Moondog
Biography
A mostly self-taught composer, Louis Hardin was born in Marysville, Kansas on May 26, 1916. The family eventually moved to Wyoming, where his father, who had been an Episcopalian minister, opened a trading post at Fort Bridger, and had two different ranches. Young Louis went to school in a log cabin in Burnt Fork, Wyoming, and fished, hunted and trapped. Later, he rode a horse to school in Long Tree, a cattle community. He wrote that his first drum set " ..at the age of five, was a cardboard box". He also went with his father to an Arapho Sun Dance, where he sat on Chief Yellow Calf's lap and played the buffalo skin tomtom. Later, in 1949, he played tomtom and flute at a Sun Dance held by the Blackfoot in Idaho. The constant "tomtom" beat became incorporated in many of his later pieces, such as the complex canon for marimbas "Wind River Powwow: arapa-host, arapa-home, arapa-hope". He played drums in Hurley High School in 1929, and there he lost his sight in his early teens when a dynamite cap exploded. He studied music and finished high school at the Iowa School for the Blind, and in 1933 studied braille at the Missouri School for the Blind in St. Louis. "I write all my music in braille.
Selected Discography
Oh my, what a treasure. May he see all he wants and needs now. I only wish I could have heard him live, an oft repeated phrase that should give us all a nudge toward buying the tickets and GOING. Time is short here, and the music is definitely worth it (given discretion), Moondog,,,ea s y to remember. I am the Viking of Harborlight. . . Its all about the water, and the moon (with a special nod to the southern cross).
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