Moondog’s Long Howl

Hey all, Ernie here with a piece from David Buck, who felt inspired enough to highlight an offbeat musical icon thanks in part to his appearance in a movie. (Kinda.) Anyway, read on!

Today in Tedium: There is no 20th century composer quite like Louis Hardin, better known as Moondog. Apparently, the director Harmony Korine agrees—as he appears to have named the lead character in his new movie, The Beach Bum, after Moondog, creating an unexpected through line between Matthew McConaughey and the musician and prompting us to revisit the life of one of our favorite composers. His use of unique instruments, tribal rhythms, ambient/environmental sounds, and grasp on counterpoint make for some of the best instrumental music around. Today’s Tedium is not a complete biographical account of the composer, but a celebration of his work and impact on the popular culture of today. Join us on a musical journey as we look into the career of the Viking of Sixth Avenue himself, the one and only Moondog. — David @ Tedium

Moondog in his pre-viking days, circa 1953. (via Flickr)

Louis Hardin, a.k.a. Moondog, had a knack for doing things himself from an early age

As the son of a wandering preacher and school teacher, young Louis Hardin moved around constantly. Though Hardin endured a rough and lonely childhood, music was a positive driving force in his life. In Burnt Fork, Wyoming, he would play at “blowout” parties accompanying his mother’s piano and neighbor Uncle George’s fiddle on his own makeshift drum kit. Per Scotto’s biography, the kit consisted of a steamer trunk (as a makeshift kick drum) and a snare drum. He used “shoe-shapers” as drum sticks.

Curious about the world around him, he developed an interest in do it yourself projects. He enjoyed building wooden models and working on projects from the pages of Popular Mechanics or Popular Science. Curiosity led him to pick up an item he found by the railroad tracks that turned out to be a dynamite blasting cap, the explosion of which rendered Hardin blind.

With his life permanently altered by these events, Hardin forged himself a new path—“to become a classical composer.” Hardin proceeded to teach himself to compose and play various instruments. Following the completion of his studies at Iowa School for the Blind, he went off to New York City where he would begin to make his mark.

He wrote his sheet music in Braille. He performed in different time signatures and beat patterns (mostly 5/4), which he called “snaketime.” He recorded an album of nursery rhymes with Julie Andrews in 1957 and was indirectly responsible for the coining of the phrase “rock & roll”. Later, much of his music would be put out on records and be would live with minimalist composer Philip Glass for a year, playing music together. He sold his poetry and music on the streets to earn his living all the while.

Ultimately, Moondog would become well-known in the city (practically a landmark), leave, return, cut a few albums and capture the public imagination for a time before leaving for good in the 1970s.

(via The Viking of Sixth Avenue)

How Moondog the musician became Moondog the viking

On the corner of West 54th Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City, Moondog would perform, compose or simply stand while wearing full Viking regalia (horns, spear, cape). The clothing was handmade by the man himself, but the Viking attire didn’t come around until the mid-1960s. People were fascinated by Moondog and many interacted with him, but very few realized he was not a wacky personality or vagrant but a serious composer who dressed this way for a meaningful reason.

In a 1998 interview with Perfect Sound Forever, Hardin tells the story of the Viking:

When I first got to New York and I was attending rehearsals of the Philharmonic, they wrote me up as “a man with the face of Christ.” I put up with that for a few years, getting compared with a monk or Christ, then I said “that’s enough, I don’t want that connection. I must do something about my appearance to make it look un-Christian.” At that time, I was studying the Norse and I felt much closer to that than Christianity so I’d do something to make it look more Nordic. That’s what was behind it.

Moondog wore the Viking outfit up through his first year in Germany, when he met a young lady named Ilona Sommer, who helped transcribe his music and did much to bring spread his music throughout the world. With that association came the end of the Viking attire.

(via The Viking of Sixth Avenue)

Moondog’s musical style: The DIY instruments that defined the artist

The last time we wrote about DIY instruments, we discussed Harry Partch’s homemade instruments. Just like Partch, Moondog made his own instruments because he “believed conventional instruments could not duplicate the sounds he heard in his head.”

Moondog discussed instruments and conducting in a 1974 interview with Sounds:

I like to write. If I have a large orchestra at my disposal, I also conduct. Otherwise, I hardly play instruments, except for a triangular drum that I designed myself.

Moondog invented several instruments that are heard through his various recordings and were a mainstay of his street performances. The most famous of these was the Trimba, a precision percussion instrument. Moondog’s friend and protege Stefan Lakatos performs with them today:

In an interview with Matt Hooke, Lakatos discussed how difficult the Trimba is to make (he had to hire someone to make it based on Moondog’s specifications) and what it’s like to play one. The 47 minute interview is worth checking out for more insight into the instrument and hearing it in action. Per Lakatos, each beat Moondog wrote—5/4, 7/4, and so on—has a particular pattern to it that players must be aware of when performing the music, but despite the challenge, he does an admirable job bringing the sounds to new audiences.

Along with the Tribe, Moondog invented several other instruments heard throughout his works. The following information comes from the back cover of 1956’s More Moondog:

Oo: a triangular stringed instrument struck with a clave.

Trimba: a triangular-shaped drum.

Yuhk: a log suspended from a tripod - hit with two rubber mallets held in right hand.

Tuji: a series of mounted sticks of graduated lengths.

Moondog’s first album for Columbia Records.

Moondog’s legacy: Four of our own influences (musical and otherwise) that were inspired by the music of Louis T. Hardin

It’s probably common knowledge among those familiar with the subject that the music of Louis T. Hardin caught the ears of a great deal of artists, conductors, composers and musicians. Moondog mingled with the likes of Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington and Charlie “Bird” Parker, along with many others. But Moondog’s influence extends beyond his contemporaries—into the modern day.

1. R. Stevie Moore. It’s no secret that we’re big fans of R. Stevie Moore. Moore, in turn, is a big Moondog fan. He says he’s a “lifelong admirer” and was influenced by Hardin’s music—something that’s evident in his vast body of work. Not only does he thank Moondog on several albums (Advanst, On Standby, As if Vinyl Didn’t Exist, Greatest Hits, the Verve 2016 CD reissue), he’s also covered a few pieces in his long career. His cover of “Here’s To John Wesley Hardin” is an almost meticulous reconstruction of the original, complete with a fantastic vocal impression that nails the spirit of the original.

Perhaps most interesting is some of the spoken word work he’s been doing. A recent album, The Embodiment of Progressive Ideals (performed with Alan Jenkins), is strongly reminiscent of Moondog’s poetry and prose. It’s uniquely Moore, but the strength of Moondog’s influence continues to extend into his modern work and informs some of his DIY compositional style.

2. Dr. Demento. Moondog’s music makes several appearances on Barret Hansen’s The Dr. Demento Show.

From its days as a nationally syndicated radio show reaching over 400 stations to its current existence as an online subscription show, Hansen made a point to play a wide variety of avant garde, instrumental, experimental, classical, and more alongside the comedy and novelty that made his show famous.

He plays the track “Be a Hobo” more often than any other Moondog piece, but “Tree Frog” and a few others will sometimes be heard in the background as Dr. Demento winds down a set.

Hansen told me he “has no info about Moondog aside from what’s been published,” but says he bought one of Moondog’s records when he was 13 and still enjoys it to this day.

Going all the way back to the second year of the show, he played almost an entire side of that album, Moondog and His Friends, on his April 22, 1971 episode on KPPC_. _In that segment, Hansen describes the record as an “extended play record that cost about $1.50 back in those days .” Fast forward a few years to the four hour show from Jan. 07, 1973, he lines up the set with an anecdote:

Something that I would have played more often, except my copy shows that I bought it when I was 13 years old and didn’t have much of a record player. One of the American primitives, a word also used to apply to John Fahey, who bought that same record when he was 13 also, as I was delighted to find out.

A listener at the time provided the show with a mint copy of the record from which he played the following “Oasis,” “Tree Frog,” and “Be a Hobo.” Hansen finishes introducing the set by stating: “Though Moondog wouldn’t like the phrase, it certainly was one of the first psychedelic records ever made. Maybe the first.”

Dr. Demento is probably the single biggest influence in my life and career. The Moondog connection inspired me seek his music out for myself. Thanks, Doc!

3. The Residents. Listening to early Residents music, one can hear the influence of Moondog’s compositional style on tracks from the Santadog EP, Meet the Residents and Fingerprince. The rhythms, minimalist composition and almost tribal aspects of those songs run parallel with some of the material from Moondog and Moondog 2.

Per a 2014 interview with KQED, current Cryptic Corporation President Homer Flynn (and let’s be honest, he’s probably the Singing Resident/Randy, too) counted Moondog among many influences on the band—a list that also included the likes of Harry Patch, Sun Ra, the Beatles and Frank Zappa.

The music of The Residents has a timeless quality to it and seems as fresh today as it was in the 1970s. To that point, Flynn remarks:

“Shirley Temple and Moondog still seem fresh to me.”

4. Irwin Chusid. Author/DJ/drummer/journalist Irwin Chusid is an incredible resource of unique music history, dedicating at least five episodes of his radio program on New Jersey’s WMFU to Moondog, most recently in 2018. Chusid also penned the outsider music resource Songs in the Key of Z (a favorite book around here).

Moondog rightly doesn’t have an entry in that book—he was a serious composer whom in no way meets Chusid’s operational definition of outsider musician. However, one of my anecdotes from the book mentions him in its Tiny Tim chapter. In 1962, Tiny Tim regularly played the New York-based Little Theatre, effectively sharing his unique style to the world. The story goes that Moondog would follow Tiny Tim on stage. Though Moondog was mostly a friendly, gracious person, he was clearly not a Tiny Tim fan.

Per Chusid, “When he mounted the stage after Tiny, Moondog reportedly muttered curses about the travesty that preceded him.”

Oh, and Lenny Bruce once joined Tiny Tim and Moondog on that very stage. What a show that must have been! Chusid covers a wide deal of fascinating, compelling music on his WMFU show each week and continues to be a source of inspiration for all of us here at Tedium.