Samuel Lonnie Simmons, Photographer

A piece from the sister blog "Vintage Sleaze" 

Samuel "Lonnie" Simmons is Unsung Hero of Photography number nine.  (See them all linked below)

Time to bring another great photographer out of the dust of obscurity and racism.  Once known as "The Man Who Never Sleeps" Samuel "Lonnie" Simmons was an African-American jazzman (more than anything else) in his younger days playing with no less than American treasure Fats Waller, Hot Lips Page, Chick Webb and more.  Many more.  He recorded under his own name as well, including "I Can't Get Started" on the Parrot label (in which he played both organ and saxophone, probably at the same time.)  If you are not yet impressed with Lonnie's musical chops, his Jet Magazine obit reports he also played with Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie.  Parrot was a label which lasted only three years in the early 1950s, but some of the recordings were reissued later on Chess Records. 

However, though Simmons performed up until the last, suffering a fatal stroke while performing AT AGE 80 according to Euguene Chadbourne, it is his work as a photographer of interest here.

Photographer too?  I'm getting a little tired of learning about astounding talented people no one taught me about in school.  

So Lonnie, or Samuel, is called "a free-lance photographer" in passing in the few places you might find information about him. 

Born in Charleston, South Carolina Actually, in Mt. Pleasant, an isolated pocket in the low-country coast, yet another of those plantation- era places near where slaves landed.  A bridge to Mount Pleasant was built in 1928.  Wiki lists one Darius Rucker as coming from the city, he being "Hootie" of the Blowfish… but they omit Mr. Simmons.   

Lonnie's father was a blacksmith who went back nearly to slave days, passing at the age of 82 in 1955.  Lonnie's father was just one notable blacksmith named Simmons from the Charleston area.  On his father's passing, Lonnie went back to Mt. Pleasant to bring his mother back to Chicago with him, and it was her first plane airplane ride.  His appearance at the funeral was notable enough for the local paper to interview him, where Simmons is reported to have "gradually drifted into take pictures for newspapers and magazines" and that he maintains his own darkroom in his Chicago home.  The headline reads "Mt. Pleasant Negro Musician Becomes Press Photographer" and adds a few more musical giants among his playing partners.

It was not unusual for Mr. Simmons to leap from the bandstand with his camera to capture events, including crimes.  A one-man forerunner of the surveillance camera, his pictures were used by the Chicago Police for evidence and he earned honorary membership in the Chicago Patrolman's Association.  Much of his photography was taken at the legendary Chicago Club De Lisa (which I wrote about earlier) and I now believe the photograph below was taken by Mr. Simmons in his "spare time" as picture maker who roamed the club supporting his income with snapshots. 

The extraordinary dance photos shown here were Lonnie's.  Scarce not only because they show the "Black and Tan" nightclub era (an era not generally regarded as worthy of documentation at the time by most photographers) but also because, I assume, most of Mr. Simmons photographs have not been exhibited.  It would be pretty safe to guess the originals are lost.  We can hope a relative finds this post, digs them out and produces the coffee-table book he earned but no one made.

Somebody has some, as Mr. Simmon's photographs were apparently used in the 1995 documentary PROMISED LAND narrated by Morgan Freeman for the History Channel  which while acclaimed was forgotten.  You can read about it HERE where people keep asking why it isn't available on DVD…one of whom writes "It is a shame that this great work of truth has been overlooked."  Par for the course.  The documentary is about the migration of southern African-Americans to Chicago.  Lonnie Simmons was one of them, and fortunately he was around with his camera.

Samuel "Lonnie" Simmons photographs appear in Ebony, Jet, The Chicago Defender, The Pittsburgh Courier, The Crusader and Cabaret (a magazine which documented burlesque in the 1950s and from where the photographs above were taken) and I suspect others once considered unsavory race and pinup magazines from the 1950s on.  The portrait of the young musician is from the Charleston Jazz Initiative at the School of the Arts, College of Charleston, South Carolina.  Jet Magazine recognized Lonnie's talents and skills…as well as using his photographs (including the astounding picture of a dancer flying above a drummer, which I have cribbed but credited) they also reported on his adventures, including being bitten by an eel and having his instruments stolen HERE.

PHOTOGRAPH OF SAMUEL LONNIE SIMMONS Charleston Jazz Initiative Archives

PARROT RECORD LABEL HERE 

Original Club DeLisa Photograph and Sleeve collection Jim Linderman 

UNSUNG HEROES OF PHOTOGRAPHY is a series on Vintage Sleaze the Blog by Jim Linderman.  Previous profiles include Art Messick George Boardman Danny Rouzer  Russ Meyer  Wil Blanche  Benno Friedman  and Bunny Yeager  

JIM LINDERMAN BOOKS AND AFFORDABLE EBOOKS ARE AVAILABLE HERE ON BLURB

A True Crime Tale by Jim Linderman

I am pleased to have the following article published in THE CHISELER this week! The Chiseler is a highly regarded web magazine edited by Daniel Riccuito. It is a site much worth following. Special thanks to Jarett Kobek, who inspired the story, having transcribed "The Oldest History of the World" book and the story from which I originally found the information I used for the story. I purchased the photograph above intending it as a post on the old-time-religion blog...imagine my surprise at learning what was in my hand.



FAITH HEALER LEFT HEADLESS: A True Crime Tale by Jim Linderman

In 1932, according to an AP wire story which ran in several newspapers, including places as far afield as Sarasota, Florida and Spokane, Washington, Robert Harris, a negro and leader of a religious order with a membership of “about 100 negroes in Detroit” confessed to the brutal murder of James Smith, also a negro. Harris admitted that “he crushed Smith’s head with the rear axle of an automobile, then stabbed him through the heart.” Robert Harris apparently dragged Smith to “an improvised altar” in his home to finished him off.

Detroit in the late 1920s and early 1930s had a problem with religious cults.

Three years earlier, on a July 4th weekend, not far from where Harris killed Smith, Paul “Benny” Evangelista, known as a “Divine Prophet” was murdered along with his wife and four children. With an axe. Few axe murders are not gruesome, but this one was particularly so. The entire Evangelista family was hacked to pieces. The bodies in bedclothes. The divine prophet’s head was severed from his torso and placed on a chair in the family living room.

Also “cruelly hacked” was Santina, the prophet’s wife and Jeanne (eight years old) Angelia (nine) Margaret (ten) and the three-year old son Mario. One account puts Mario’s age at eighteen months. In addition to the prophet’s head, one of the girl’s arms was severed. Police suspected that wound was the result of a “miscalculated blow” intended for Santina’s neck, as it too had been hacked but the head was left hanging by a thread. Leaving the house on St. Aubin avenue, in the Italian district of depression era Detroit, the fiend and pervert left a bloody trail for police which went nowhere.

Benny was downstairs in pieces when found by a neighbor, real estate broker Vincent Elias. A friend of the family, just a day earlier Elias had completed arrangements for the purchase of a farm near Marine City, MI for the Evangelistas. Elias opened the unlocked door, saw the head and without looking further ran for the police. The children and wife were found by authorities upstairs.

In an understatement, Wayne county coroner James Burgess called the murder “an unusual case.”

A week later the entire family was wheeled down rain-slicked Woodward Avenue, parade-style, each in a coffin of appropriate size. The public funeral was an opportunity for police to look for the killer in the crowd, but to no avail.

A relative of the Evangelista family living in Coraopolis told police they must have been murdered by members of a “Black Hand” organization.

Benny was Benjamino Evangelista, a Neapolitan immigrant who claimed to be an herb doctor and faith healer. In other words, a criminal and fraud using religious superstition and jargon to steal. Like all “faith healers” he bilked rubes out of savings like a carnival barker, but his tools were voodoo, false claims of health, black magic and superstition rather than sideshow swindles. He overcharged desperate people for “love potions” and promises of cures. He provided “readings” for ten dollars. For these things, it appears, he and his entire family were sent to a violent and blood-sticky end. Benny pissed off a client with an axe.

Prior to being murdered, Evangelista wrote an enormous, self-published book of religious ravings based loosely on the bible. It took him 20 years. “The Oldest History of the World: Discovered by Occult Science” It is unreadable, useless and no one bought it. In the fictional account three prophets travel to “Afra” in order to “see what the colored people were doing…” but all they were doing was eating their food uncooked.

The book has been hand-typed from one of the few existing copies and digitally reproduced by the extraordinary Jarett Kobek. http://kobek.com/

Kobek is a brilliant scholar and is most certainly, despite the extraordinary story of Divine Prophet, himself a better story than the people and events he writes about. He also provides the most complete bibliography of period articles about the crime, and details such as the characters in the book existed also as puppets in a shrine in the Evangelista basement.

The gruesome crime was still unsolved three years later when the “rear axle murderer” above, Robert Harris confessed. Briefly, The police thought the crime solved. So did the press. “Confession by King of Weird Cult clears up Detroit Murder” read one headline, but it was not to be. Harris didn’t do it.

Neither did Angelo Depoli, arrested the day of the murder with a blood covered curved knife used for chopping bananas in his barn. A year later the family dog was still being sought as a witness. Detroit police were so desperate to solve the crime they tried to pin it on a man who escaped from a lunatic asylum and was presumed killed by a freight train two years BEFORE the crime. They didn’t have much, but they did have a pair of bloody fingerprints from the door latch. They were figured prominently in the bulletin from Superintendent of Police James Sprott along with the reward of one thousand dollars which was distributed far and wide to no avail.

The case is as cold as wind from Windsor blowing across the Detroit River in December.

by Jim Linderman

Jim Linderman uses photographs and ephemera from his personal collection to tell true stories. He is author of the Grammy-nominated book / CD Take Me to the Water and the forthcoming Heroes of Vintage Sleaze. His daily blogs are DULL TOOL DIM BULB, VINTAGE SLEAZE, and old-time-religion. He has also self-published a number of books which are available from Blurb.com.

Original Press Photograph Wide World Photos 7/5/29 Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books and Ebooks HERE

Guest Post by Natalie M. Curley Antique Dealer

Natalie Curley is one of the rare breed doing the heavy lifting for collectors.   All these objects have to come from somewhere, and the folks who find, save, protect, share and sell them to others are how I connect with the past.  Natalie is a little like me…she has to own an object to understand it, and that unending search to learn is what keeps her going.  Anyone can sell an object, that's what Craig's list is for.  But it takes a special person to find it, figure it out, treat it with respect and pass it along at a very small mark up to other collectors.  I own things with Natalie M. Curley provenance and so do many others.  It's time to share a favorite source.  I asked Ms. Curley to discuss a few of her finds with us and to explain what gets her up in the morning.  Ms. Curley has a splendid website, sells on eBay, restores and frames objects and hits the road early to find great stuff.  See what Natalie has available at CURLEY'S ANTIQUES and on her eBay listings.  Stay up to date with Natalie's travels on her Facebook page.

Because Ms. Curley's interests are wide, we are posting two versions of this piece.  One here, the other on Vintage Sleaze the Blog. 

"Prior to the hipster “heritage,” and crafty “repurposing” revolutions born of reality television so many years ago, the only context the public really had for the artifacts of their collective history not stored in struggling museums seen only on childhood school trips were the legions of condescending retirees smelling vaguely of lilac and rambling about “book values” running prissy but dusty antique shops in vacation towns. I rightly cannot fault y’all for not finding those very accessible or worthy of your precious free weekend hours. But for folks like me, weirdos ooking for points of connection in an uncomfortable world, the very idea of “forgotten” makes our hearts race and we think you’re crazy to resist! An abandoned parking lot or the field of an underutilized historic landmark in need of the funding, completely uncatalogued piles of every single thing ever possibly made by man or machine before this very day with no answers and not many hints, likely beginning an hour before dawn and potentially slogging through mud or 90 degrees, sounds better than sex! Its a never ending number of too crazy to be imagined stories, lives lived, lost achievements, personalities and insights all silenced by the years and the graves just waiting to wake up and chat. The age and construction of a thing, the society that produced it, the intent (folk art is ALL intent) of the maker, the make-do necessity of the materials used, how its aged and how its been damaged all tell the story. I can become aware of things I never imagined and with the context I piece together, so can the new owner. In the process, we all learn something about ourselves. Theres nothing better than that discovery and I’ve made ALL my professional choices in this life so that I can afford to run away to this circus every-day."

 

Art Deco Figural Electric Holy Religious Crown Antique Prop Remnant
Handmade and electrified by the same tiny hobby light bulbs any early train set would use, but a mystery past that. The imagination runs wild, part of some odd religious revival or stage play? Carnival prop or weird advertising? No idea, but its all patina and sculpture now!

 

1920s Post Toasties General Grocery Store Advertising Work Apron
The early 20thc American economy was not only moving rural to city, self reliant to national, but was unknowingly writing the rules of a modern global economy at the time. Like so many of our most insightful antiques, who would expect this apron to survive nearly 100 years? It dates to pretty much the moment when BRANDS made family owned General Stores into competitive groceries, first launching invasive campaigns into our collective conscious. The lucky laborer to wear this one got to wear a sign on his chest and advertise the day’s specials!

1919 Ruth Law Aviatrix Vintage Pilot Plane Barnstormer Antique Photo Pitch Card
Real historically relevancy is a rare treat, here is Ruth Law (Oliver) identified “Apollo Fair Mrs Oliver (married) on her frame stunt flier, August 8 1919” on reverse. Law bought her first Curtiss plane from Orville Wright in 1912 and in the next decade worked as a commercial pilot, dropped “baseballs” (grapefruits) from planes to Dodger catchers, set many flight records before being denied entry into WWI combat when we entered the War in 1917. Her passionate article “Let Women Fly” became canon for even decades later aviatrix.
 

Disturbing Wonderful 19thc Victorian Nursery Rhyme Playing Cards 
Antique paper should not be. It was only ever advertising, marketing or toys made cheaply and treated poorly. The quality of construction and carefully crafted graphics make so much of it timeless, when its lucky enough to survive the trash bin for a century. Much of it becomes unique by default and theres no research to be done, and such is the case here. These might have been made by a popular Victorian printing company McLoughlin Brothers, responsible for so many of our classic fairytale and nursery rhyme images, or maybe not.

Depression Era Make Do Feed Sack Window Screen Folk Art Bee Keepers Hat
Handmade things are usually born of necessity, but the art is in the spirit of survival and joy.  There is nothing new in the reuse of feed sacks during the Depression and Dust Bowl years, it was so common that Feed companies started to print patterns on the fabric for their customers. What shows spunk is taking a bit of window screen (itself a commodity at the time) and having sewn it loosely to two pieces of old feed sack charge into a beehive to get the family a little treat or sell the honey. That’s something, and that makes me smile.
——
www.curleysantiques.com
www.facebook.com/curleysden
http://stores.ebay.com/rarebooksandpaper

If You Build it They Will Come Vintage Seaze the Blog 2.5 Million Hits

Vintage Sleaze the Blog has reached 2.5 Million page views and is rapidly approaching 75,000 followers on Facebook. 

Gene Bilbrew African-American Artist of Vintage Sleaze (part two)

African-American illustrator and artist Eugene Bilbrew was born in Sunny L.A. in 1924. As with most of the illustrators I hope to profile here (see my earlier Bill Alexander post) his life is sketchy. In fact, even his 1974 death of a heroin overdose in the back of minor mobster Eddie Mishkin's bookstore on 42nd Street in Manhattan is poorly documented, especially for an artist whose work has had such an influence. Remarkably, it is known that Bilbrew knew Alexander in Los Angeles before WW2. While Alexander was able to come close to the music business (illustrating 78rpm records for Roy Milton's Miltone label) young Bilbrew actually made it to the stage, if only in a minor role. He somehow finagled himself into temporary membership in "The Basin Street Boys" a LA based Doo Wop group with one hit, the prophetic "I Sold My Heart To The Junkman." The song was later recorded by Patti Labelle and has been performed in concert by no less than Bette Midler and Bruce Springsteen. The group broke up leaving Eugene in New York City (from where I will continue his story in a later post) A warning to the faint...since Bilbrew obviously fell into some bad habits in the Big Apple, you would be correct to assume most of the young black man's talent was directed at artistic pursuits even less, umm..."acceptable" than the lurid sleazy covers of these 1965 paperbacks from my collection, so if you choose to google him up with your preferences open, you might be disturbed. There are literally thousands of entries on Bilbrew and his work on the web, and yet the "real" art world seems to know virtually nothing about him. This may be due to his "way outside the norm" life and body of work, but it could just as easily be due to his race or the fact that virtually none of his original work survives. Although he was accepted into the program at the "Cartoonist and Illustrators School" (later titled the School of Visual Arts in 1956) one suspects his drift into drug addiction and work which was was largely considered pornographic at the time may have been at least partially caused by discrimination. He had a most unusual and completely individual style which emerged from a more traditional genre of cartooning, and once one becomes familiar with his work it is instantly recognizable. The best biographical material on Eugene Bilbrew and other sleaze paperback artists is found in the outstanding 2005 "Sin-A-Rama" book published by Feral House, in particular the entry on Bilbrew by Brittany Daley. This year, Feral Press has also published "Dope Menace: The Sensational World of Drug Paperbacks 1900-1975" by Stephen J. Gertz which is equally as fascinating and even more scholarly but just as much fun.

Six c. 1965 Paperback books, cover illustrations Eugene Bilbrew. Collection Jim Linderman

SEE TIMES SQUARE SMUT THE BOOK HERE

Vintage Sleaze Art and Illustrators It Ain't Just Paperbacks anymore!

Homemade and Handmade "Gag" Postcards from the 1960s

What is funnier than a bunch of old sexist gag drawings? Umm...not these. HOMEMADE POSTCARD erotic "gag" drawings by an anonymous amateur. What could he have possibly been thinking? Was he intending to mail them to friends? Send them to a printer to have them run off? Send them into a professional postcard company to see if they were interested? Since he appears to have had trouble writing the captions, I'm going to suggest he get a professional printer, at least. Hilarious. But not funny. At least they are colorful. I have over 50, so who knows how many he did. The standard gags are all here...women of the night, the wife, the sleazy boss, a fishing joke. Standard fare for the sixties, but done by hand? As common as clean dirt.

Collection of Homemade and Handmade "Gag" cartoon postcards, circa late 1960s. Collection Jim Linderman

Also posted on Vintage Sleaze the Blog

Miracle Fotos Pic-Tease "Fingers"Game YOU DEVELOP THEM Hollywood Lovelies

As Kodachrome fades into fuzzy, unfocused memory, I present here just about the only thing left to develop. MIRACLE FOTO! The "Fingers" Game with photographs you develop at home. Presented by Pic-Tease, one of the finest providers of Hollywood Lovelies. But it isn't enough for you to create actual photographs at home, there is a game involved too! As you see on the reverse, one must "guess the fingers" As you can see in the only "developed" card in the set, our lovely here has a full set of ten digits AND two "bonus" nubs I had to black out. But you get the point, and the have indicated a "10" on the card. That is for her fingers, not a sexist scale rating her beauty. The instructions ask one to wet the crepe paper which comes with each card, and press it against the reverse until the miracle foto appears!

Being a collector, I am saving them all in the original box, as I hope the Kinsey Institute will bid high for the set on day. I find nothing on the web about these miracle fotos, the manufacturer did also produce "Miracle Derby Cards" so they clearly did intend the placing of bets. As such, and given the risque images, I suspect these were, at the time they were made, Illegal and that is why they are scarce.

Set of Miracle Fotos Pic Tease cards. Collection Jim Linderman Date Unknown (1935?)

See DULL TOOL DIM BULB / VINTAGE SLEAZE BOOK CATALOG HERE

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Dull Tool Dim Bulb Retrospective 2 Million Clicks

The three blogs which comprise the Dull Tool Dim Bulb empire went to two million hits yesterday. To celebrate, some images from the first year.


Dull Tool Dim Bulb


Vintage Sleaze


old-time-religion


Thanks! Jim Linderman