Erotic Folk Art Grandma's Secret Risque Pot Holders

Handmade risque man and woman pot holders circa 1940.  Collection Jim Linderman

19th Century Folk Art Drawing Courtship

Untitled 19th Century Folk Art Drawing Collection Jim Linderman
See also ECCENTRIC FOLK ART DRAWINGS

Ray Oakes and Sons Crooked Carnival Sideshow Games Add Em Up Dart Board

An add-em-up dart board from Ray Oakes.  Below it, Ray proudly stands before some of his other scams! Mr. Oakes and his sons (one who took over the business when the old man died) sold carnival and sideshow games designed to remove quarters from one person and put them into the heavy pockets of others.  

The Add Em Up dart game is an example of a razzle-dazzle.  The vocal delivery of the carny is as important as where the darts actually land.  During the 1950s, any game involving math was a pretty safe bet in rural America.  Often the boards had numbers printed so small, they could not be read from the dart throwing spot.  "NO LEANING".  Some had numbers which would be subtracted from the total, so a player really never knew where he stood.  Along with some confusing patter designed to bring the "total points" to a meaningless (and prize-less) number, the frustrated mark would leave and try the next game.  Move along, or look even more stupid when you try to logic it out.

Oakes worked from Tampa Florida and Illinois during the mid 20th century.  They sold carnival punks (the rack of cats shown here) and other sketchy sideshow games to operators all over the country.  

ADDEMUP

Add-em-Up game cardboard sign or dartboard circa 1950  Thanks to our friends at BOX LOTS on Facebook.

Zenith HP-6VA Record Player Ready for the Return of Vinyl !

I got ALL FOUR SPEEDS baby.  Bring on the Vinyl.  

Zenith HP-6VA Record Player 1950s Collection Jim Linderman

SEE ALSO THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL from Dust to Digital

You'll Never Have More Fun than with a Game of Dunce

Aah yes.  For once, I can say this isn't something I lived through.  Like a pigeon, I was born fully grown!  (My urban friends will understand that, as no one in the world has seen a baby pigeon.)  Digress.  DUNCE was a tasteful game produced by the Schaper company.  It's what plastic was invented for!  Johnny comes home from a humiliating long day at school, and his parents want to make him play school MORE.  

I would guess a third of my nightmares go back to school.  Brain wrinkles store up the most horrendous memories.  

Schaper make a load of toys you might remember.  Cootie (that thing you put plastic legs into) and DELUXE Cootie, Skunk, Lil Stinker, Tumble Bug, Snap-eze and Tiddle Tac Toe among them.  Maybe letting your kids play video games isn't so bad after all.

W. H. Schaper Mfg. Company Minneapolis, MN.  1956

19th Century Folk Art Drawing Monkeys and Boots ? A Curious Antique Drawing

Odd.  A group of soldiers round up the boots of opposing troops?  This one is a mystery.  I have heard of taking boots and marking the ground with them going the other direction to confuse trackers, but I am really not quite sure what is going on here.  Nonetheless, an antique folk art drawing depicting the spoils of war in SOME manner, if whimsical. 
Collection Jim Linderman 
See also ECCENTRIC FOLK ART DRAWINGS

Antique Folk Art Sculpture Miniature Carving of a Man Northwestern Collection Jim Linderman

Antique Folk Art Sculpture.  Miniature Carving of a Man on a hook with original paint.  19th Century.  Northwestern Tribe?  Collection Jim Linderman

Feeding the Orphans 19th Century Folk Art Drawing

Anonymous folk art drawing titled on reverse "Feeding the Orphans"

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See also ECCENTRIC FOLK ART DRAWINGS

Bloom Photography Chicago Nude Letter Opener Burlesque Sales Incentive

Bloom Photography studio was active in Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s.  They took photographs of celebrities and burlesque performers.  This letter opener was likely given to customers to stimulate business.  
You may also enjoy the site TRUE BURLESQUE
No date Collection Jim Linderman

Mimi Garneu Ricky Rocket and Captian Zoom Zoom the Trained Fleas of the Amazing Mimi

Are flea circus acts real?  Mimi Garneu's was.  Here Mimi makes her tiny troupe run through the act on her desk.  The world's smallest slave labor!   The film shows a competing group, but you get the idea.  I once tied a fly to a piece of thread and he few around in circles, but I felt it cruel and let him go.  Fleas, however, get no pass.  Creepy little chiggers.  At least Mimi knew how to control her infestation.  Mimi was a sword swallower too.  To see more information about the Amazing Mimi Garneau, see the book project on her HERE 

Yard Bird Folk Art Chicken

Folk Art Chicken Head of Papermache and Tape.  Circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman

The Yogi Predicts Lenticular Love for Valentine's Day Carnival Vending Machine Novelty,

The Yogi predicts Lenticular Love for Valentine's Day!  Gazing into the crystal Ball reveals the prophetic picture change.  "Moving" postcard published by the Yogi Company, Wheeling, WV.

Folk Art Racist Scarecrow Resting Vernacular photograph

Everyone needs a hobby.  I collect snapshots of Scarecrows. Hard-working ephemeral folk art figures now replaced by poison insecticides and factory agriculture.  An easier, more simple time here?  No.  The times were never easy and they never will be.    See MORE at the link HERE

Folk Art Swans Yard Birds

A trio of three swans or ducks made for the yard.  Each 18 inches tall including the metal ground stakes.  No Date (1940?) 

The Greatest Blues Song Ever Written But who WROTE it? by Jim Linderman

Can any blues song, or blues performance be called the best?  There are many one could nominate, and you are welcome to suggest yours as a comment here. This is the story of a song which combines infidelity, deception, sex, humor, fear, impending violence, escape, neighborhood gossip and more in a few short lines.  Who wrote it?  Let's try to find out.  This is the story of One Way Out.

One Way Out isn't even a traditional blues song, except for the first stanza. 

Ain't but one way out baby, Lord I just can't go out the door
Ain't but one way out baby, and Lord I just can't go out the door
'Cause there's a man down there, might be your man I don't know

Lord you got me trapped a woman, up on the second floor
If I get by this time I won't be trapped no more
So raise your window baby, I can ease out soft and slow
And Lord, your neighbors, no they won't be
Talking that stuff that they don't know

Lord, I'm foolish to be here in the first place
I know some man gonna walk in and take my place
Ain't no way in the world, I'm going out that front door
'Cause there's a man down there, might be your man I don't know
'Cause there's a man down there, might be your man I don't know
 
The most familiar version is, of course, the Allman Brothers.  Recorded and released numerous times, and a stalwart of the brother's live performances for 40 years.  Likely brought to the band by Duane "Skydog" Allman. The track here comes from the last night of a four night stand recorded for their Live at the Fillmore Lp in June 1971 with Tom Dowd at the controls (?)  This version is selected as Duane was alive, though not to be for long…and the interplay with co-lead guitarist Dickey Betts is outstanding.   Duane regularly appears on "top ten greatest guitar player" lists, but on each one he should be bumped up a few notches.

Duane's brother Gregg Allman once said the phrase "southern rock" is redundant."  He is right, and it is one of my favorite rock and roll quotes.  Mr. Allman often says a great, great deal with few words.

On the Allman Brothers releases, One Way Out is credited to Marshall Sehorn and Elmore James.   Sehorn was a musician who became southern promotion man for  the Fire and Fury labels.  He put his name on Elmore's recording.  

Common practice then…and theft.  Sehorn would eventually receive songwriting credit (and the royalty payments) for over 350 songs recorded in the 1960s.  He went on to form a company with Allen Toussaint, helping the the Neville Brothers obtain a recording contract and recording numerous New Orleans legendary musicians.  As this story is aimed at blues listeners…he also claimed writing credits with Lightnin Hopkins.  Here is Sehorn, a fellow who LOOKS like an adulterer who might skulk out a second floor window, but not really a bluesman. He didn't write it.

By the way, Dickie Betts, who had to take the place of a very young Duane Allman at a very young age....is no slouch either.


 

The Elmore James version of One Way Out is a screech with a fingered solo…no slide (!!!) and a saxophone. He recorded it in 1961 but it didn't get released until two years after Elmore passed away.  I believe it first appeared on The Sky is Crying Lp, and it was also released the same year as a single.

I believe it is most likely Sonny Boy Wiliamson who should be credited with the song.  It is a clever lyric, and Sonny boy was clever. He recorded two versions, the first in 1961 and again in 1965.  Sonny was also not bound by tradition.  If he wanted his blues song to read like a poem, a sonnet or a speech it was his right, and he is usually considered one of the most poetic writers of blues songs.  Here, it is Chess Records house-writer Willie Dixon who sneaks his name onto the label.


G. L. Crockett's version of the song in 1965 gives it a primitive, swampy sound. A little King Bee, a little Jimmy Reed. G.L. Crockett was Chicago-based, and his real initials were G. T. Crockett. Why the change? Typo? The label didn't care much. He also recorded as "G. Davy Crockett (!)  He claims authorship!

Likewise, Duster Bennett recorded as It's a Man Down There, He credits the song to Crockett and speaks a bit of the song. Duster was a British blues singer, so we might say he apes his way through the song. Needless to say he didn't write it. Duster Passed away in 1978 when his Ford van collided with a truck after doing a gig with Memphis Slim.


Jimmy Reed recorded an ANSWER SONG(!) titled I'm the Man Down There in which he dares the man upstairs to use the stairs! Jimmy wants to kick your ass, but in real life his wife was tougher than he was…and she's upstairs busy.

 "I'm the man down there, boy Don't you come down those stairs".

I am willing to bet there were some 1960s garage band versions and many African-American Chitlin Circuit versions of the song too.

There was truly only one way out, at least for Elmore…and Stefan Wirz shows it on his Elmore James discography HERE.

ORIGINAL VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS COLLECTION JIM LINDERMAN
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE THE BOOK "THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTION OF JIM LINDERMAN

Antiique Folk Art Sculpture Carnival Ring Toss Turn of the Century

Antique Folk Art Sculpture Carnival Ring Toss Turn ofthe Century  
Collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Heads Handmade Group of Puppets circa 1930 Sculpture Collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Heads  Handmade Group of Puppets circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman

Mugs Kissers and Drawings of Faces HUNDREDS of Them 1944 Eccentric Drawings on Crowded Cardboard

How would you like to draw literally hundreds of unique faces on one piece of cardboard, then spill your coffee on it?  Well, it could be water damage or foxing, I suppose.  Still, this piece is something of a cartoonist tour de force.  Go ahead, count them.  Each person is about an inch square.  I particularly like the man in a Welder's mask, and you will see that bastard Shickelgruber here too.  These were drawn by a soldier in 1944. While the figures are small, the last scan here shows the entire group.

Drawings of Faces on one piece of cardboard.  Collection Jim Linderman

Prime Pulp for a DIME. Dime Novels from the Turn of the Century

Early pulp entertainment for the masses (and for those on streetcars, wagons and trains.)  It's the Dime Novel! Surprisingly thick and with plenty of multi-syllable words.  Back in 1910, it seems the junk populace was smarter than we are now.  I don't know much about these...and I am certainly not going to read any.  These novels are dense!  

I do know "The Old Sleuth" was a young guy who dressed up as an old bald guy to solve crimes, but I am not sure why.  The world's first geriatric superhero!  I guess at the scene of a crime, he would duck into the nearest saloon or haberdashery and paste on his wispy beard.  

Group of dime novels, now a dollar each!  Artists unidentified and frequently written by hacks.  Collection Jim Linderman, but maybe I'll recycle them.  This is prime pulp.