Topic: Billiken Johnson

[dj]

Thanks, Frankie!

[uncle bud]

google yielded this in 0.29 seconds:

Horsman Company Dolls

Billiken could clearly give Chucky a run for his money in the doll most likely to come to life and kill you department.

[Johnm]

Agreed, uncle bud.  That is one muy ugly and scary doll.
All best,
Johnm

[frankie]

the temptation to romanticize the past is so strong...  until you see stuff like that!  imagine all our grandparents, snuggling up with their cute little Billikens at night...  it's amazing we're here at all, under the circumstances.

[jostber]

It's also amazing how they came up with this concept of a doll that looks like a cross between a monkey, duck and a smiling kid.

[Stuart]

http://digital.library.msstate.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/SheetMusic&CISOPTR=23926&filename=23927.pdf


It's a PDF file that takes a few moments to load.

(sheet music of "The Billiken Rag)

[don o]

Anyone think of other vocal effects on country blues recordings? 

Whistlin' Alex Moore was a contemporary of Billiken in Dallas and continued to whistle along with his piano playing until his death in the 80's.  Here's a video:

[hortig78rpm]

hello

during my long research on texas blues piano, I could`nt find any trace of johnson.
same for bill day ( have a look on my two part texas blues piano article in "Blues & Rhythm")
but johnson is not the only one, have an ear to bert mays ( wild oax moan on "midnight rambler blues I think), and he`s imitating a "thunder" in smashing into the pianostrings..

regards
mike

[Stumblin]

Maybe it would be interesting to do a "Write a Billiken Blues" challenge & invite MP3 entries to some server somewhere etc...
I'm just thinking out loud right now, but...

[dj]

It turns out that Billiken Johnson wasn't so much a one off as one of the last of a kind.  The earliest and perhaps the biggest African American recording star of the first decade of commercial recording was George W. Johnson (no known relation to Biliiken).  While George W. Johnson sang on record, his specialties were laughing to music (The Laughing Coon, The Laughing Song, Carving The Duck, The Merry Mailman) and whistling (The Whistling Coon, Listen To The Mocking Bird, The Whistling Girl), with some sound effects thrown in.  Johnson first recorded in 1891 and was still visiting the recording studio 15 years later.  Apparently minstrel shows and early vaudeville regularly featured such acts.

[TonyGilroy]

and they wonder why vaudeville died.

[uncle bud]

On Freeman Stowers' "Sunrise On the Farm", Stowers does a wide range of noises, including chickens, cats, dogs, cows, mules and other critters. There is no actual music, it's just vocal effects, with some done through the harmonica I believe. Then his "Texas Wild Cat Chase" (the flip side?) is also entirely effects. Mostly dog noises. His Railroad Blues includes imitations of his sugar babe, who is leaving him (somewhat understandably), and trains.

These strange records are on Document's Sinners and Saints.

Here's Sunrise for educational purposes.

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