Some stats ...formerly known as Louis Thomas Hardin …
- Born: 05/26/1916 (Marysville Kansas)
- Blinded: 07/04/1932 (farm accident, age 16)
- Died: 09/08/1999 (Munster, Germany) Heart Failure
Genres - Third stream, classical; experimental; minimal
Occupation(s): Poet, Inventor, Musician and Composer
Instruments: Vocals, keyboards and percussion
Years active: 1932–1999
Labels: SMC, Epic, Moondog, Prestige, Columbia, Kopf
Inspired by: Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Cowell, Erik Satie, Duke Ellington, Arturo Toscanini, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Moondog Influenced so many:
Janis Joplin: “All is Loneliness” covered by Janis Joplin One day, a band called Big Brother and the Holding Company, which featured a singer named Janis Joplin, showed up at Moondog Corner, and Hardin taught them the song "All Is Loneliness." They stood on the corner singing the song before a rapt audience, and then recorded it on their debut album in 1968. She "really murdered it," Hardin later said of Joplin.
Moondog version
2005 "All Is Loneliness" by Antony and the Johnsons
Motorpsycho (Live)
Alan Freed: ''Moondog Symphony'' was regularly played by Alan Freed, the pioneering rock-and-roll disk jockey. “ ... from the Washington Post Obituary for Hardin in 1999 … When Alan Freed, the pioneering rock-and-roll disc jockey, moved his radio program to New York from Cleveland, he used one of Mr. Hardin's recordings, "Moondog Symphony," as his theme music and called his program "The Moondog Show." ... Mr. Hardin successfully sued over the use of the name. So the disc jockey changed the name of his program to "Alan Freed's Rock 'n' Roll Show." Freed is generally thought of as the originator of the term "rock 'n' roll."
He played with Charles Mingus and Moondog lived with Philip Glass for a short time.
Insect Trust with Robert Palmer … Be a Hobo
Moondog version of Be A Hobo
Mr. Scruff Bird’s Lament
Moondog the Inventor
An inventor of several musical instruments, he notes, because he works with more tonal (or traditional or melodic, if you want) structures for his work, Hardin applied the same non-conformist philosophy to his music; striving for new, unique ways to do things, he began to construct his own instruments with the help of a local cabinet-maker. These included the “uni,” a seven-stringed zither; the “utsu,” a rudimentary type of keyboard tuned to the pentatonic scale (the same intervals of the black keys on a piano); the “tjui,” a series of nine tuned wooden pegs, and the “oo,” a triangular 25-stringed harp, which he favored most passionately.
Trimba- percussion instrument (still played by Stefan Lakatos, friend and Swedish percussionist)
Moondog for Gamelan with Iwan Gunawan and Stefan Lakatos – Unsound Festival 2017
Moondog — Suite no. 1 — performed by Calefax Reed Quintet & Stefan Lakatos
Stefan Lakatos, Trimbasolo in 7/4
Trimba in Quarters
Oo – small triangular shaped harp
Oo Debut – Moondog
OO Solo
Sextet (OO)
Ooo-ya-tsu
Hus – triangle shaped string instrument played with a bow
There is so much more to say about Moondog, that I have decided to break this piece into 3 parts ...
Part One - Inspiration and Inventor - Published 9/29/2018
Part Two - The Early Years (coming soon)
Part Three - The Latter Years (coming soon)
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