Juvenile Gospel Singers with Hair Grease

Juvenile Gospel Singers with Hair Grease is a post on the Old Time Religion site as well.  

The young Brown boys gussied up for performance with pomade!  
Real Photo Postcard (no date) 
Collection Jim Linderman

Articulated Figure Graphic Design Postcard from the USPS (Chicago Branch)

Articulated Figure Graphic Design Postcard from the USPS (Chicago Branch)

No Date Collection Jim Linderman
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The Forgotten and Deserving Coen Brothers film Catherine Zeta Jones Files for Divorce

Film predicts reality, as Catherine Zeta Jones has apparently decided to divorce Michael Douglas.  I have no idea why, and it is none of my business…but what poses as "news" today brought it to my attention.  Which is why I watched the most underrated Coen Brothers movie ever,  Intolerable Cruelty.    How well does she play the uber-litigious spurned spouse?  You'll see if you take my advice.

Personally, and I'll go right out and say it...she reminds me of the first woman Bruce Springsteen married.  Remember her name?  Nope.  An actress.  Again, I have no idea of the irreconcilable differences between Catherine and Liberace...but I hope they can work it out. 

Lost at the time, as it appeared to be yet another cruddy romantic comedy…guess what folks?  It's a COEN BROTHERS MOVIE and it is great.  A gift.  It's like being given a present you couldn't even imagine..   FULL of Coen brothers odd film angles, weird perspectives, outrageous characters… and every bit as funny as the Dude's dream.

By the way...Inside Llewyn Davis isn't the first film making use of a folksinger by the brothers.  Let's just say Paul Simon songs appears on the soundtrack. Often.  Repeatedly.  Hilariously. 

Watch it while you wait for Inside Llewyn Davis.

You'll thank me.

Antique Folk Art African-American Puppet Doll Head Sculpture

Antique Folk Art African-American Puppet Doll Head Sculpture  Collection Jim Linderman

Asphalt Bootjack

Asphalt Bootjack No Date

Collection Jim Linderman

Antique Folk Art Painted Barn Door Star Original Paint collection Jim Linderman

Antique Folk Art Painted Barn Door Star Original Paint and wooden latch.  
Collection Jim Linderman

Buck Barry Singing Cowboy of WOOD TV

Buck Barry Singing Cowboy of WOOD TV
Every town with a television station had their own local celebrities, and they still do.  The local weatherman is still recognized when he goes to the mall, and local broadcasters still make their appearances at local food festivals and such.  My local celeb as a boy was Buck Barry. Check out the primitive "cowboy style double B brand" signature!

I've found two pieces of Buck Barry detritus since moving back to Michigan and each brought a smile, as I was on Buck's afternoon show along with the other members of my cub scout troop.  How my (Den) mother arranged for it is a mystery now, but it was just one of the things she did while raising me which I have learned to appreciate.  No, I did not "buck up" in cowboy drag like the little buckaroos here…I wore my cub scout uniform, and remember being terrified to lead the pledge of allegiance at the start of the show.

I was prepared to slam Buck with my typical hip irony, but it  turns out Mr. Barry the buckaroo had quite a career before settling in as the afternoon three stooges host.  (He introduced a segment every day, and made sure we understood their gags were not to be done at home.) 

Buck Joseph Barry was a singing cowboy with Gene Autry Credentials.  He was born in 1917 and rode with the Col. Tim McCoy Wild West Show starting in 1938.  He landed a radio gig on WOOD radio which eventually led to his afternoon television show.  He often yodeled on the show and played a sunburst Gibson while doing it.  He recorded one 45 rpm with The Countrymen and gave a lesson on the flip side.

There were two horses named Thunder (who also appeared with Buck at events.)  One was lost in a fire, but everyone pitched in and bought Buck Thunder two.  Both are shown in my "Thunder career-spanning" ephemera collection! 

The Cowboy revival band "Riders in the Sky" have a special relationship with Buck's memory…Fred "Too Slim" LaBour who plays bass in for the band is a Grand Rapids native and credits Buck with their yodeling.

The Buckaroo Rodeo ran for nearly 15 years on WOOD-TV out of Grand Rapids.

The Grand Rapids Public Museum, who mounted a Buck Berry exhibit in 1997, provides the studio set photograph above.  More information on Buck is HERE and his wiki is HERE

Buck is buried in Texas.

Official Buck Barry postcard swag collection LIttle Jimmy Linderman

Big Head Man with No Torso Folk Art Sculpture

Big Head Man with No Torso Folk Art Sculpture now living on my shelf.  Photos (and carving) courtesy Rick Ege Antiques.  Rick has a good eye and a great selection of objects d'curious!  Visit his site HERE

Antique American Indian Folk Art Puppet circa 1890 in Buckskin and Beads collection Jim Linderman

Antique American Indian Folk Art Puppet circa 1890 in Buckskin and Beads.  A fully articulated 24" tall handmade puppet with hide buckskin clothing, beads and Victorian cloth highlights. Original paint on face and feathers.  Found in Central Michigan.  More properly called a marionette, as the figure moves on strings attached to a wooden X control bar.  The oldest and most interesting folk art puppet I have found, but the technique certainly goes back centuries earlier.

Collection Jim Linderman

BOOKS AND ebooks by Jim Linderman are available for preview or purchase HERE

Folk Art Handmade Cheshire Cat Mask with a Red Felt Grin

Vintage 1950 Handmade Paper Mache Cheshire Cat Grins. 
Collection Jim Linderman
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Veteran News Photographer Kent Murdock in the Very First Graphic Novel Illustrations by Robert Stanley

Veteran News Photographer Kent Murdock stars in the very first graphic novel, published by Dell in 1950, as part of an intended mini-line of digest sized comic books.  "Told in pictures" and it is.  Not too many others were published, and the experiment failed.  Consequently, the book is rare today and a $100 dollar item, but it was reprinted in full by Pure Imagination a few years ago.  Look for the original.   I found mine for three bucks at an antique mall.

Striking illustrations by Robert Stanley, who also did many of the covers for Dell's much-loved Mapback series, and the book was also published as one.

Kent Murdock was a fictional crime photographer from the early Weegee era.  In the film "Murder with Pictures" you can see him portrayed by square jaw low-talker Lew Ayres. The flick is on Youtube in full but the book is better.

George Harmon Coxe created the character, and Kent Murdock was not his only crime shutterbug.  He also created crime photographer Jack Casey.   (AKA "Flashgun Casey")

Kent used his fists more than his camera, but he is always in the darkroom.  The graphic novel is great, but the movie is the kind I haven't been able to sit through since college, when pot made any movie watchable.
 
Hardboiled, but soft back.

Four Frightened Woman by George Harmon Coxe (A Kent Murdoch Murder Mystery) illustrated by Robert Stanley 1950 Dell  "Told in Pictures" book.

Books and ebooks by Jim Linderman are available HERE

Young Detroit American Commercial Photo Company Photographs collection Jim Linderman

A set of original 8 x 10 photographs taken by the American Commercial Photo Company of Detroit circa 1910-1930.  All come from a scrapbook (with several other images) found in central Michigan, and while unidentified for location, each is stamped by the photo company which was active in Detroit.  Unless it was a location assignment, these would show Detroit as a growing city before World War Two, when commerce worked and money was plentiful.
 
Other early photographs of Detroit by ACPD are HERE. 

Photographs of Early Detroit (?)  Circa 1910 - 1930 collection Jim Linderman

Books and Ebooks by Jim Linderman available HERE.

Vintage Wire Funeral Topiary Cross

Vintage Wire Funeral Topiary Cross 
BOOKS AND $5.99 EBOOKS BY JIM LINDERMAN HERE

Boat Builders! Chris-Craft Women Employees of World War Two

Chris-Craft Rosie Riveters!  A lovely photograph of what is likely World War Two workers at the Employee Parking Lot of the Chris-Craft Boat Manufacturing Company.  Snapshot Splendor.  Chris-Craft factories were in Algonac, Holland and Cadillac Michigan and the company contributed to the war effort by building, among other products,  landing craft out of plywood.  After the war, they resumed manufacturing of the now prized boats like the one pictured in the ad below.    Collection Jim Linderman

Potmetal Gas Tank Train Car Toy Collection Jim Linderman

Potmetal Toy Train Car no date Collection Jim Linderman

Dickeyville Grotto Folk Art Environment

Father Wernerus built his gigantic ramshackle bedazzler to show other Americans that Catholic Americans loved the President as much as the Pope.  His Grotto full of patriotic baubles was a tribute to both.  Welcome to the Dickeyville Grotto.  Constructed 1929 image from a Real Photo postcard mailed 1945.
Collection Jim Linderman

Anonymous by Anonymous Folk Art Portrait Painting collection Jim Linderman

Anonymous by Anonymous No Date Collection Jim Linderman

Unidentied Lawman Reenacts His Hay Stack Capture Collection Jim Linderman

"He was hiding RIGHT IN THERE!"  

Snapshot circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

Cellluloid Season Opener from Japan Football Frenzy and Frito-Lay

It's a fall football feeding frenzy from Frito-Lay.  Not long ago, a strategist for Frito-Lay said what we have known for a long time, but few consumer product companies have dared to say.  In an article discussing the snack market, a Frito-Lay exec announced they would be developing snack product in two categories:  for the rich and for the rest of us.  “The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer,” said Ann Mukherjee, chief marketing officer at Frito-Lay North America.  So henceforth, they will be aiming their empty calories at the "value" customer while continuing to create unhealthy crud for the long gone middle-class.

For the record "books" Frito-Lay, one company which is owned by Pepsi, has 40% of the snack food market in the United States, and 30% in the rest of the world.  ONE COMPANY.  Do you have ANY idea how many effing Cheetos ® that is?   Enjoy the game!  

Celluloid Football Player Doll from Occupied Japan, circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

  

JAZZ Performance through the Porthole

Jazz!  Umm...Teacher watching students?

Original Photograph circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman