CDV Photographer Trade Card Salesman Sample Photographica collection Horton Grand Rapids Jim Linderman

 

Photographer O. W. Horton of Monroe Street in Grand Rapids Cleans his Studio.  Circa 1855.

Orsamus W. Horton was one of the first daguerreotype photographers in Grand Rapids, MI.
Later he created Stereo photographs.  In 1916, on his passing, he was referred to as "Grand Rapids First Photographer" and was also the first to install a skylight.  He was also known as "Practical Photographer" and listed his location at "Foot of Monroe St."

Original Carte de Visite Photograph circa 1855 Collection Jim Linderman
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BRONZE THRILLS ! George Levitan Goes Black and Goes Smutty

Astoundingly, or maybe not...Bronze Thrills was published by a Caucasian.  George Levitan.  Not only that, Levitan was originally from the Upper Pennisula of Michigan and once said he never even saw a Black person until he was 18 years old,  according to Texas Monthly magazine in October 1983.  As a teen, Levitan moved to Detroit but he didn't stay long.  He moved to Forth Worth, Texas and bought the Good Publishing Company.  It was a good move.  Bronze Thrills was already being published, but George spiced it up a bit (as you can see)  more and commenced becoming a very rich man.

Not only Bronze Thrills (Breaking the Cross-Dressing barrier here with the story of a husband who got his kicks wearing women's clothes) but Hep, Jive, Sepia, Soul Confessions, Soul Teen and Soul Confessions.  A one-man Black publishing empire which was white!

That isn't to say George was a creep.  He hired African-American workers, trained them well, paid them well and promoted them to important positions.  Sure, the magazine was thrashy, but at the time there really wasn't much else for the race.  Soon his primary title, Sepia, was a moving force in the Black community.  He also helped raise funds for the United Negro College Fund. 

Issue of Bronze Thrills  "Thrill Girls: Men meant only sex and a good time to me" and "My Husband was a Transvestitie: He got his kicks from wearing women's clothes"  December 1966 Issue  Original  Collection Jim Linderman

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Chief Paul Protects the Public from Peep Show Perversion Second City Smut Vintage Sleaze Midget Movies

Chicago citizens will sleep better knowing the pin-up peep shows have been unplugged by Chief Investigator Paul Newey. Since there was no other crime in the second city on this day in 1959, Chief Paul invited the press over to see his collection of confiscated coin-op smut. Paul's pursuit of the peep shows was crime-bustin' action of the highest order. To celebrate (and convince the public Newey was on top of the situation) he flicks his ashes on the filthy coin slot in distain!

Original Press Photograph (8" x 13") Unknown Chicago Paper 1959 Collection Jim Linderman

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Vintage African-American Magazines Hot Black Romance

Black romance! Other than the dynamite duo of Jet and Ebony from Johnson Publications in Chicago, African-American magazines are surprisingly scarce, which is why the examples I pick to show here likely will not look familiar. Smaller circulations, segregated neighborhoods, institutional racism (did YOUR public library subscribe to Jive?) and other reasons account for their rarity. Plus, museums and serious collectors are now purchasing them to compensate for their earlier neglect. Unless you find a box somewhere, you might expect to pay 25 to 50 bucks apiece and more for a mint condition black romance magazine from the 1950s and 1960s...if and when you can find one.

Group of vintage African-American Romance magazines collection Jim Linderman

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Weegee Bettie Page and the FBI The Last (?) Unpublished Photographs and What Weegee told the FBI about Bettie Page

(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images


What if you could put Bettie Page, the most influential pinup model of the last 50 years in the same room with Weegee, certainly one of the most famous photographers in the world...and he had a camera in his hands? I'd say it would be so juicy even the FBI would be interested. And it appears they were!

Search for a photograph of Bettie Page taken by Weegee. One appears on the International Center of Photography website, which is appropriate as Weegee's widow Wilma Wilcox donated his extensive archive to the museum in 1993. The photo actually appears on Fans in a Flashbulb, the museum's exceptional blog.

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) was personal friends with the model, for years living only three blocks apart from each other just off Times Square (Weegee on West 47th Street and Ms. Page on West 46th Street), a walk one can do in less than five minutes, even Weegee with a cigar. There is a story reported that Weegee once climbed into a bathtub fully clothed with Bettie hoping for a better photo until she literally kicked him out. But until now, very few of the photographs Weegee took of his beautiful acquaintance have ever been publicly shown.
Cass Carr, Harlem jazz musician and promoter of amateur camera club outings also had a space in the very same neighborhood at 218 West 47th Street (a mere two blocks from Weegee's house) which he called the "Concorde Camera Circle" with a rudimentary studio. I believe the revealing studio shot here showing other participants snapping away was taken at Carr's place. It is typical of Weegee to create his own particular view in a photographic setting. The one thing you do NOT want to see in a photo of Bettie Page is other men, but there you go. Leave it to Weegee to turn the camera on the cameramen.

(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

Carr also arranged outings to local farms and parks for camera club participants prior to forming the Concorde Club (previously known as the Lens Art Club) but he changed the club's name after being arrested along with others for promoting an outing in South Salem, New York. Some accounts have Weegee arrested at a camera club outing along with Ms. Page, if so it probably would have been the South Salem, New York shoot on July 27, 1952.

One thing I can confirm is the outdoor photographs here were taken at Headley Farm in New Jersey, as the gas pump has figured in other photographer's pictures. Also present at the shoot, which took place on September 9, 1956, were photographers Art Amsie, Arnold Kovacks, Don Baida, and an unknown woman photographer seen here on the left holding her own camera with the boys.

As far as I know, this unknown woman's pictures of Bettie have not turned up, but we can now say Bettie was photographed by at least three women, the others being Paula Klaw (Paula Kramer) and Bunny Yeager (Linnea Eleanor Yeager)

(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

The Weegee photographs (and there are more) are beautiful pictures of the model in her prime. Striking poses of a young model obviously both aware of her talents and enjoying the session. That they were taken by one of the most interesting and talented photographers in history adds to their charm and importance.

The photographs Weegee took of Bettie Page have never been shown, and it is an honor I do not take lightly. It is also the reason the copyright notice I have placed under each image is not to be ignored.

One of the Weegee photos of the model taken in a studio is notable primarily for the unusual bikini Bettie wears which she would have made herself! It was a talent she was proud of, but maybe she should have stuck with store-bought. It also appears in a cropped version on a website or two, but in poor and possibly purloined quality.

(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

The other Weegee image from the ICP collection which has appeared on the web is a cropped print showing Ms. Page in virtually the same pose taken at the same day by four different photographers.

Another Weegee photograph here shows Ms. Page in a make-shift studio not as yet identified. It could be either of their own apartments, as Page was known to pose individually on request and for her standard modeling fee. It is not known (to me anyway) if Weegee was in the habit of hiring individual models, but he did sell and publish other cheesecake photographs in news digests and quite likely some joke and gag publications. I would like to think Bettie gave him a freebie on this one!


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images
But what of the FBI? Recently the FBI released several documents on Bettie Page, likely in response to repeated requests. As we know, the model was harassed and hounded by zealots and government agencies during her modeling years. Once being called by the Kefauver Committee in conjunction with their investigation of Irving Klaw, and earlier in relation to an obscenity bust in 1956 Harlem (in which the amateur bondage model was asked about "ping pong paddles" and a riding crop. She denied being involved, and also denied knowing of any photographs of the sort being produced in Harlem.



CLICK TO ENLARGE


In the the newly released FBI document pictured here I noticed a most interesting story hiding in the redacted print! Half way down, note the passage enlarged here which indicates photos of the model were "turned over on 5/25/60...by (name omitted) also known as (name omitted) a photographer who resides at (location omitted.) Now I do not know of any other New York City photographer working with a short pseudonym who took pictures of Bettie Page! So there you go... it now looks like we can add Weegee to the long list of artists who have been pestered by the long arm of the law.


CLICK TO ENLARGE

Now if I were writing this for a tabloid in the 1950s, when the neighborhood all three principles called home was known as "Hell's Kitchen" I would have titled this 'WEEGEE SQUAWKS TO FEDS" but to be fair, anyone with the slightest connection to "dirty" pictures was vulnerable to such puritanical procedures, when the laws attempting to define obscenity were far more strict than today. So let's call them all pioneers rather than pigeons.


(c) Weegee/International Center of Photography/Getty Images

I would like to thank the International Center of Photography for allowing me to use the above unpublished photographs from their archive to help illustrate this discovery and story. If you are not an active member or supporter of the museum, please take the time to join.



Jim Linderman is author of Times Square Smut and The Birth of Rock and Roll

 "Times Square Smut" available now covers the same time period as the above in detail and publishes numerous works by African-American artist Eugene Bilbrew unseen for over 50 years. Times Square Smut will tell the story of denizen and mobster Edward Mishkin, who printed and sold proto-porno soft-core books using the artist's work on 42nd Street at the same time Irving Klaw was publishing photographs of Bettie Page. In the meantime.  The Birth of Rock and Roll might be the most unusual music book you have ever seen!

Last Nail in the Coffin (The LAST Unheard Robert Johnson Track) 100 years of Traveling Riverside Blues

The only bad thing about Robert Johnson is that there are no more tracks to find. It used to be when one discovered an artist worth hearing, one had to go look for the rest at record stores, or under the mattress in bad neighborhoods.

Johnson is now 100...and they've all been found. The last discovery was made in 1997 when an "obscene" track withheld from the Columbia releases was added to the public canon. That the obscene lyric is the now familiar and standard blues phrase involving "juice running down a leg" doesn't matter, what does matter is that although the recording was purchased by the national trust, we still had to pay Columbia/Sony to hear it. The unreleased version of Traveling Riverside Blues on a 10 inch test-pressing was sold by the Alan Lomax archive to the Library of Congress American Folklife Center for $10,000, and was at the time the only unheard track by the artist. That Columbia was allowed to profit from it 8 years after millions had already paid for the reissue of Johnson's other output in 1990 (and the LP version years earlier) seemed odd to me.

Billboard Magazine June 17, 2000

Folklife director Alan Jabbour said "It's part of the Robert Johnson legacy, which in turn is part of our blues legacy." Apparently, it was part of the Columbia Sony legacy as well, since they asked fans to purchase the entire set to hear the then single new 2:38 addition back in 1998. As you can tell, I never got over it! HUMPF!

But it was worth the wait and I gladly shelled out the dough for the shellac.

By the way, they also erased the smoke from Johnson's lips when they put him on a U.S. Postage Stamp. A perfect example of Orwell's premise. Erase the cigarette, erase history and create a new reality. Call me stickler.

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What's Your Sign? Horoscope Astrology Zodiac Unfurled.

Astrology sign with two lecturers. 
Original Snapshot circa 1925 collection Jim Linderman
The new book of photographs from the Linderman Collection is
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J. Charles Jessup, Convicted Preacher with a Triple-neck Mosrite guitar

Charles Jessup was married to a 15 year old girl while still married to his third wife. Rev. Jessup was a border radio fixture for years, sharing time on a mega-powerful station operating just across the Rio Grande (and outside of U. S. regulations) at the same time as Wolfman Jack. Robert Duvall cited him as an influence on his film The Apostle, and others have compared him to Elvis, but then Elvis was never convicted of mail fraud and using ill-gotten contributions from loyal listeners for cock-fighting.
Jessup barnstormed God's airways with mountain music, a squeaky voice and an insatiable sexual appetite. Taking in ten million dollars, he claimed was to help the Mexican people, he instead "llenarse los bolsillos" which is Spanish for "line your own pockets." And there are folks who worry about Mexicans coming here? Cars, Seaplanes, real estate...whatever supposed pleasures awaited his followers in the afterlife, he was taking full advantage of in the present.
Not to be outdone by his own brother's double-neck guitar, shown in a photo here...he ordered a custom made THREE neck guitar from the Mosrite Factory which surfaced a few years ago. I am not sure what he used to play it with, but perhaps his young wife can tell us. Amazingly, he continued to appear on other evangelist's programs after serving his sentence (at least one of which still operates in my home state) and they welcomed him as an inspiration! I include here several photos of Jessup and his posse with a scan of their 78 rpm record (which unfortunately I have not heard as God has not yet provided me with a working turntable, but he will, I believe)

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A double blog post here and on "old time religion"

Photo excerpts from "Heaven and Hell" "My Life's Story" "A Stirring Message on Death" all circa 1945-1950 by J. Charles Jessup, and "Preach the Word/I'll Meet you in the Morning" by Jessup Brothers on Jessup Brothers records, 78 rpm. All Collection Jim Linderman