The Poetry of Hy Sobiloff

Something tells me Sobiloff should have stuck to his other careers.

From his encyclopedia entry:

Sobiloff, whose poetry was respected by many of his better-known contemporaries for its fresh, honest, unpretentious qualities, was also widely known as a filmmaker, industrialist, and philanthropist... While praising his work, both Aiken and Tate come close to representing the poet as a primitive, particularly by their use of words such as "folk" or "unaware..." Less positive were Kimon Friar's judgments of the collection, as presented in Saturday Review: "Sobiloff's poems are monolithic, his lines lack cadence, there is no melodic progression within a single stanza or between stanzas. Instead, we have staccato and precise descriptions of objects, but with little of the poetic realism of a William Carlos Williams or of the subtlety of Wallace Stevens."

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 21, 2024 - Comments (1)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Vinyl Albums and Other Media Recordings, Poetry, 1960s

The Murder of Vivian Gordon As Explained by Mystery Writers

You can read the true crime story details at The Smithsonian Magazine site. But for the explanations from fiction writers, see below. I think police in 2024 should adopt this tactic. "So, Stephen King, how would you solve the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft?"

Posted By: Paul - Fri Jan 05, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Crime, Writers, 1930s

Gamma Goochee

A YouTube commenter explains:

According to the notes to "Great Googa Mooga" (Ace CHCD 830) Gamma Goochee Himself was a dental technician named John Mangiagli from southern California. Each year, he would spend his summer vacation making and promoting a self-produced record. This disk was the only one that even came close to charting in the US. The backup singers were his pre-teen nieces. Strange song, even stranger story behind it..

Hear another song by Mangiagli at the link (non-embeddable).

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jan 19, 2023 - Comments (3)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Jabberwocky, Scat Singing, Nonsense Verse and Glossolalia, Music, Outsider Art, 1960s

Six Boys in Trouble

This album features jams on homemade percussion instruments by six 11- and 12-year-old African American boys living in New York City public housing, about 1955. These young, untrained musicians improvise the tunes and tales of their upbringing on this rhythmic release and draw inspiration from family folk traditions and popular radio and juke box hits of the era. The group’s enjoyment is apparent in their school yard musical expressions, as is their self-identification with the community in which they live. The album is divided into three parts: Percussion Ensembles, Rhythms with Voices, and Rhythms with Verses. The liner notes provide a deeper look into each section, as well as a subsequent transcription of the lyrics.

Playlist for the rest of the album here.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jun 23, 2022 - Comments (0)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Hobbies and DIY, Music, Juvenile Delinquency, 1950s

RIP Maria Makowska-Kalinowska, Champion Moviegoer

"Today, Ms. Maria Kalinowska, the greatest Poznań (Polish, and probably the largest in the scale of the universe) cinema lover, has passed away today," wrote the employees of the cinema to which Maria regularly visited her husband. A married couple wrote down each screening in a notebook - they could spend whole days in the cinema, equipped with sandwiches. People from Poznań who regularly visit the Muza Cinema had to meet them at least once.

News article source of quote.

Their Wikipedia page says:

Maria Makowska-Kalinowska (1945 – 14 November 2020) and Bogdan Kalinowski (1939 – 9 November 2017) were a married couple from Poznań, Poland, known as the most avid filmgoers in Poland. They watched films in cinemas of Poznań regularly from 1973 on. In 2010 alone they watched 563 films. Altogether, between 1973 and 2010 they had viewed over 11,000 films together; by mid-2015 the total exceeded 13,000.[

Maria and Bogdan Kalinowski were librarians, and they met during a course for librarians. There was also a library of the films watched, which they meticulously kept. The Kalinowski family went to every film festival, sat down with notebooks in their hands and took notes of every film they watched. And they saw thousands of them together - in 2017, when Mr. Bogdan died, this number probably exceeded 16,000.

Source.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 17, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Eccentrics, Excess, Overkill, Hyperbole and Too Much Is Not Enough, Movies, Europe

Bette Davis Sings

Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 18, 2019 - Comments (0)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Movies, 1960s, Cacophony, Dissonance, White Noise and Other Sonic Assaults

Starlit Stairway

Posted By: Paul - Fri Oct 19, 2018 - Comments (1)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Regionalism, Television, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s

The Kate Bush Dance Troupe

The Kate Bush Dance Troupe - Babooshka at The Sculpture Center from Kate Bush Dance Troupe on Vimeo.

In case you needed visuals to accompany your Kate Bush songs, these folks will gladly provide them.

More videos here.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Aug 31, 2016 - Comments (1)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Eccentrics, Fey, Twee, Whimsical, Naive and Sadsack, Ineptness, Crudity, Talentlessness, Kitsch, and Bad Art, Dance

Mailed herself to the Beatles

June 1966: 12-year-old Beatles superfan Carol Dryden of Sunderland, England came up with an ingenious scheme to meet the Fab Four. She packaged herself inside a box and arranged to have a friend mail her to them — addressed "to the Beatles, care their fan club, London." Shipping cost $8.47.

But Carol only got as far as the railway station, where a clerk noticed the box she was in wobbling back and forth. Inside of it, Carol, overheated and running out of air because she hadn't made any holes in the box, was trying to take off her sweater.

Carol confessed, "I hadn't thought about fresh air or food. All I wanted was to see the Beatles. I don't know what I would have done had I really arrived on their doorstep. I suppose I would have fainted."

The railroad refunded the freight charge.

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle - June 16, 1966

Posted By: Alex - Fri Aug 26, 2016 - Comments (2)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, 1960s, Postal Services

Co-Star Records

There were fifteen of these uniquely bizarre records.

The whole story is here.

Posted By: Paul - Mon May 30, 2016 - Comments (2)
Category: Amateurs and Fans, Celebrities, Hobbies and DIY, 1960s