Traveling to Unusually Named Cities? Send me some ART MAIL Farmers and Battle Postmarks

Pair of hand drawn cachet art on mailed envelopes.  Note postmark for each.  Early mail art.

Two original drawings on envelopes 1950  Collection Jim Linderman

Newest Book The Birth of Rock and Roll available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Direct from Publisher Dust to Digital.

Moonshine served HERE Moonshine Party TONIGHT!

Moonshine party!  Original Snapshot no date. The best song about the powerful brew is, of course, that sung by the legendary Possum....George Jones.  For related images of inebriated joy and passion set to music, see the new book THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the publisher  Dust to Digital

Cropped like a Corset Photographic Manipulation before Photoshop

Here a vintage photograph takes away some curves in an early example of photographic dieting (which shows women have been presented doctored up earlier than one might think.) Actually published photos have been lying all along.  (See my earlier post "Pictures always lie".) Never mind that this photo was likely used to advertise a nightclub performance for men...it is deceptive and as we have long known, demeaning.  One reason I like to tell stories with vernacular photographs is that the professional ones always deceive.  We have always taken it for granted, I guess.  Guess what I just learned?  Advertisements lie too! 

Slim made slimmer for publication vintage photograph, circa 1950.  Collection Jim Linderman  See information on new photobook THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL HERE.

Blues in Brooklyn African-American Mug Shots from the Collection of Jim Linderman

Real Black gangsters, I guess.  Criminals from the 1950s, but presumed, I am afraid, guilty until proven otherwise. Given attitudes, practices and institutional racism when taken,  these sharp-dressers might have been just walking to work.

Striking Photographs, each near 8" x 10" and each handed back and forth from lawyers, prosecutors, file clerks and now collectors. Another reminder that the photograph was a tool and a physical object which developed surface, wear and form as it aged.

Jim Linderman's newest book of photographs is THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL and is available from the publisher DUST TO DIGITAL, AMAZON, BARNES AND NOBLE AND OTHER FINE RETAIL OUTLETS.     

Greil Marcus on Jim Linderman The Birth of Rock and Roll Dust to Digital 2015

I am honored more than I can describe by the review Greil Marcus provides on his Real Life Top Ten  column HERE on B&N.  

Featured Image on Artbook D.A.P is The Birth of Rock and Roll

The Birth of Rock and Roll book by Jim Linderman is featured on the Artbook.com website.
HERE

Scarecrow from 1939 World's Fair Penelope Shoo Protects New York Wheat Garden

Miss Penelope Shoo. "The Scarecrow of Tomorrow" stands over the only wheat field in New York City.  The wheat field lasted 68 years.  Miss Shoo (as is SHOO, birds…SHOO! ) stood over the field of wheat that Continental Baking and their product Wonder Bread planted for the 1939 World's Fair.  In front of the field was a building designed by Skidmore & Owings. 

Penelope Shoo was created by mannequin maker Jean Spadea, and at least one of her costumes was a fashion design by Hattie Carnegie.  When she was removed (or stolen?) in 1930, folks wondered where Shoo went.  She was STOLEN by pranksters from Columbia University to be used at the Columbia / Princeton football game.  The anonymous thieves returned her, sans arms, to Continental Bakery.  A color film from 1939 which documented Penelope is HERE.

Original snapshot 1939 "Penelope Shoo" collection Jim Linderman
Books by the author available HERE
The Birth of Rock and Roll by the author available HERE

The Birth of Rock and Roll by Jim Linderman Joe Bonomo and Dust to Digital

Big splash on my new book with MUSIC and clips.  Enjoy the SHOW.  ORDERING INFORMATION HERE     ALSO AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON AND BARNES AND NOBLE

The Birth of Rock and Roll : Photographs from the collection of Jim Linderman plus a conversation with Joe Bonomo

The Birth of Rock and Roll is now available for pre-ordering on Amazon.  I received a copy and it turned out beautiful.  A coffee table book, and a book about music unlike any you have seen.

My vintage photographs were handled beautifully by the fine folks at the publisher DUST-TO-DIGITAL and the design by award-winning Martin Venezky and his Appetite Engineers shop is fantastic.  Historian, essayist and music-writer Joe Bonomo contributes elegant prose. 

160 pages and when they are laid open, each is 19" x 12" of striking jumping' and jivin' humanity!  I am proud indeed to make a contribution to our understanding of that phenomena we call Rock and Roll, and the folks mentioned above helped it happen.  

There will be more about the book soon, but for now it is listed in the art book D.A.P. Catalog (shown here) and Amazon is taking pre-orders.  It will soon be available at the Dust-to-Digital Website and other sources.

It may be worth mentioning that my first book with Dust to Digital, Take Me to the Water (which was Grammy-nominated) is now out of print and used copies are trading for over a hundred dollars…

I would like to thank the publisher Stephen Lance Ledbetter for recognizing the potential of this project, and for the magnificent results.  A picture does tell a thousand words, and in this case the pictures tell a hundred year story like never before.  Thank you!

Coming Soon, Again!

Just for the record, the book THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL is sold out, but it is being reprinted by a major publisher. Stay tuned, and thank you!  Jim Linderman

NIGHTCLUBBIN' Club DeLisa and the Fifth Avenue Ballroom. Roving Club Photographer on the Scene

 

Three crusty photographic remnants of the Black and Tan club scene!  The Club DeLisa photographs quite likely taken by master photographer Samuel Simmons.

Three original club photographs with original sleeves circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman
The Birth of Rock and Roll Book by Jim Linderman available HERE

Photographs from THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL book by Jim Linderman COMING SOON

THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND ROLL IS COMING SOON from
DUST to DIGITAL

Jim Linderman interview on No Such Thing As Was with Joe Bonomo

Rock and Roll in Sepia: A Conversation with Jim Linderman

Jim Linderman

Jim Linderman is an archivist of the obscure. I profiled him here in 2011 and continue to deeply enjoy the curios he finds and actively posts at his three blogs, Old Time Religion ("Vernacular religious detritus"), Vintage Sleaze ("The true and untold story of smut in America"), and Dull Tool Dim Bulb ("Surface, wear, form and authenticity in art, antiques and photography"). He's just released a terrific new book via Blurb, a collection of found photographs titled The Birth of Rock and Roll in which he's arranged a storyboard of sorts that dramatizes the spirit, if not the chronology of rock and roll...


READ ENTIRE INTERVIEW HERE

The Birth of Rock and Roll Number 8 Jazz with Guitar, Trumpet and Clarinet Snapshot

The Birth of Rock and Roll Number 8 in the series.
Original Snapshot circa 1935 collection Jim Linderman  Unidentified Musicians  

The Birth of Rock and Roll Number Seven in the Dull Tool Dim Bulb Series snapshot collection Jim Linderman

Untitled (Dance Lessons?)  Undated original snapshot no date.  The Birth of Rock and Roll Number seven in the series.  Performer Unknown.  Collection Jim Linderman

The Birth of Rock and Roll Number Six in the Dull Tool Dim Bulb Series Collection Jim Linderman

The Birth of Rock and Roll Number six in the series.  Original publicity 8 x 10 glossy photo by W. M. Byrnes June 1956!  Performers Unknown.

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The Birth of Rock and Roll number five in the Dull Tool Dim Bulb Series. Collection Jim Linderman

The Birth of Rock and Roll number five is a snapshot circa 1950 (integrated dance) from the Jim Linderman Collection.  The Birth of Rock and Roll series of original photographs appears on Dull Tool Dim Bulb periodically.

The High and Ho of Weegee Bernard Bailey High Magazine and Ho Magazine from Periodical House Publish Weegee's Poison Portraits

I am not a Weegee scholar, but I am a fan, and also recognize the importance of his work.  I also know the magazine High and Ho are today pretty scarce, as editor and art director Bernard Bailey's goofy idea of putting TWO narrow magazines on the top shelf in the place of one didn't work out.  Note the prices.  I don't think he had market research in the late 1950s which indicated a fellow was inclined to pay 35 cents for HO! (The LONG magazine) and 25 cents for HIGH (the TALL magazine) either.  So few today have seen them.  Each issue was 100 skinny pages and come from 1957 and 1958.  The Golden Age of smutty glamor.

Bailey did have the good taste to either hire, or purchase, a considerable amount of Weegee's more experimental work.  Distortions and treatments.   They are titled "Poison Portraits" and Weegee's Weirdies" and they are that..

I have no idea if the copyright on High and Ho is abandoned or has been assumed by the International Center of Photography, where you can find lots of material on the photographer.  I AM sure they own the images.  The Weegee Archive was bequeathed to ICP in 1993 by Wilma Wilcox, Weegee’s long-term partner, and it is a treasure.  Wikipedia tells the story, and as you can see the institution has exhibited some, if not all, the images here:

"In 1980 Weegee's widow, Wilma Wilcox, Sidney Kaplan, Aaron Rose and Larry Silver formed The Weegee Portfolio Incorporated to create an exclusive collection of photographic prints made from Weegee’s original negatives.  As a bequest, Wilma Wilcox donated the entire Weegee archive - 16,000 photographs and 7,000 negatives to the International Center of Photography in New York. This 1993 gift became the source for several exhibitions and books include "Weegee's World" edited Miles Barth (1997) and "Unknown Weegee" edited by Cynthia Young (2006). The first and largest exhibition was the 329-image "Weegee's World: Life, Death and the Human Drama," brought forth in 1997. It was followed in 2002 by "Weegee's Trick Photography," a show of distorted or otherwise caricatured images, and four years later by "Unknown Weegee," a survey that emphasized his more benign, post-tabloid photographs. In 2012 ICP opened another Weegee exhibition titled, "Murder is my Business". Also in 2012, exhibition called "Weegee: The Naked City" opened at Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow"

Bailey's narrow magazines are bound well and not easily mashed onto my scanner…but let's take a look at some obscurities by Arthur Felig.  Weegee's Weirdies is listed in the bibliography of his works HERE, but Weegee's Poison Portraits seems not to be, so here you go.

Bernard Bailey, editor and art director of High and Ho is a bit more obscure, but like many folks working in the golden age of smut, came from the comic book environment.  I'll say it again...Kefauver was right.  He was an artist who worked for both DC comics and Atlas, which eventually became Marvel.  His bio is HERE.

Not much has been published about his connection with High and Ho.  Interestingly, High turned into a normal sized magazine after the tall experiment, but it didn't last much longer.  Both magazines are chock-full of now prominent artists, photographers and models.  Bernard had good taste, if not business sense.

Tall and Long issues of High 1957 and Ho 1958
Photography Books by the author include The Birth of Rock and Roll, Take Me to the Water and In Situ American Folk Art in Place.
Photographs  by Weegee / INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY

The Birth of Rock and Roll Number 4 from Dull Tool Dim Bulb

The Birth of Rock and Roll number four is an original slide circa 1950 from the Jim Linderman Collection, and we like it so much we gave it a watermark!  The Birth of Rock and Roll series of original photographs appears on Dull Tool Dim Bulb periodically.

Untitled Original Color Slide circa 1950 collection Jim Linderman

The Birth of Rock and Roll Holiday Edition

Number three in the series The Birth of Rock and Roll comes from Cleveland, so I finally have to agree with the choice to locate the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame there!  Undated, but certainly 1940 or earlier, an obvious trouble-maker participates in planning for the Thanksgiving dance!  I hope it got out of hand.  An unusual early photograph of desegregated dance for the kids!  On the reverse the person I HOPE chooses the music is identified as "Pete Owens African-American Young Man" at Thomas Edison High School Cleveland Ohio.  It comes from a photo book, but I am going to guess it was taken for the High School Yearbook. 

Original Snapshot Undated Collection Jim Linderman