White Women

Collection Jim Linderman

A Little Birdy Told Me To INSULT Your Ass.

I have trouble imagining the bitter rancorous old goat who came up this idea. "Prize Sap" indeed. At least they weren't mailed.

Set of Insult Postcards, 1945 Privately Printed in Chicago Collection Jim Linderman

Zoom Lite RPPC

Zoom: To simulate movement rapidly away from or toward a subject using a zoom lens. To cause text or other graphics in a window or frame to appear larger on the screen.

Lite: To avoid copyright problems with "Light" or to indicate a beer, food, brand or physical object with no taste, substance or significance.

Zoom Lite Real Photo Postcard c. 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Camera Club Girls: Bettie Page and the Work of Rudolph Rossi Vernacular Photography

CAMERA CLUB GIRLS: Bettie Page and the Work of Rudolph Rossi

These are cropped detail portions of the extraordinary hand-painted photographs of Rudolph Rossi. Rossi was an informal member of the New York City Concorde Camera Club in the repressive 1950's. For a ten dollar fee, he photographed Bettie Page and a plethora of interracial models, then later meticulously hand-painted the photographs creating the illusion of color photography. An exceptional body of work by a previously unknown and unrecognized photographer and erotic artist from a time when such activity was taboo. Bettie Page, who passed away last year, is the most famous and most recognizable pin-up model of all time. You'll have to trust the first image here is indeed Ms. Page. A new website publishes some of the photographs, hopefully the first step in generating interest in the previously unknown and unseen work. To see the original works, you will have to "click through" a mature audiences page. visit "CAMERA CLUB GIRLS"

Rudolph Rossi Original Hand-Painted Photographs (detail) c. 1950, Collection Jim Linderman

Sandwich Board and Watermelon Heaven Can Wait

"This young member of the sect finds a little bit of heaven on earth, in the shape of a juicy watermelon slice"

Original Press Photograph, 1953. Collection Jim Linderman

To Follow my blog of similar material, click OLD TIME RELIGION

Missed Opportunity to Improve your Position in Life

Someone gave it a try but never mailed it in. This organization not only still exists, it is accredited! Known as the "Draw Me" school, they have an Alumni Gallery HERE.

Art Instruction Inc. Folded "post card" Application Form. c. 1935 with pencil embellishment. Collection Jim Linderman

Stanley Smolak and the Legs Inn RPPC

Not only is Stanley Smolak's creation, the Legs Inn still operating after 80 years, it is thriving! Live bands and the greatest Polish food outside of Poland. You HAVE to read the menu HERE. Only in America? Nah...only in MICHIGAN!

Three real photo post cards, c. 1950? Collection Jim Linderman

True Crud from Newsweek and True Crime from David Jacobs

The Newsweek double issue last week was devoted to true crime, supposedly. Whadda ripoff...is anyone doing any research anymore? I paid $6.95 at the airport and received a mere ONE PAGE from the genius James Ellroy...but several more from Vincent Bugliosi...a yawn every paragraph from this whitewash writer of decades ago who couldn't even take a literary punch from tough-guy Truman Capote. Then a few vintage mug shots, the likes of which photo collectors on Ebay found so long ago they carry about as much shock as a hearing aid battery. I'd rather look at the new ones they post on the Smoking Gun showing pimps smiling through police brutality wounds and gold grills. Please...the reason magazines are going under is because they now "write" them with press-releases from publishers and wire stories linked on Drudge the week before. Don't they even have any INTERNS who know what is cool over there? The real true crime is the price I paid for this snore which crept over me faster than my sonata.

Here, however, is the real deal. David Jacobs, shown as "the man I would most like to have dinner with" compiles tales of true crime when it meant hoodlums, hopheads, hepcats, convicts, jailbirds, reform school girls, hellcats, vixens and vice dolls. All are true stories swiped from the SOURCE...pulp magazines from the 1950's Detective Rags. Each morbid tale written with few words over 7 letters and a punk gets what was coming to him at the end of every damn one. Each story a GEM edited tighter than the lyrics to a Hank Williams weeper. From back when hacks pounded typewriters..that's right....typewriters... on speed and had to backspace to cross out the mistakes in between gulps of vodka and smoke. Back when the spouse was the spell-checker. I link to the fattest one here..355 pages of greasy gals with gats in their garters. Now that's summer reading!


Lurid heaven from David Jacobs.

A Nice Try

Stecher "Betty's Painting and Cutout Book" and selected page c. 1920 Collection Jim Linderman

Best Art Books of 2009 You have Never Seen (Christmas made easy)

Small Press Art books seldom made the stores, an as a result your friends have never browsed them, as such they make perfect gifts! Three of the best and most unique 2009 Art books are available online and should be seen! The first two come from the new art house DULL TOOL DIM BULB run by Jim Linderman. The first Gals Gam Garters documents the anonymous scrapbook of a 1950s leg fetish. He cut out hundreds of women's poses, from the waist down, clad in all manner of stockings. Risque but with no nudity, the collaged pages were found in a dumpster 50 years ago and have been published for the first time. A secret but fascinating show for the risque retro fan. The second, also released by Dull Tool Dim Bulb, "Shy Shamed Secret Shadowed Hidden" shows the amazing vernacular vintage erotic photographs of Victor Minx, a pseudonym. The photos, collected over years, each show a woman in states of undress but hiding her facial features. They are extraordinary. The third, also from the unusual Jim Linderman archive, Take Me to the Water: Immersion Baptism in Vintage Music and Photography consists of dozens of antique photographs of folks being baptized. A staggering exhibit of humanity and just perfect, the book comes with a CD of old-time baptism songs and sermons compiled by the Grammy Winning Dust-to-Digital house. It could quite likely win them another this year. All three available online with a few clicks! None of these adventurous and unique books will have been seen by your friends, but ALL deserve your attention! All are well documented and reviewed online, with free preview pages, but seldom seen in stores. There is life in publishing still, but Barnes and Noble certainly do not carry them!

Uldine Mabelle Utley Signs and Wonders Child Evangelist Girl Preacher with God's Photographer at Work

Uldine Mabelle Utley, a "signs and wonders" child evangelist. She received a vision in 1921 at the age of 9 and the long-winded little girl commenced teaching. Her devotees wept, trembled and spoke in tongues. She preached at Madison Square Garden in 1925 to 14,000. At age 26 she married salesman Wilber Eugene Langkop, who promptly committed her to a mental institution and divorced her. From that point on, she was in and out of various institutions and hospitals until her death in 1995

Selected images from the Uldine Mabelle Utley House Organ and Newsletter "The Rose of Sharon" Bound volume, issues number 1 to number 12, 1925. Collection Jim Linderman

To SEE my blog of similar material, click OLD TIME RELIGION

Modern House Modern Garage Sundeck...Heaven? or TOYTOWN

A project for you and the kids this weekend. Click to Enlarge, print, color, cut, fold.

Assorted cards from Toytown Shredded Wheat Premiums, 1946 (set of 36, "Three in each box") Collection Jim Linderman

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

"Exhibit at Houghton Lake, Mich." (Real Estate Office) EKO Real Photo Postcard c. 1945 Collection Jim Linderman

Byrd, Ice Bird, Global Warming, Climate Change and the Chemical State of H20

It is "climate change" not "global warming." Every day I hear some misguided, misled and misinformed Fat Rush fan say "it's colder than ever...so much for global warming." First of all, Fat Rush is an ENTERTAINER, not a SCIENTIST... an increasingly dangerous one. Secondly, global warming means a change in weather patterns, not simply that it might get hot. Our weather is now the weather which used to be in Seattle, and I'm 2000 miles east of there. We've had a pounding "winter of a century" and a drenching "wet spring of a century" two years in a row, while California bakes and burns. The earth is a closed system. All that moisture changing from one physical and chemical state (ice) to another (rain) has to go somewhere. It seems to be going here. Admiral Byrd, shown as a penguin in an early child's game, traveled to the North Pole in 1926 and the South Pole in 1928. He wouldn't recognize either place today, and I think I know which way his political opinions would lean.

Admiral Byrd Game Card, c. 1940 Collection Jim Linderman

Woodstock, The Band, and the Anagram Photographer

Woodstock. It is curious to this day why the only band who actually both LIVED there and performed at the gig has to this day not had their set shown or released. Most folks don't even know The Band were there. At the same time plans were being made for the giant festival, The Band were living right down the road, practicing every day and in the woodshed with Dylan, another well-known, though reclusive resident I mentioned in an earlier post. Bob didn't make it, despite rumors he would. His backing band did...a full set of ten songs which have never been put on a compilation or added to endless reissues of "bonus" material on editions of the still essential film. In Levon's autobiography he claims it was because they forgot to turn Robbie's microphone off before the performance. (Personally, I like Robertson's voice, but he was no Levon Helm , Rick Danko or Richard Manuel) The set has been bootlegged, of course.

There is another angle to the story not told enough. While Dylan was healing up, drying out and raising a family nearby, very few pictures of him came out. Being fan, I was always glad to see the few that did, including a famous luminous shot of a 28 year old healthy gentleman Bob in pressed pegged pants leaning against an old car, surrounded by an aura of pink which ran on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. A few more trickled out, notably the striking, in fact now legendary photos of the boys in The Band. They were credited to one Elliott Landy. I always thought Landy, who happens to have a last name which is an anagram of Dylan...were one and the same. By that time, serious Dylan students were used to his attempts at preserving a life by hiding his under myth, I always just assumed he picked up a camera and took the shots himself. Whoever did certainly had Dylan's artistic skill (or extraordinary access)

Well, Elliott Landy is in fact a photographer, and a good one indeed. Many of his photos have become both iconic and emblematic of the era. The most comprehensive catalog of his work has just been released, shown here, and the photos are beautiful, colorful, crystal clear. Although of the time, they somehow manage to avoid the psychedelic claptrap of the period (something The Band did as well) The set? Not The Band's best, which is still to say better than almost everything else.

The woman above? Placed there by the photographer to make the boys smile, something they didn't do enough. It worked!

Elliott Landy's Website

The Next Best Blog...Fringepop

So when one of my heroes announced she was going to start a blog, I knew it would be good. It is. I approached Astrid a year ago for help with a book idea. I hope to get back to it one day, but what with harvest time approaching and my required four hour nap...who knows when. She was immediately helpful, forthcoming, charming, friendly, open...and in no time a very, very good friend from afar. She is also beautiful and a genius, her significant guy is buff and a genius, their art, photography and book collection is as extraordinary and unique as it is rare and unusual...and now having been carefully born it is being shared on their blog FRINGEPOP. Worse than all that, they are both frightfully young, well educated and perfectly positioned for the future. I hate them. But I love their blog, and you will too. I expect it to grow like kudzu on a steamy damp day and if you would like to get in from the get go...now would be the time. (The painting is by Mark Ryden, the juxtaposed images by Astrid)


Selected images from FRINGEPOP the blog.