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Chapter Three: Snaketime (1943-1953)
The disappointment and frustration, however,
did not carry over to the rest of the trip, and until
September of 1949, when he finally wended his way back to New
York, most of his adventures were benign and enriching. One
sad moment occured in Sante Fe, though he couldn't know it at
the time, when he talked to sister Ruth on the phone: it was
the last time he would ever hear her voice or, indeed, hear
of her or about her. She simply disappeared. He did see
Leonard Bernstein, who remarked wittily that he had a date in
Israel and Sante Fe was on the way, and he did meet a young
lady with whom he briefly fell in love. Jeannie was "the girl
with the velvet voice," as he celebrated her in song, who
"may be a hermit" but who made his heart "sing/ like a hermit
thrush in spring." Memories were evoked when he touched the
desk Irving Wallace had written Ben Hur upon: the first movie
he had ever seen was based on this novel, almost thirty years
earlier, in Wyoming.
On he went: in Salt Lake City a policeman helped him
make his last pair of square drums out of pine scraps and
leather oddments from a company that made artificial legs. In
Los Angeles he wrote words for the tune he had composed in
1947 called "Moondog," about that dog howling at the moon,
and a dance step, called "L'Americana," to accompany the
piece in five-four time. Even before he recorded it several
years later, therefore, "Snaketime" went public: when a
"ballerina" first heard the slippery, pulsing 5 or 7 beats to
a measure, she had called it "snakey." It stuck. The dance,
he advised those who interviewed him, would end the tyranny
of "backward dancing by women" and "replace the waltz in
popularity." Thus, in one newspaper, he is quoted:
"No cheek to cheek will do," he declared.
Although he created animated responses to his new wares, no
new dance sensation erupted unto the scene due to his
efforts.
He did meet and impress Duke Elligton while in Los
Angeles, however, a significant achievement indeed. The
Million Dollar Theatre held an amateur contest which Moondog
tried out for and won, playing "a little waltz-like piece in
the Chopin style." The Ellington Band was playing the theatre
at the same time and the great jazz figure asked to meet the
winner backstage. Not only did Moondog meet the Duke, but
also Al Hibler, the blind singer, soon to record several big
hits. All of his new friends never failed to look him up
whenever they came east.
Wherever he went he attracted crowds, so it was always
with a little trepidation that he entered a strange, new
place.
In traveling around the country like I did, sort
Despite some resistance, he encountered very little
difficulty and no harrassment. One community in California,
Willow Springs, did send out a cop to ask him to leave, and
Moondog was very fond of the argument: "You're too rich for
our blood." More often than not he met marvellous people who
treated him to unexpected bounties: Dolores House in Taft,
for instance, invited him to her desert home for a few days,
and there he went for walks "into the desert evenings,
barefoot on the sand." There were others, nearly all female,
who entertained him in a string of towns and cities in the
west.
Up north to Portland, Oregon he went, via Eugene,
"selling his sheet music as he goes from city to city," and
impressing the residents as "that man in square clothes." "My
earrings, shoes and even my tent are made out of squares. I
make all these things myself." Moreover, he announces, "I do
not dress differently to get noticed. I get noticed because I
dress differently." Casuistry aside, Moondog picked up his
pace. Though he rarely hitchhiked, he did arrive at Idaho
Falls, as he puts it in one of his madrigals, by "rule of
thumb" rather than by bus. There he picked up a tanned elk-
skin which he had sent to a taxidermist: it would be his new
cape. On to Cheyenne and points east. In Rochester, New York,
he purchased maracas and clavas to replace the wooden
sticks with knobs at the end which he had used for over a
year. By September, 1949, he was back in New York City.
If his jaunt cross-country had proved anything to him,
it was that he was "determined to make a noise" upon his
return: he would "waylay them in doorways"; he would "make
things happen" on the streets. Since the traditional routes
to success, through offices and auditions, hadn't seemed to
work, a new offensive, bolder and fresher, was needed. Thus
"snaketime" came alive on the streets of New York, Moondog's
"exotic rhythms" translated by the performer's commensurate
skills. "Mr. Rhythm" would be one of his sobriquets, the
"off-beat" percussionist who not only created "odd" ditties
in 5's and 7's (and who knows what else), but who also
fashioned new instruments to lend them greater distinction,
thereby, not by accident, attracting even further attention.
First came triangular drums (later called "trimbas") because
they held their shape better and longer, then wilder
percussive mutants with names like "oo" and "uni" and "utsu."
Also, for the first time in his life, Moondog began to live
on the streets and make his living through the lawful
occupation of begging. It was a full-time commitment to a
statement of purpose, an artistic life-style, for which he
would become, for over two decades, an avatar.
Life was hard, but stimulating. With no place to stay,
and little money to splurge on living quarters, he arranged
to rent the use of an old panel truck parked alongside some
other wrecks near the Polo Grounds in the Bronx from a
garageman for fifty cents a night. He would go regularly to
the 51st Street Greyhound bus terminal, check his baggage in
a locker, and spend twenty-five cents on a shower. At night,
he would play snaketime in the doorways. The first time he
dared perform was on 32nd Street west of 8th Avenue, in front
of a bank, but an official soon came out and dispersed the
early evening crowd. Then he moved uptown, into the fifties,
and worked at night, before larger and more appreciative
audiences. One evening he "trommelt" in a doorway on the west
side of Sixth Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets, when the
owner came out to discuss the intrusion but wound up,
instead, asking Moondog if he would like the make a record
at his facility. The man was Gabriel Oller, proprietor of the
Spanish Music Center, who became in short order patron,
partner and friend, with the help of his wife, Inez. Since
money was a severe problem -- Moondog only earned about five
dollars a day on the streets and he now had to pay to get his
music copied -- he accepted the opportunity of sleeping on
the basement floor during the day because he was now free to
record and perform at night. Within months, over the winter
of 1949-50, four 78's were produced, all of them later re-
mastered and re-recorded on the albums Moondog made in the
mid to late fifties: "Snaketime Rhythms" (SMC 2523), side A 5
beat, side B 7 beat; "Moondog Symphony" (SMC 2526), side A
"Timberwolf," side B "Sagebrush"; "Organ Rounds," 1 and 2
(SMC 2527); and "Oboe Rounds," "Chant," "All Is Loneliness,"
and "Wildwood" (SMC 2528). Through complex over-dubbing,
Moondog played, on separate tracks, all of the featured
instruments plus drums, hollow logs, cymbals, trimbas,
moroccas and, of course, he performed the vocals. In one
newspaper interview he stated that he was "studying every
instrument in the orchestra" in order to "record a whole
symphony by himself" -- something he came close to doing,
though modestly, with "Theme" a few years later. By 1950 he
was composing rounds and madrigals with such regularity that
it took on the fervor of commitment, and in truth he would
write them for the remainder of his career. In the program
notes of his 50's and 60's albums, and especially the lavish
"Around the World of Sound" in 1971, he would expound his
theory of composition which he recognized the pressures of
reality had dictated: a great deal of music in a minumum of
space. "All Is Loneliness" is his first and most famous,
written on 51st Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, a
melancholy, dirge-like tune in 5/4, like many of his earliest
lyrics, as he told one reporter, "quite bitter." |