I have written about nutty eccentric and WAY before his time Bernarr MacFadden before, and will link at the end of this post, but for now let's just thank the Digital repository at Ball State University. They have done us all a great service by scanning these fantastic covers of a magazine which ran for decades but are now literally dissolving through acid paper and neglect. Remember, those who ignore the past will regret the future. Unlike Google's various aborted, legal ensnared and poorly organized attempts to raid the world's printed legacy in order to gain marketing data on you...Ball State isn't going to collect your search results when you look at their collection, nor will you see advertisements for products which a robot has determined you are searching for. (You should see MY spam) By the way, I think the first cover here is one of the earliest fake "Before and After" scams! My earlier post on health guru Bernarr MacFadden is HERE Covers are copyright Physical Culture Publishing Co. (various years) and the images come from the Ball State University Digital Media Repository.
Total hit count for the Dull Tool Dim Bulb series of blogs is now well over three million. Go figure. Read on...
First of all, a BIG thank you to Grand Rapids Magazine, May 2013 for a nice profile and several photos of what they called my virtual museum. Pics here are tiny as the May 2013 issue is on the newsstand now…go buy it. Grand Rapids Magazine is the model of a regional publication. Grand Rapids, 30 miles from my beach town, recently made big news for their growing economy, job opportunities and flood. Grand Rapids, still the "Furniture City" in my mind is being rebranded as an art center as well with the nationally recognized Art Prize. West Michigan rules! (9 months out of the year.)
Craig Yoe in his new book The Creativity of Ditko credits my research and images considerably in helping to solve the question of who REALLY invented the character Spiderman…and it isn't who you may think. A great story which defines friendship, hypocrisy and the relationship between art, commerce and comics. Highly recommended. I was pleased to contribute. Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books has several interesting new photography collections now available, minor little efforts but then all are only $5.99 if purchased in ebook form. The pictures look better on a screen than the printed page now anyway, but they are also available in paperback and hardcover. Without going into descriptions, trust ALL are unique books documenting highly unusual "things" and forgotten art forms...the hallmark of Dull Tool Dim Bulb. Each links here to the books on Blurb.com.
Argentina Tintamarresque: Comic Foreground Novelty Photographs from Argentina Next up will be True History of Tijuana Bibles: Facts and Myths which is taking a while as I actually have to write. I'm far better at scanning photographs than I am at writing. But it will look like the below, will likely be 150 pages and will tell the story of the little filthy comic books your grandfather knew well but wouldn't mention...with lots of previously unreported attempts of your tax dollars trying to stomp them out, and the wise-guys who printed them in their basements.
Vintage Sleaze the Blog (which tells a true and usually very funny story untold story from the glory days of smut) continues a meteoric rise to the top of the blog world. Vintage Sleaze now has well over 90,000 followers on Facebook (!) and to think I started it just to trick folks into looking at my REAL blog. Pretty women and dirty men make for good reading…and believe me, as the stories have never been told, the research is hilarious. The site tells a true story every day from the 1950's and 1960s, when soft-core sleaze was hounded by censors and the law. The real life characters (models, photographers, illustrators, writers and mobsters) make for good reading, and that the public agrees is great. Many of the stories (and much, much more) will be compiled into TIMES SQUARE SMUT to be available soon. Risque and not quite Innocent fun now rendered harmless by the real smut of the internet! The book centers on three sleazeballs who unwittingly changed culture: Leonard Burtman, Edward Mishkin and Irving Klaw, and several remarkable artists they employed, and the focus is on the graphics and artistic contributions (as well as their efforts to eliminate book censorship and promote intellectual freedom.) The stories are outrageous.
Additionally, the blog within a blog CONTEMPORARY Vintage Sleaze, which profiles, with their cooperation, major artists working today who have been influenced by the smut of the past, is now up to 36 entries, and we have had the cooperation of an astounding group of notable artists. Ryan Heshka, Tony Fitzpatrick, Jane Dickson, Hudson Marquez, and many more nationally known figures. To date, only ONE artist has turned me down and I won't say who, but screw him. I never liked his dealer either.
Stay tuned to Dull Tool Dim Bulb for upcoming projects and stay away from the other blogs. I have all the attention I need, and if clicks were coins I would be rolling in fresh dough. Or, as a hero of mine who passed away recently once said "farting through silk" but I will regret writing that as soon as I hit the "publish" button.
The
congregation of Reverend Elder Bishop Anderson Johnson numbered in the
thousands, but they were virtually all painted by the preacher himself
and most hung by threads from the ceiling instead of sitting in pews.
Surrounded by crime, blight, drugs and wig shops, he lived a
quiet life on Ivy Street in Newport News, VA following a long career of
selfless ministry. I am only now beginning to appreciate, some 15 years
after my first visit, how special was his gift and talent.
Within the
door of his church and home a dark cave of religious passion entirely
of his own making awaited. Completely surrounded by his own paintings
of "followers" he performed on guitar, pedal steel and piano, hidden
within the walls and largely for himself. I was surprised years later
to find he had recorded commercially. Despite many conversations about
his life, service and mission, he never mentioned his gospel steel
guitar recordings made by Henry Stone in Florida in the late 1950's
released on the Glory and Angel Labels. I understand there has been a
resurgence of steel guitar gospel players in Florida since, I suspect
the roots of this movement were planted by Reverend Johnson.
One has recently been posted on YouTube, using one of my photographs, so I am taking the time to repost this entry in Dull Tool Dim Bulb. Reverend Johnson passed
away near poverty, but at least one painting was added to the
Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1998. He once told me, in all
seriousness, the reason he painted so many portraits was that he hoped
to find work as a courtroom artist. The house he transformed was
destroyed by urban renewal (which in this case was needed, believe me)
Portions of the environment also remain in historic preservation museum
projects in Virginia and in private collections. There is a beautiful
essay about his life on the website of the Middle Passage Project run
by the College of William and Mary. Some of Mr. Johnson's recordings
have been reissued, one appears on the Dust-To-Digital "Goodbye, Babylon" box set of 2003
Are all fingerprints unique? Well…if you've been following here long, you probably know the answer. Not really. We'll get to that later.
Fingerprint and Identification Magazine. Fingerprint Magazine ran for some 50 years, and guess what? The Genealogy Today website is indexing all the issues into their database as fast as they can find them!
The magazine was sold to 16,000 police chiefs who in turn shared it with ten patrolmen. (yes, sold…it was a subscription item your local chief had to pay for.) See the stats on the cover? 16,000 sold, 160,000 readers. In the publishing business that is known as the pass-along rate. "Mac…stop screwing around. Go study the Fingerprint magazine."
It ran profiles and the whorls of wanted desperadoes, including gunsel (and cover girl) Bernice Pepperling (AKA Marie Riley) here who tried to slip a weapon into jail to her lover. She is presumed innocent until rounded up. If you are doing some genealogical research on your great aunt Bernice, you are in for a surprise.
They also has curious little news items, like the one here about fingerprints being used to control quarantined Detroit citizens…You'll see they fingerprinted the resident of every rooming house to prevent the spread of smallpox. Sorry privacy advocates. Public Health wins out every time, just like it did back in 1924. Read the piece and you'll see some guys were sending in ringers to give prints for them so they could keep on spreading germs.
I looked for the newest issue of Fingerprints at Barnes and Noble, but it must have slipped back behind one of the Brides magazines or something.
Anyway, back to the initial question. Is every fingerprint one of a kind? Turns out it is kinda like every snowflake being different. Wilson Bentley found identical snowflakes, and he only had to look at 5,000. We had that many nearly every DAY last winter on my PORCH. Then Mr. Bentley died of pneumonia. (True)
That is, the uniqueness of a fingerprint is "a working hypothesis" which is why in court they used to pay someone to come in and say it's a science. I guess in the trade the problem is known as "false positives" which is an oxymoron, but it works.
I quote. "Five examiners made false positive errors for an overall false positive rate of 0.1%. Eighty-five percent of examiners made at least one false negative error for an overall false negative rate of 7.5%." For you sticklers, the citation is "Accuracy and reliability of forensic latent fingerprint decisions" by Bradford T. Ulery" National Academy of Sciences. Even better is THIS ONE.
Fingerprints are increasingly being replaced by DNA. DNA never lies, but the problem is often getting juries to believe in science. Some jurors zone out around 10:30 and miss the explanation…and they zone out again after those two hour lunch breaks. I do know there has been a marked decrease in the number of perps trying to file or burn their fingerprints off…something which happened in movies during the depression and in Dick Tracy comics. By the way, did you know John Dillinger tried to burn his fingerprints off with acid? Yep…not long after this magazine appeared.
Initially I thought this was a somewhat primitive church piece from a somewhat primitive alter, but it didn't take me long to realize it is a parade float fragment from the end of World War Two. Over 4 feet long and nearly as tall, the dove of peace would wiggle along the parade route on the wire stand. Two-sided plywood with creamy white paint on the letters and dove, a nice red base with a hole to connect it for the slow ride through town. Peace Plywood Parade Construction circa 1945 Collection Jim Linderman SEE ALL AVAILABLE BOOKS (AND $5.99 eBOOKS) BY JIM LINDERMAN HERE
The Michigan Elvis : Lonnie Barron Shot through the Head in Muttonville Michigan
I think the first shot went into his arm…whether it was his strumming arm is unclear, but the second shot took a good chunk of Lonnie Barron's head and put him away.
Lonnie Barron was a honky-tonker who suffered the same fate as many a roadhouse rogues…taken out for good by a jealous husband. Though he died at a younger age than Jimi and Janis, you won't see him listed in any of those dreadful "Rock and Roll Heaven" articles. He isn't singing any duets with Amy Winehouse either. When alive, Lonnie sang "hillbilly weepers" and "thumpers" which was the music most likely to encourage the swoons of young rural Michigan women during the 1950s. Northern girls far too isolated to see the real Elvis.
So Lonnie made out. He was a Mississippi catfish out of water. A big fish in the Michigan pond. He was industrious and talented, especially for a southern cracker's son who dropped out of school at 14. He wrote songs, played multiple instruments, worked as a disc jockey and even operated his own juke-joint, The White Eagle Hall in Richmond, Michigan. All by age 24. He lived next door to the dive, and it was in the bathroom of that house his corpse fell.
Lonnie's big hit was Teenage Queen, in which he brags he was "having fun" with his teenage queen when she was seventeen. Not to worry, he makes her an honest woman.
The Michigan Elvis was mis-named, as about the only thing he had in common with the King was that the post-mortem "tribute" cash-in above was on the Crown label. The disc calls him a "Country Music Star" and shows him in the ponderosa shirt he performed in. (After treatment by "Fazzio" who air-brushed many of the Crown sleeves) That is a kerchief, not a choker. Crown records was a budget label subsidiary of a cut-out bin conglomerate. It was formed as a way for the Bihari brothers to dump their cast-offs. Any thing "good" on the label was a mistake.
B. B. King Sings Spirituals Bongo Madness by Buddy Collette The Drink Along album by the Sing Alongs
They were based in Hollywood, and it is likely the only time the principals had been to Michigan was to rip-off Detroit master John Lee Hooker (which they did) but they smelled a few bucks after Lonnie's death and rounded up twanging label-mates Evelyn Harlene and Casey Clark to re-record his hits. Evelyn was hot. Her rocking single on Sage has lyrics like "hitch my hot rod to the stars" and "a set of wheels and a radio, away I go." Casey Clark was a portly fake cowpoke who had a TV show out of Detroit aimed up to white trash in the thumb. It is commonly understood in the music community that the Bihari brothers claimed authorship of a good deal of the material they released. They got the royalties and the artist got the royal shaft. Although the cover is worn, the record inside is mint, but it skips. That's another thing the Biharis were known for…chunks of cheap vinyl rock in their grooves. The disc does not even credit the songwriter of Lonnie's big hit Teenage Queen. It was Lonnie.
Billboard Magazine contains an ad showing the tribute record selling for 99 cents. The disc is undated, but certainly not long after Lonnie's death. It receives five stars on Amazon, but from only one person, and I can't rate it as I got mine from a garage.
Barron was a, well…redneck Romeo? Down-home P-hound? While the press said things like he didn't drink and he read the bible, they did find hundreds of love letters from hormone-gourged women fans in his house…a pile of them were found in the bathroom Lonnie fell into trying to escape the bullets. Whether his murderer threw them over Lonnie's body is unknown.
Lonnie Barron released his own recordings on the Sage and Sand label, sometimes credited as "The Mississippi Farm Boy" and it was there he came from and to where he returned in a box on a train. First through Chicago, then down the tracks along Big Muddy.
The Mount Clemens newspaper reported "friends of the victim" as saying he "did not have an enemy in the world" but that means what it usually does in the papers. He did… one with a gun. Reportedly one Roger Fetting, a "jobless carpenter" who confessed to the murder with a radio newsman. UPI carried the story. Fetting was not only married to a woman who admitted "illicit relations" with Lonnie, but apparently related to the woman who ran Lonnie's fan club. Roger's wife wrote Lonnie love letters, but Roger found one she didn't mail. End of story.
In Memorial to Lonnie Barron with Casey Clark & Evelyn Harlene Crown Records LP Collection Jim Linderman
The best article on Lonnie Barron is found at the Hillbilly Music site HERE
A fantastic double exposed snapshot of a young pugilist twice, and a coincidence as a fellow found photo friend just published a lament on the lost art of double exposed images HERE on the Tattered and Lost website which is always full of surprises. Great minds think alike...or in double.
I didn't really want to write about George Jones, as he is too personal for me...which I am sure will come out as I write this. I didn't really WANT to write this, but all day long folks who know me have been reminding me Mr. Jones passed away. That is one of the strangest things about Facebook. People have some odd compulsion to immediately rush to their device and share a celebrity death. I don't know why that is. Citizen journalists.
I will cry at some point about George Jones. Maybe as I write this.
It is no secret to my friends or folks who have read my material over the years that I had a drinking problem, and I loved George Jones. I've been sober 24 years, fortunately, but I quit to save my life. It was that bad.
Being drunk is nothing exceptional. Quitting is and I know how lucky I am. A few folks over the years I have counseled have not been as lucky, and today they are gone. As one put it to me, "It has a powerful draw" and that I understand. I have empathy many of you won't ever have, and that is good for both of us.
You will be given You Tube links to George whether you want them or not. Three minutes won't do it. I lived intimately with George Jones in my head for decades. I heard them all. Not a clunker in the bunch, and even the INTENTIONAL clunkers were great. If you know his body of work, you'll know what I mean. If you don't, it is too late to start now.
Frank Sinatra once called George Jones the second greatest singer in America, and he was wrong.
George Jones was the greatest singer this country has produced, and he did it (as I read somewhere) singing through clenched teeth the whole time. George Jones could tear anything out of a song he felt like. The word used most often to describe his voice is ethereal. That means a voice too good to describe. That means a voice which hurts.
Here is another reason I am a lucky man. I worked quite a while in Manhattan on 6th Avenue midtown. Across the street was a record store. Yes. A record STORE. You won't find one now, nor will you be seeing as many "in-stores" as there used to be. One afternoon I walked out of the office for lunch, and there was George Jones outside the record store having just finished an appearance. 1991 I believe. He was alone except for an assistant. I didn't even know he was going to be there.
No one likes country music in Manhattan. A friend who ran the ticket office at Radio City Music Hall once told me "I can't get you any free tickets...except I can for any country act. Those, you can have whenever you like." Needless to say, Mr. Jones wasn't mobbed.
I walked right up to him and shook his hand. I leaned in and said "Mr. Jones, I would like to thank you for what your work has meant to me over the years. You and Bob Dylan are just about the only things I have kept from my drunk days." The entire time I fumbled it out, Mr Jones was staring right into my eyes, holding my hand, and he said "Thank you son. That means a lot to me."
I saw George perform a few years later at Tramps, a slutty nightclub just off the Hudson river. A room full of drunks were shouting the whole time. He was good, of course, and he churned through 25 great songs in less than an hour. By this time, his act was virtually an hour long medley of hits. Mr. Jones was no stranger to Honky-tonks, having practically invented them. He played them fifty years. But It was a particularly loud crowd, and an unusual place for a George Jones gig.
Willie Nelson will turn 80 this weekend. I was all prepared to celebrate for Willie, but George opened and stole the show.
In
1909, Conde Nast purchased Vogue. Some believe that was the origin of
modern-day fashion photography. Conde Nast, in case you do not know, is
the name of an individual, not a corporation, though it could be one
now. Conde Montrose Nast was a native New Yorker born in 1873. He
started his magazine work at Collier's, where he remade the struggling
weekly into a profitable machine.
Nast left and subsequently made Vogue the premier fashion magazine in
the world, along the way also developing Vanity Fair, House & Garden
and Glamour.
Others
claim the origin of modern day fashion photography to the pictures
Edward Steichen took of of couturier Paul Poiret's gowns in 1911 which
were published in Art et Decoration.
These
photographs, while as far from the work of Steichen, Horst P. Horst,
Irving Penn, Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Richard Avedon as they can be, none
the less illustrate in 1928 "fashion" a staple of today's magazines for
women...the makeover. Maybe not glamour, and maybe not even possible
to determine which was "before" and which was "after" they are none the
less primitive and early examples of what has become a billion dollar
plus-sized industry.
Early snapshots, and I think while one would expect these to be "trick" photographs of some type, I think they actually built a giant bug! Enlarge and see. Comments? Group of Three original snapshots, circa 1930? Collection Jim Linderman BOOKS AND EBOOKS BY JIM LINDERMAN AVAILABLE HERE
Favored local crank and bear wrangler John E. Meyers, A.K.A "Spikehorn" peers around the corner of his ramshackle "bear's den" in this real photo postcard circa 1935. He seems to be waiting for potential lawsuits…and yes, there were maulings. Welcome to Michigan!
Maybe that primitive rendering of a child petting the hungry stomach of a big one wasn't too smart. Kids COULD shake bear hands, and no, there wasn't a "Don't pet the bears unless you are THIS tall" sign in the yard.
Spikehorn'stombstone "bears" his name and the title "Central Michigan Naturalist" but they omitted "inventor of the sugar beet lifter" whatever that is.
In 1937 the Owasso (Michigan) press reported Spikehorn was providing entertainment with trained bears at the founding of an early Michigan conservation club, so he must have had a den on wheels too.
The bear dens burned down in 1957, and Spikehorn spent the last two of his 87 years in a rest home in Gladwin, MI.
Every few years a Michigan writer claws up the tale of Spikehorn, and this is mine…but he is increasingly known only by those who attend postcard shows.
See Spikehorn Meyers in action (in color!) below.
Spikehorn Meyers Harrison Michigan Real Photo Postcard circa 1935? Collection Jim Linderman Books and eBooks by Jim Linderman available HERE
The history of Sunbonnet Sue begins, I believe, with Illustrator Kate Greenaway, but as she was a Brit, I prefer to give credit to homegrown Bertha Corbett Melcher, who not only created the Sunbonnet BABIES but also came from the great American West. Here is a panel drawn by Ms. Melcher depicting the young sunbonnets swiping a baby!
However, left out of most Sunbonnet Sue stories is my favorite version of the tale, by the Fort Worth Doughboys, who at the time I believe had the magnificent Bob Wills in the group. That would be Mr. Wills in an unusual photograph in which he appears to be standing straight upright and sober!
The Sunbonnet Sue above is a needle holder, and has the unusual distinction of having several layers of petticoats to hold needles.
Sunbonnet Sue was later a lousy movie, which lost every bit of cowboy fun and when sung by the "Golden Voiced" Phil Regan? Shudder. Show tunes.
Play the Doughboy's version again. I promise you will be singing it all day long. Sunbonnet Sue Needle Holder Handmade circa 1930 Collection Jim Linderman
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