Jim Linderman blog about surface, wear, form and authenticity in self-taught art, outsider art, antique american folk art, antiques and photography. Dull tool and dim bulb were the only swear words my father ever used. Items from the Jim Linderman collection of vernacular photography, folk art, ephemera and curiosities. (Note: if anyone believes an image contained violates their rights or insults their intelligence, simply point it out and I will remove)
I suppose most know the folk art trade signs of figural form from days gone by were intended to identify the store for those who could not read. The technique was obviously particularly important in the case of eyeglass makers, as their clients couldn't read OR see! Consequently, the giant pair of glasses is one of the most common and recognizable early trade signs.
The sign here, mounted on Elmer the Optician's place in Muskegon Michigan dates to 1920. Elmer was Elmer P. Heimer, who had the top floor. It appears a shoe sale was going on below.
Elmer the Optician Perfect Fitting Glasses Optical Goods Trade Sign Real Photo PC circa 1920 Collection Jim Linderman
Phil Spitalny runs his girls through the paces! The card above allows loyal listeners to pick their favorites, and you can tune in and see if the women play your pick on the radio JUST FOR YOU!
For a time, the centerpiece of the all-woman band was Evelyn and her magic violin…she actually chose the musicians, but other than playing hot fiddle solos stayed behind her man…that being Mr. Spitalny, she stayed quiet. The radio show around ten years apparently, which is a miracle when you think of it. Why? Because female musicians sound just like any musician on the radio! I guess Phil didn't think of that. But then, you couldn't see Edgar Bergen not move his mouth on the radio while Charlie the dummy spoke either, and he made a bundle! Oh well…the yokels bought it.
According to the "Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio" Phil made the women weigh under 122 pounds when they auditioned and there was a committee to approve dates. I don't find any record of Phil doing any "couch" auditions, but he did eventually marry Evelyn! Her last name was reported in the New York Times with her obit. Thank you, paper of record. Nearly every mention of Evelyn omits her last name.
Phil also forced the group to rehearse six hours a day, and if any of the women had the gall to get married, they had to give 6 months notice!
Like ALL musicians, Phil was short. I know, a stereotype. But he was 5 foot 3 inches tall. I am more than sure a good handful of the workers were taller…and I am also sure a good many of them could kick his ass.
Fortunately there is a hot rag filmed record! Check out a few lifts of the action! I think this is from an Abbot and Costello film.
The stars of the show, all women, and shown here on the Radio of Yesterday site. Most of them are real knock-outs, and the drummer Viola is leaning into her kit like a churning train.
Since President Obama's handlers won't say it, I will. The Republicans are running yet another rich, far lesser son of a more impressive father. It astounds me how anyone could possibly think another privileged seed which fell so far from the tree could help this country.
I grew up in Michigan when George Romney, young Willard "Mitt" Romney's father, was active, Governor and much admired. He was a man and a good American. He was smart, fair, a working man who respected other working men and labor. When he became chairman of American Motors, he saved the company by deciding they should make small cars rather than, I quote, "gas-guzzling dinosaurs" way back before any else would say it. A smart man. He also ran for president, but was smart enough to know the pentagon was selling him a line of goods about Vietnam, and when he said so out loud, his own party abandoned him. We went on to kill near one million innocent people and some 50,000 of our own. You don't hear many folks today saying the Vietnam war was a good thing. It wasn't. It was the most horrendous thing which happened in my lifetime, it shouldn't have happened and I was right to protest against it when I was young. It wouldn't have happened that way if George Romney was elected, a man I respect and still do.
I also lived under the presidency of George Bush number one, the father of poor student and privileged son young George. Father Bush was smart enough to run the Central Intelligence Agency, and believe me, that takes a smart man even if you don't agree with what they do. He was a war hero and still is. He is a good American. He was smart enough to rebuild the Republican party as chairman after another Republican beacon, Richard Nixon, resigned in well-earned disgrace. He was a moderate and knew how to work with the other party to advance the country. He favored banning the import of semiautomatic rifles (for which the NRA abandoned him) and he raised taxes because he was smart enough to recognize there was a need for it. So of course, the rich men who ran his party abandoned him too. I did not like him, but I respected him and still do. Unlike the Republicans today, he knew the future of the country depended on compromise and intelligent reason…which he had in considerable quantity.
George's son "W" went on to trash the American economy by spending a trillion dollars on a war which killed some hundred thousand innocent people who had nothing to do with 9/11 or the WTC ( which I also lived through) and a good many or our own. You don't hear many folks today say the Iraq war was a good thing. It wasn't. It was the second most horrendous thing which happened in my lifetime. They still haven't counted the dead, and can't. There were far too many…and we will be paying for it with our ruined economy for a long, long time.
I love my country, but sometimes I wonder how stupid some of the voters are. Do we really want yet ANOTHER less than adequate rich son of a respected father as president?
By the way, I am smart enough to recognize I am not the man MY father was either.
A lonely soldier writes his mother from the front. As noted on the reverse, "Pistel Packing Mama" was carved by Bill Nicewater from company L. Now some speculation. The young soldier writes "Remember Righting me about this Mom?" I think Mom warned him about those woman available to soldiers. More information on Pistol Packing Mama and dames with guns is HERE (my article on the origins of the armed pin up.) Will there ever come a time when boys who aren't even old enough to spell won't have to leave home to kill their brothers?
Note rudimentary bars constructed on the window of home. This was most likely not to keep out animals...but the enemy. I hate every single thing about war except the humor young men are able to retain under the most horrible circumstances
World War Two Snapshot of a folk art carving by Bill Nicewater. Circa 1943. Collection Jim Linderman.
Browse and Order Books and Ebooks by Jim Linderman HERE. All ebooks are $5.99. Paperback and hardcover books are more.
Okay, so there are no hills (and the trail looks straight as a preacher) but still excitement abounds at the Wichita Eagle Bicycle Pageant!
MAN DOWN! Flat tire anyway. Lucky he has professional assistance to get back into the race. No steroids here. In fact, I doubt many of them have even dropped their voices yet!
The Wichita Eagle, the local newspaper, sponsored the event, so I am going to guess these are the newspaper delivery squad, and some of those hats might even be made from "extra" newspapers...which as I recall from my paperboy days didn't really mean extra, it meant I missed someone. Well...they'll let the paper know.
Set of original snapshot photographs, circa 1920 The Wichita Eagle Bicycle Pageant Collection Jim Linderman
Phenix
City, Alabama used to be ground zero for organized crime in the south.
You can look it up, and even though the city has tried hard to make you
forget it, the stories persist. Shooting, prostitution, gambling,
bootleg liquor... and most of it there because the army trained
thousands of hormone-filled young men nearby at Fort Benning, a
considerable naive market for the criminal to prey on. How many towns
are called "The Wickedest city in the United States" even taking into
account that cesspool of smut up north called Calumet?
(Heh Heh...Calumet. Sin City and Phenix of the north!) There have
even been movies and songs written about Phenix, and a famous fictional
guy named Maggot was from there!
Well, it is no wonder the African-American population chose another
course for their children. Mother Mary Mission and her Negro Apostolate
of the Divine Savior. It is still a happening place, and they even
have a Facebook page.
Postcard, No Date. Society of the Diving Savior Mother Mary Mission Phenix (Negro Apostolate of the Divine Savior) Collection Jim Linderman.
Browse and Purchase books by Jim Linderman HERE (All available as Ebooks for $5.99)
Screw your flat screens, man. Here is a tube you can enjoy without even turning on what passes for news and entertainment today. NO wonder they call it part of the designer series. It has a record changer and a radio as well. Fake flowers and what seems to be a fake Buddah extra.
It appears Sparton was a Sparks Withingon manufacturer in Jackson, Michigan. Founded in 1926 as a radio company, they were one of those who spent more on the box than the guts. Like the reputation Magnavox used to have among audio purists (who, back then, were called "Hi-Fi Guys" and spent their time pouring over Lafayette parts catalogs. I think Lafayette was absorbed into Radio Shack, who is trying to rebrand as the hip "SHACK" but it won't work. They'll all close up too. Who wants to go to "The Shack" when you can sit on your increasingly wide rear and order online?
Anyway, This box rocks. They produced until around 1956, about when this beauty was made. It was so good it put them out of business.
Sparton Three-Way Imperial TV Chassis postcard Collection Jim Linderman.
I am not sure which land fight, crop failure, state line or health concern motivated a young woman named Angel to produce this piece of art, but it does add a bit of mystery to the drawing. I do know whatever it was took place in the mid to late 19th century, and the wheat shaft being consumed by an insect might provide a clue to the solution. Maybe it is that little bugger who should eat less.
19th Century original Calligraphic Dove with message "Eat Less Wheat" by Angel Carnegessi. Collection Jim Linderman
Not all guitar players take their monikers seriously, but I have the scarce photographic proof that Cactus Mac walked the walk and grew the cactus!
Cactus Mac was an obscure performer on the CKNX Barn Dance (called "Canada's Largest Traveling Barn Dance" in an equally obscure book. It was a radio program which broadcast out of Wingham, Ontario on Saturday nights from 1937 to 1963. According to the North Huron Museum in Wingham, Cactus Mac was a beloved performer…and though he was on the radio, he mugged like a TV Star in the photograph they own. Could be as Cactus Mac was a comic as well.
The website Hillbilly Music is seeking more information on Cactus Mac…well, if they are looking, now they'll know he was a botanist!
At least one recording is known, but since the show ran so long I am sure there are many. The CD Saturday Night Barn Dance volume 1 contains Mac's version of Little Brown Jug.
Three original snapshot photographs of Cactus Mac circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
See Jim Linderman Books and Ipad ebook downloads HERE
Original Salmon Paint. Three of the finest words one can put in a row if you collect folk art or primitive Americana. An early "full-bodied" rooster weathervane. It is a full body, but not too full. Two pieces welded together atop a directional. Found in Michigan Collection Jim Linderman
I gotta say, this summer of 100 degree plus days and apocalyptic, biblical quality drought is starting to bother me...but then I moved to the mitten after reading the day would come when water would be more expensive than gasoline. I can go dip it out of the lake with no problem, but as it has been sullied by mankind, I hate to think of all the wood I'll have to chop to boil it first.
Oh well, junior here isn't worried about the heat.
Announcing Hoofers and Sweethearts : The Little Women of Frank Wendt. The newest photography book by Jim Linderman from Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books.
Sideshow and circus freak photographer Frank Wendt had another line of work. He made hundreds of cabinet card photographs of early vaudeville child actresses to be sold by the performers as souvenirs. Collected for the first time, these turn-of-the-century photographs have never been shown together and come from the collection of Jim Linderman. Young women "earners" from the tawdry and tainted early days of American show business when child labor laws did not apply.
Available in paperback OR as an Ebook download for only $5.99. Preview and Purchase HERE
(COMPLETE LIST OF DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS AND EBOOKS HERE)
A group of the
recently discovered erotic fantasy comic illustrations by Asa "Ace" Moore,
African-American from Ohio, circa 1935. First time ever shown! Share them around the joint,
Comic-Con Folks!
The Women's band at Eden Springs, the House of David commune at Benton Harbor, MI. To see Dan and Debbi Geib's wonderful "virtual tour" of the House of David site and history visit HERE. The site is created with vintage photographs, real photo postcards and even films. Much recommended!
A little Civil War man from Jekyll Island, Georgia. Circa 1865, made as a whimsey from lead, I believe, and I assume the same lead used to make bullets. That is a guess. When I obtained the little fellow, he was in two parts, which is not surprising as lead is soft and he was buried a long time. I have rejoined him temporarily for the photo. You can see what he was found with below…relics. Relics of a war we have still not come to grips with. How can we? African American Slave Made Folk Art Figure? Or Mere Whimsey.
When I purchased this fellow, I had not mere whimsey in mind. I was thinking of the famous slave-made iron figure also unearthed, but from a blacksmith's shop and slave quarters in Virginia, not a Civil War resting place. The figure which has been written about by scholar John Michael Vlach is frequently used to illustrate African craft, sculptural traditions and skills which were transmitted across the Atlantic…setting the stage for a war fought over freedom and commerce just before the industrial revolution.
The similar stance, diminutive size and presence was evident immediately. Were there slaves (or African-American freedmen) around the campfire in Jekyll Island when this fellow was melted in a spoon and shaped in the sand? Or was this simply a way for a bored soldier, of either side, to spend some time.
Jekyll Island is called "an affordable Georgia Beach family vacation spot" today. As with much of the low-country along Georgia and South Carolina, what was once plantation is now golf course. Fifty years AFTER the importation of slaves to the United States became illegal, they were still coming to Jekyll Island. The second to last shipment of slaves imported to the states arrived there in 1858…some 450 men torn from their homes and made to work. I do not know how many men were on the boat when it left Africa, but one source says the ship Wanderer arrived with 409 slaves. The mortality rate for passage was 12 percent, so that would be about right.
The people who arranged the illegal shipment knew what they were doing and knew the rewards. They choose to profit.
The Union Army arrived on St. Jekyll Island in 1862. By that time the plantation was deserted, but after the war the man who owned the island returned and split it up among his sons.
So is my mere whimsey a more profound object now? It is to me. Did it just happen to be found during the same dig, but made earlier by an African-American man who lost his home but retained his esthetics?
"Relic" man Metal (lead?) circa 1860 Height 4" Collection Jim Linderman
ECCENTRIC FOLK ART DRAWINGS OF THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES BOOK AVAILABLE NOW
FROM THE COLLECTION OF JIM LINDERMAN
Click for Sewer Tile Pottery Folk Art Site
BOOK The Birth of Rock and Roll
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Click Jim Linderman Profile New York Times
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JIm Linderman Take Me to the Water
Grammy-Nominated Best Historical Release out of print
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ABOUT JIM LINDERMAN
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jim Linderman
"...Linderman is widely regarded as one of the foremost figures in a field of vernacular art collectors working beyond the margins of most institutional axioms and impulses, in what is essentially it's own self-taught art form." Ursula Magazine Hauser & Wirth 2019
"Linderman produces the most sublime books on dreamy, arcane subjects, sexy stuff, too, all with rare one-of-a-kind images." Craig Yoe 2017
"...disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time" John Strausbaugh in The New York Times
"...one of the blog writers to watch for" ARTSlant
"...wonderful, extraordinary, fascinating, remarkable and profound" Fans in a Flashbulb International Center of Photography Museum 2016
"Brilliantly Astute, Acerbic and Aesthetic Jim Linderman" The Museum of Everything 2014
"Dull Tool Dim Bulb is always worth a visit" THINGS Magazine 2016
"...grumpy..." The Austin Chronicle 2014
"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"
Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012
"Jim Linderman likes Art, Antiques and Photography and his collection of Vernacular Photography, Folk Art, Ephemera and Curiosities is a wonderful place..." LifeElsewhere with Norman B. 2014
"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments." Derek Taylor Dusted
"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting." Drew Jubera Paste Magazine
"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..." Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine
"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish." Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was
"...he's one of the world's greatest pickers." Brian Wallis in The New York Times
"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories." William Smith Hang Fire Books
"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience" Joey Lin Anonymous Works
"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny" Could it be Madness-this?
"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb" The Cynephile
"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..." The Hyggelic Life October 2009
"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting" Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art
"...an amazing collection..." Revel in New York October 2009
"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it." American Digest March 2010
"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."
"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday." "...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..." John Foster Accidental Mysteries
"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane." William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan
"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..." BOOKSTEVE
"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts" Spaniel Rage
"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love" Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama
"Almost an experimental narrative" Idiopath
"He came to us with hundreds of jaw-dropping baptism photos that he'd been collecting for 25 years," Ledbetter explains. "By the time he found us, he'd already done half a lifetime's works, and he trusted us to handle it properly." Lance Ledbetter in Creative Loafing 10/13/11
