Music
The eccentric musician, dressed like a Viking and playing songs on the streets of New York, is being celebrated on a new album by the likes of Rufus Wainwright and Jarvis Cocker
Tuesday 26 September 2023, 4.24pm BST
Most tourists who come to New York City for the first time check out landmarks like the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and Central Park. But between the early 1960s and 1972, adventurous visitors had a different agenda. “Certain people flying into the city back then would jump into a taxi and tell the driver, ‘Take me to Moondog!'” said Robert Scotto, author of a book about the eccentric musician and composer who bore that luminous name. “The driver took them straight to 6th Avenue and 53rd Street because everyone knew he was there.”
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Surely no one passing by this busy part of the city at that time could have missed him. Dressed like a fantasy Viking, complete with a two-horned headdress, a somber black tunic, an eight-foot spear, and a long white beard, Moondog had an imposing presence to say the least. The fact that he was blind only increased the intensity of his appearance, a fact he did not want to hide behind dark glasses. From his trusty post, Moondog pulled out of his pockets lots of poems, sheet music, 78rpm recordings and pamphlets that he had written to sell to curious passers-by. Some people thought he was a freak or a tramp. (He was actually homeless for several short periods.) Others saw him as the ultimate counterculture figure, while some major musicians viewed him as a visionary, including jazz greats Benny Goodman and Charlie Parker, as well as classical artists from Arturo Toscanini to Leonard Bernstein. Janis Joplin covered his existential composition All Is Loneliness on her first album with Big Brother and the Holding Company, and pop acts from T-Rex to Prefab Sprout referenced him in their lyrics. Moondog was written about in many local and national newspapers, and he had released two albums in 1969 and 1971 with Columbia Records, then headquartered on the same block where he haunted.
These days, it’s mostly musicians and fans of mystery who have any knowledge of Moondog at all – an oversight that inspired the creation of a new tribute album, Songs and Symphoniques: The Music of Moondog, to reinforce his legacy. The project was created by the Brooklyn-based jazz chamber ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra in collaboration with the Kronos Quartet and also features vocal performances from stars such as Rufus Wainwright, Jarvis Cocker and Joan as a police officer. “Over the years, I’ve become something of an evangelist for Moondog,” said Brian Carpenter, leader of the Ghost Train Orchestra. “I want more people to know the joy and wonder of his music. And luckily there is so much of it.”
Moondog in 1972. Photo: CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images
In fact, when Moondog died in 1999 at the age of 83, he left behind an archive full of hundreds of compositions, many of which have not yet been transcribed or recorded. The range of material in this archive in Münster, Germany, is broad and diverse enough to cover many types of music. “I always say that Moondog was a composer’s composer,” Carpenter said. “He wrote for string ensembles, percussion ensembles, solo drummers, choirs, reeds and brass, but he also wrote pop songs with lyrics and jazz pieces. His work seems endless.”
To capture the dizzying and unusual variety of sounds in his head, Moondog created his own instruments, in the style of another inventive American composer, Harry Partch. “As time went on, his instruments became more sophisticated,” Scotto said. “You would look at it and say, ‘How do you play this?’ And he was very selective about how they were built. It had to be made of a certain type of wood and the basin had to be made of a certain type of metal.”
His most famous invention was a triangular striking device called a “Trimba”. “You could create a tremendous number of percussion sounds from it by hitting different parts of the wood block,” Carpenter said.
There was also a triangular harp he called “oo,” a stringed instrument called “hüs,” and more. Moondog also made its own clothing items, many of which were based on Norse myth. It’s all a logical byproduct of a life based almost entirely on self-invention. The man who would become Moondog was born Louis Hardin in 1916 in Marysville, Kansas, into a religious family. His father, an Episcopal minister, moved the family to Wyoming when the boy was young, and it was there that he discovered his first major musical influence, which came from Native American culture. His aha moment occurred when his father took him to an Arapaho Sun Dance, where he met Chief Yellow Calf, who showed him how to play a tom-tom made of buffalo skin. A lifelong fascination with rhythm emerged. However, at the age of 16, his life changed radically when he came across an object while playing that he didn’t know was a dynamite cap. The device exploded in his face, blinding him. “Moondog later told me that he felt like he couldn’t breathe for almost a year after that,” Scotto said. “The life had gone out of him.”
His sister was instrumental in mobilizing his spirits by reading him philosophical and mythological works that helped shape the character he would later become. While attending the Iowa School for the Blind, he learned music, which he began composing in Braille. In 1943 he brought this knowledge to New York, where shortly after his arrival he adopted the name Moondog for a dog he knew that howled at the moon. He had not yet developed his Viking persona when he began his career recording his own compositions for small labels, some of which proved impressive enough to attract the attention of Artur Rodzinski, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, who invited him to perform with them.
To capture the dizzying and unusual variety of sounds in his head, Moondog created his own instruments. Photo: Dan Grossi
He also had a strange connection to the formative days of rock and roll. Pioneering DJ Alan Freed called his show “The Moondog Rock and Roll Matinee” and used the composer’s piece “Moondog Symphony” as the uncredited theme song. Moondog sued and won, preventing Freed from using the music or his name. At the time, Moondog was handsome, tall, and gaunt, earning him the nickname “the man with the face of Christ,” a nickname that enraged him as he desperately wanted to rebel against the religion he was raised with. “Norse mythology was the exact opposite of what he saw as a facade of Christianity and the Greco-Roman tradition,” Scotto said. “But he wasn’t drawn to it just as a rebel. He also saw it as a great source of metaphor, poetry and ultimately musical adaptation.”
Additionally, he recognized that the Vikings’ getup was “a great boost,” Scotto said. “He knew it would get him attention and he definitely had a sense of humor.”
He chose to stage his performance on 6th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan because there were so many jazz clubs and record labels in the area at the time. The occupation of this location made it so well known that in the 1960s an ad for the nearby clothing company Burlington Mills said, “Come join us – right next to the Hilton Hotel and Moondog!”
Although Moondog usually made just enough money selling his creations to keep a roof over his head – and his life eventually proved stable enough for him to marry several times and father a child – he sometimes lived on the streets. In the early ’60s, his situation inspired the Village Voice to write an article asking, “Where are Moondog’s friends?” Scotto recalled. “Someone should take him in.”
That someone turned out to be composer Philip Glass, who let him live on his couch for a year. In return he received important musical training. “Philip Glass told me he learned more at Moondog than at Juilliard,” Scotto said.
There is a clear correlation between Moondog’s compositional process and Glass’s trademark minimalism. “Glass’s music is very sparse and has a tremendous amount of repetition, which was the case with Moondog all the time,” Scotto said. “As a blind man, he could only write down a certain amount of information at a given time. He used a large index card and got a complete piece right on top of it, which is why he often wrote rounds, canons and madrigals.”
Rufus Wainwright, who recorded Moondog’s Be a Hobo for the tribute album Songs and Symphoniques. Photo: Miranda Penn Turin
The new tribute album explores the full range of Moondog’s music, from madrigals to symphonic pieces to songs like All Is Loneliness. According to Janis Joplin biographer Holly George-Warren, Loneliness came to Joplin through Big Brother guitarist James Gurley, who was a Moondog fan. Nevertheless, Scotto said the composer was disappointed with their version because “the song was written in 5/4 time and they did it in 4/4 time.” The version solemnly sung by Petra Haden is featured on the tribute album restore the original time signature.
Many other interpretations of the album take liberties with the original recordings. Sam Amidon’s version of “Behold” transforms it from a madrigal into an Americana-folk ballad, while the cover of “Down Is Up” highlights its proto-psychedelic chords. (The piece was written in the 1950s.) Other songs reflect Moondog’s sense of whimsy, including “Enough About Human Rights,” whose lyrics playfully ask, “What about goat rights?” and “What about lark rights?” Rufus Wainwright opens the album with a mantra: Be a Hobo. “It’s a song about letting go of our power so we can just be human,” said Wainwright, who also recorded Moondog’s song High on a Rocky Ledge for his latest album Folkocracy. “When I first heard Moondog it was a mystical event,” said the singer. “At first you are seduced by the simplicity of his music, but then you hear an underlying sophistication that is the hallmark of Genie.”
The tribute album also honors Moondog’s love of street sounds by incorporating car horns and pedestrian chatter into the music, as he did. “He loved the natural world around him in a way that a blind person responds to it – through its sounds, not its sights,” Scotto said.
Despite its roots in the outside world, Moondog’s music also has an otherworldly atmosphere that is further enhanced by its visual presentation. “Like Sun Ra, Moondog created a cult of personality and an entire mythology around him,” Carpenter said. “His music also has a cinematic atmosphere, like the score to a film that no one has made.”
The Ghost Train Orchestra and Kronos Quartet’s efforts to spread Moondog’s message will not end with this album. They are planning a follow-up set and tribute show at Carnegie Hall in November. Moondog’s compelling backstory always helps spread the message, but Scotto says his core lies elsewhere. “Listen to the music,” he said. “You’ll meet the man there.”
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