Moondog

[Hardbopjazz]

What style of music would you put him in? I have just 1 recording by him, the self titled album "Moondog" on CBS. I'm not sure if I understand what he was trying to do. He's a bit too way out there for my taste.

Edited January 24, 2005 by Hardbopjazz

[mjzee]

I liked Moondog as a person. I'd chat with him when I worked a few summers during my teens in Manhattan. If you're referring to the Columbia CD "Moondog," it actually has both his LP's on it. I've always loved "Moondog 2" (the last 26 tracks on the CD, those short rounds). I still listen to it.

He styled himself as a classical composer, and Columbia marketed him that way (the LPs were on Masterworks). His classical tracks sound more like fragments to me, but you can hear the bebop influence. You might also like his final CD, "Sax Pax for a Sax" (Atlantic).

[Chuck Nessa]

It is just music, listen to it that way. Nothing complicated, just music.

[AllenLowe]

I remember he always used to appear on the Alan Burke Show during the 1960s -

[Guest ariceffron]

if he had so many record deals why was he homeless

[mjzee]

He wasn't homeless. He dressed like a Nordic warrier. He had an apt in Manhattan and a small house in upstate NY.

[Hardbopjazz]

It is just music, listen to it that way. Nothing complicated, just music.

I agree. It's just music and listen to it that way. But it's very different. My wife only let's me listen to it when she's not around.

[garthsj]

I have always been intrigued by Moondog's music, and I saw him on the streets of New York several times over the years. I like some of his pieces more than others .. but there are some wonderful pieces. I wonder how much Lincoln Continental paid his estate for the rights to use his Charlie Parker tribute "Bird's Lament" as the theme for all of their TV commercials. I almost freaked out when I first heard this as the background to a bunch of yuppies driving around in their Lincoln SUV. What perverted (or enlighted) commercial director played that subtle joke on the mass of the viewing public? I think that Mondog would have loved it!

Garth.

[AfricaBrass]

It is just music, listen to it that way. Nothing complicated, just music.

That's where I live. I used to have all my music categorized, now it's just alphabetical. To me, music is music....

I was just listening to my OJC Moondog CD the other day. Anybody who dresses up like a viking and doesn't pillage is alright with me.

[Guest ariceffron]

can someone explain a little more for me--- so why was he on the streets all the time? did he ever record jazz (his albums for prestige, are they jazz) what instruments did he play, who discovered him, etc

[brownie]

aric, this website from Germany is pretty thorough on Moondog:

http://www.moondogscorner.de/

Saw him at a benefit in New York's East Village back in 1967. Wilson Pickett and Archie Shepp were also on the bill.

Moondog was not jazz. He worked on rhythms and sounds combinations with instruments he created. Quite a fascinating character!

[Late]

Finally ordered my first Moondog disc today. I don't know what took me so long ...

[Late]

The AMG write-up, by one "Blue" Gene Tyranny, is actually pretty interesting:

A mostly self-taught composer, Louis Hardin was born in Marysville, Kansas on May 26, 1916. The family eventually moved to Wyoming, where his father, who had been an Episcopalian minister, opened a trading post at Fort Bridger, and had two different ranches. Young Louis went to school in a log cabin in Burnt Fork, Wyoming, and fished, hunted and trapped. Later, he rode a horse to school in Long Tree, a cattle community. He wrote that his first drum set " ..at the age of five, was a cardboard box". He also went with his father to an Arapho Sun Dance, where he sat on Chief Yellow Calf's lap and played the buffalo skin tomtom. Later, in 1949, he played tomtom and flute at a Sun Dance held by the Blackfoot in Idaho. The constant "tomtom" beat became incorporated in many of his later pieces, such as the complex canon for marimbas "Wind River Powwow: arapa-host, arapa-home, arapa-hope". He played drums in Hurley High School in 1929, and there he lost his sight in his early teens when a dynamite cap exploded. He studied music and finished high school at the Iowa School for the Blind, and in 1933 studied braille at the Missouri School for the Blind in St. Louis. "I write all my music in braille. When I write for orchestra, I do not write scores any more, but just write out parts, for the score is in my head and just writing out the parts cuts the time and cost in half ... anyhow, if my pieces were ever in demand, a score to each could be made from the parts. I call this process ' intracting ', as opposed to the opposite, having a score and 'extracting' parts from it. From the braille I dictate every slur, tie, expression mark." It is then written in pencil by another person, read back and corrected, then inked in by another person - " .. double trouble ". Hardin lived in Batesville, Arkansas until 1942 when he got a scholarship to study in Memphis. However, he mostly taught himself ear training and other musical skills and theory from books in braille. In the fall of 1943, he came to New York and met Artur Rodzinski, Leonard Bernstein, and then Toscanini. In a legendary story, Hardin made to kiss Toscanini's hand " ... whereupon he pulled it away, saying,' I am not a beautiful woman ' ". Hardin began using the name Moondog as a pen name since 1947 in honor of a dog "who used to howl at the moon more than any dog I knew of". His music, constructed of direct musical gestures and built mostly from pure modal themes expanded by sophisticated counterpuntal techniques, would now receive the avant-garde label of "minimal" or pattern music but this sound has characterized his music since the late 1940's, and is thus a precursor of this postmodern compositional style. In New York, Moondog began to meet legendary jazz performer-composers, such as Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman, and to incorporate jazz inflections as well as humorous philosophical couplets and environmental sounds into his recorded compositions - the early recordings on the Prestige label in 1956 - 57 contain brief pieces such as "Up Broadway / The impressions of Moondog as he passes Birdland and the Palladium up the great White Way ... (a) Broadway and 52nd St. The Jazz Corner of the World. A dog trot in 1/4 time ... (b) Broadway and 53rd St, the Afro-Cuban Corner of the World - A bumbo in 4/4 time ..." and a duet for the whistle of the ocean liner the Queen Elizabeth and a bamboo flute. Moondog also sold his printed music and records as well as performed on the streets of Manhattan. His music truly expressed a universal vision with the best of American musical sensibilities. Moondog passed away on September 8th, 1999 in Germany at the age of 83.

[Guest youmustbe]

Moondog used to satnd on 6th Avenue in front of what was or became the CBS building...he also used to satnd in front of Carnegie Hall for a while...when he left that post, it was taken over by none other than Rocky Boyd, the sax player.

[BFrank]

"Sax Pax For A Sax" is a nice album. Worth it for "Bird's Lament" alone!

[Stereojack]

His music isn't really in any category. He makes jazz references in some of the titles, and he recorded for Prestige, largely a jazz label, but his music is not improvised.

I never got to see him on the streets of New York, but I do remember seeing him on the Tonight Show when his first Columbia album was released.

I played him on the air several times, and always got calls, so I guess his music was compatible with jazz.

[Van Basten II]

It's music like Morricone does some of it's music, remember the intro sequence in Once upon a time in the West, with the bad guys waiting in the train station, the fly the screeching sound except it's not for a movie score.

It's easier to categorize by what it is not than what it is. I'd go with symphonical street music.

I have a compilation of him made in England that puts the LPs Moondog and Moondog II, gotta say it's great stuff.

http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/...FMoondog+II.htm

Edited September 24, 2006 by Van Basten II

[paul secor]

It is just music, listen to it that way. Nothing complicated, just music.

Missed this when it was posted. One of the wisest and simplest things I've ever read - a good one to remember.

[7/4]

Moondog used to satnd on 6th Avenue in front of what was or became the CBS building...he also used to satnd in front of Carnegie Hall for a while...when he left that post, it was taken over by none other than Rocky Boyd, the sax player.

Black Rock @ 52nd Street? My Dad worked there for a while.

[rockefeller center]

http://www.moondogscorner.de/