Moondog: Sound of New York
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2019
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
New Yorker Huey Morgan examines the life, work and enduring appeal of the musician known as Moondog, who lived and worked on the city's streets in the 1950s and '60s. Born Louis Thomas Hardin in Kansas in May 1916, he played musical instruments from an early age and lost his sight in an accident when he was 16. He went on to teach himself music and composition by ear, as well as music theory through books in braille. His music would take inspiration from street sounds like the subway and foghorns, and his compositions were a combination of classical, traditional jazz and American vernacular. He became a pioneer with a unique attitude to composition and melody, and also invented instruments.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The sounds of my native New York. |
| 0:14.0 | Fogg horns, the subway, Times Square, birds, buscars, the harbor, all taken for granted by most people going about their everyday lives in the city. |
| 0:26.0 | But all noises I find strangely comforting when I return home. |
| 0:31.0 | It's like I've never been away. |
| 0:33.0 | And for one man in the 1950s and 60s, |
| 0:37.0 | these sounds meant something more. |
| 0:39.0 | They were noises that inspired him to compose a unique sound. |
| 0:45.5 | The man himself was indeed also unique. |
| 0:48.8 | In fact, in a world where everything seems to demand a label or a box. |
| 0:54.0 | It's quite liberating to be presenting a program about someone who refused to be pigeonholed, |
| 0:59.1 | shunned labels, and did things very much in his own way. |
| 1:03.0 | The man I'm talking about is Louis Thomas Harden, |
| 1:07.0 | or Moon Dawn, as he later called himself. |
| 1:10.0 | He was a blind homeless musician who lived here in New York City for several decades. |
| 1:15.0 | And he had a regular spot and it's there I'm destined. |
| 1:18.0 | Yo, Taxi! |
| 1:20.0 | I'm Huey Morgan and this is Moon Dog, the Sound of New York on the BBC World Service. |
| 1:27.0 | I'm at 6th Avenue on the corner of 54th Street, right in the heart of Midtown New York City and it's here where Moon Dogg would sell poetry and compose his music. |
| 1:36.5 | And it was a good place to be because it's here he would catch the attention of some big names in the music business. |
| 1:42.0 | One of his pieces, All His Loneliness, |
| 1:45.0 | was famously recorded by Janice Joplett. He collaborated with Julie Andrews well before her time as Mary Poppins or a Maria |
| 1:59.2 | Von Trapp in the Sound of Music. An album called Moon Dog with Julie Andrews and Martin Green. |
... |
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