.

[edit] Disography

[edit] Singles

  • "Snaketimes Rhythm" (1949-1950), SMC
  • "Moondog's Symphony" (1949-1950), SMC
  • "Organ Rounds" (1949-1950), SMC
  • "Oboe Rounds" (1949-1950), SMC
  • "Surf Session" (c. 1953), SMC
  • "Caribea Sextet"/"Oo Debut" (1956), Moondog Records
  • "Stamping Ground Theme" (from the Holland Pop Festival) (1970), CBS

[edit] EPs

  • Improvisations at a Jazz Concert (1953), Brunswick
  • Moondog on the Streets of New York (1953), Decca/Mars
  • Pastoral Suite / Surf Session (1953), SMC
  • Moondog & His Honking Geese Playing Moondog's Music (1955), Moondog Records

[edit] Albums

  • Moondog and His Friends (1953), Epic
  • Moondog (1956), Prestige
  • More Moondog (1956), Prestige
  • The Story of Moondog (1957), Prestige
  • Tell It Again (with Julie Andrews) (1957), Angel/Capital
  • Moondog (not the same as the 1956 LP) (1969), Columbia
  • Moondog 2 (1971), Columbia
  • Moondog in Europe (1977), Kopf
  • H'Art Songs (1978), Kopf
  • Instrumental Music (1978), Musical Heritage Society
  • A New Sound of an Old Instrument (1979), Kopf
  • Facets (1981), Managarm
  • Bracelli (1986), Kakaphone
  • Elpmas (1992), Kopf
  • Big Band (1995), Trimba
  • To a Grain of Rice (1996), Paradise
  • Sax Pax for a Sax with the London Saxophonic (1997), Kopf/Atlantic
  • Bracelli und Moondog (2005 Laska Records

[edit] Compilations

  • More Moondog/The Story of Moondog (1991), Original Jazz Classics
  • Moondog/Moondog 2 (2001), Beat Goes On
  • The German Years 1977–1999 (2005), ROOF Music
  • Un hommage à Moondog tribute album (2005), trAce label
  • Rare Material (2006), ROOF Music

[edit] Various artist compilations

  • New York 19 (edited by Tony Schwarz) (1954), Folkways
  • Music in the Streets (edited by Tony Schwarz) (1954), Folkways
  • Rosey 4 Blocks (arrangement by Andy Forsythe (1958), Rosey
  • Fill Your Head With Rock (1970), CBS
  • The Big Lebowski motion picture soundtrack (1998), Mercury
  • Fsuk vol. 3: The Future Sound of the United Kingdom (1998), Fsuk
  • Miniatures 2 (2000), Cherry Red
  • DJ Kicks (2006), Henrik Schwarz K7 Records

[edit] Moondog's music performed by other musicians

  • Moondog and Suncat Suite by British Jazz musician Kenny Graham, featuring one side of interpretations of the work of Moondog (1957)
  • "All Is Loneliness" by Big Brother and the Holding Company, featuring Janis Joplin (1967)
  • Canons on the Keys by Paul Jordan (1978), unreleased
  • "Theme and Variations" performed by John Fahey on the album Rain Forests, Oceans, and Other Themes (1985)[2]
  • "Crescent Moon March" covered as "For You Blue" by Laibach on Let It Be (1988)
  • Lovechild Plays Moondog 7" on Forced Exposure (1990)
  • Alphorn of Plenty by Hans Kennel (1995), Hat Art
  • "Synchrony Nr. 2" by Kronos Quartet (1997)
  • Trees Against the Sky compilation album (1998), SHI-RA-Nui 360°
  • "Get a Move On" (remix of "Bird's Lament (In Memory of Charlie Parker") by Mr. Scruff on Keep It Unreal (1999)
  • "All Is Loneliness" by Antony and the Johnsons, live (2005)
  • "Sidewalk Dances" - Joanna MacGregor (2005) Sound Circus SC010
  • "Moondog Sharp Harp" by Xenia Narati (2006), Ars Musici

[edit] Further reading

  • Scotto, Robert Moondog, The Viking of 6th Avenue: The Authorized Biography Process Music edition (22 November 2007) ISBN-10 0976082284 ISBN-13 978-0976082286 (preface by Philip Glass)

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • In the science-fiction novel Lunar Descent by Allen Steele, a clipping from the November 16, 1989 New York Times is hung in the General Manager's office[3], where Lester Riddell explains that Moondog is the closest anyone can come to figuring out the origins of the term "moondog", used to refer to the workers at Descartes Station. The station's radio disc jockey goes by the nickname of "Moondog McCloud."[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Moondog is heard saying, "Machines were mice and men were lions once upon a time. But now that it's the opposite it's twice upon a time."
  2. ^ Rain Forests Oceans & Other Themes. Allmusic. Retrieved on 2008-06-10.
  3. ^ Steele, Allen. Lunar Descent (pbk Ace, 1991: ISBN 9780441504855) p. 83-84.
  4. ^ Steele, Allen. Lunar Descent (pbk Ace, 1991: ISBN 9780441504855) p. 51.

[edit] External links