Moondog’s Alive and Back on U.S. Scene

He was called Moondog.

And, in the ‘50s and ‘60s in New York City, he was frequently seen on Sixth Avenue--the street known only to tourists as Avenue of the Americas. Tall and imposing-looking, bearded, garbed in a hand-made leather poncho and pants, wearing a horned Viking helmet, he usually stood somewhere between 51st and 56th streets, sometimes playing hand-made percussion instruments and a small portable organ.

Columnist Walter Winchell was the first to write about him, but he soon became a Manhattan legend. Marlon Brando befriended him shortly after completing “The Wild One.” He was photographed by Diane Arbus, who would occasionally meet him at a cafeteria near Carnegie Hall. He performed in concert with Tiny Tim and Lenny Bruce, and appeared in Conrad Brooks’ impressionist film “Chappaqua” with William Burroughs and Allen Ginsburg.

Moondog recorded with Julie Andrews and Martyn Green in 1957, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin covered his “All Is Loneliness” in their 1968 debut album. His drum patterns have been sampled on albums by Stereolab and Moonshake, and most musically aware New Yorkers in the ‘60s could recite his best-known couplet, “Be a hobo and go with me, to Hoboken by the sea.”

And now, amazingly, Moondog is back.

This month, Atlantic Records released “Sax Pax for a Sax,” the first American album of his music in more than 25 years. Recorded by a large saxophone ensemble, it is a charming blend of music, filled with Moondog’s repetitious canons and his deceptively simple, but attractive melodies.

First released on a small European label in 1994, it was heard in France by Yves Beauvais, Atlantic Records’ vice president of A & R, special projects, who immediately decided to license it for U.S. release. “What completely sold me on this was the sheer beauty of the music,” Beauvais says, “a perfect combination of classical writing with elements of jazz and blues.”

It’s easy to hear why composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich were also attracted to and influenced by Moondog’s compositions, and why performers as diverse as Joplin, Tom Waits, John Zorn and Elvis Costello have called him a major influence.

“When I first heard Moondog on record in the ‘60s,” Costello says, “I thought his music was a product of those days. Little did I know that it was just one of the occasions in which the world has discovered Moondog. Recently, I was talking with my 22-year-old son, Matt . . . who said, ‘Do you know this album?,’ and out of his bag produced a Moondog record from the ‘50s. I have no doubt that in 40 years or more, a father and a son somewhere will be having the same conversation about a Moondog record.”

Long gone from the New York scene, assumed dead by many, the 81-year-old Moondog--whose real name is Louis Hardin--has been living in Recklinghausen, Germany, since 1974, composing, recording and occasionally performing in concerts throughout Europe.

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Despite his legendary history and remarkable appearance, Hardin is a genial, soft-spoken, articulate man whose primary goal, since the beginning, has simply been to compose music in the contrapuntal style he loves so well.

“Why did I choose to adopt that costume and stand out on Sixth Avenue?” he says in a phone conversation from Recklinghausen. “Because it was a way to make a living, and also a way to reach the public. Then, after Winchell mentioned me in his column, I began to get offers to do some single records--78s in the beginning. But I continued to stay out on Sixth Avenue because it worked so well for me.”

Blinded at the age of 17 when a dynamite cap accidentally blew up in his face, Hardin carefully prepared his public, Moondog persona.

“I told people I was born in Sasnak,” he says with a chuckle. “And when they asked where that was, I said it was a very mysterious place. I left it for them to figure out that it was really just Kansas, spelled in reverse.”

The colorful outfit he wore was assembled by hand.

“I’d been experimenting with making clothes out of square pieces of leather,” he says. “I got the inspiration from the Indians and their ponchos. But I heard that soldiers in ancient England also had a square garment with a hole in it for the head to go through, so the poncho is very old. And from that I made my pants and stuff.

“But then people began to describe me as some kind of monk, and I got tired of that, so I started wearing a helmet with horns.”

But the final piece in the persona was the name.

“Ah, yes, Moondog,” Hardin continues. “It’s a pen name, of course. And this is the 50th anniversary of my assuming it. In 1947, I was sitting in my garret in New York, remembering the pet dog I used to have in Missouri. We used to howl at the moon a lot together, so I put those names together.

“I thought I was being original, but later I found out that it’s an Eskimo term, too. They have a Sundog, which is a rainbow over the sun, and a Moondog, which is a rainbow over the moon. There’s also a Moondog in Norse sagas that refers to the tail of a comet, as well as to a giant. So it’s a very old name. There’s even a whiskey in Kentucky called Moondog.”

Hardin’s real agenda of studying and composing music continued. In his Sixth Avenue Moondog vigils, he sang, drummed, recited his couplet-driven poetry and picked up whatever change he could to sustain himself. But in his off hours, he composed larger works--often based upon the form of the canon (or round)--and frequented rehearsals of the New York Philharmonic.

“The day after I first came to New York, in 1943,” he says, “I got some front row center tickets to a Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall, sitting right behind the conductor. What I didn’t know at the time was that I was hearing Leonard Bernstein making his debut as a fill-in.”

Hardin began to frequent the stage door, where he was seen and recognized by some of the musicians, and invited to attend all of the Philharmonic’s rehearsals.

“It was fantastic,” he says, “that I just happened to be at the right place at the right time. And attending those rehearsals was part of my basic music education. I learned a lot about orchestration sitting there, listening to the way they took the music apart and put it back together.”

But Hardin may have been too successful with Moondog. Although he received plenty of attention, he never quite managed to get into what he describes as his “heavy composing” until he moved to Germany. (“I’m of German and English descent,” he says, “and I wanted to come to Europe because so many historical events happened here. It’s home for me now.”)

Ten albums of his compositions have been released in Europe since 1977, and his collected works now include 300 canons in the form of madrigals, more than 100 keyboard works and a self-published, four-volume “Art of the Canon.”

“And I’m continuing to work on a symphony,” Hardin says, “which I call ‘The Overtone Tree.’ It’s about a thousand bars long. There are so many canons in it that it has to have four conductors--one to be the general overlooker, and three sub-conductors to handle their own individual scores, all working together.”

Determinedly tonal in an era still tinged with dissonance, Hardin insists upon continuing to follow his own Moondog path.

“I guess I’m considered old hat because I stick to tonality, counterpoint, melody and the traditional principles of music,” he says. “But I hear that tonality is slowly and timorously raising its head again, and I still think that 99% of the people in the world still like tonal music.

“They used to call the cacophonic avant-gardists rebels back in the early part of the century. So maybe I’m a rebel against the rebels.”