I was lucky enough to start searching for the private press record back in the 80's when not too many people cared about such nonsense???.
it allowed me to track down, talk to and sometimes even meet all kinds of characters...
So at Chris's request.....the Jr. & The Soulettes Story
Musta been the late 80's or early 90's....my partner Mark and I
took a trip up to Oklahoma City to look for records. Most of
the day we hit various Flea Markets with pretty good success.
Multiple sealed copies of Guiness and Tomorrow label LP's, about 20
sealed copies of the Markley LP, and alot more, most of them at
$1.00 each.
Our last stop of the day was a place called The Memory Market,
which is still there today. It's a large metal building that housed
about 10-15 various antique dealers who specialized in "junk". The
back 1/3rd of the building was run by two elderly women who dealt in
nothing but records. Tens of thousands of records, LP's and 45's. We
started digging in and it was apparent that we were the first ones
to go through this stuff who were looking for what we were looking
for. The first hour yielded titles like Badge & Co. a very beat up
copy of The Marble Phrogg, Darius, Trizo-50 and many more.
The market was going to close at 6:00 and it was about 5:45 when
I came across an amazing looking record titled "The Psycho-Delic
Sounds Of Jr. & The Soulettes". The cover was a "10" with Jr.
playing a Gibson Firebird behind his head while doing a split on the
stage. I called Mark over, we pulled out the little Big Bird record
player we carried with us and put the LP on to give it a spin. It
was beyond warped, totally destroyed with only about 20% of the
surface area being playable.....enough though for us to know we had
found a MONSTER, yet bizarre LP. Mark pointed out that it had an
Oklahoma City address on the back.
We paid for all the LP's and headed straight for the pay phone
in front of the place. We looked in the phone book and sure enough,
we found a Harold Moore Jr. & Sr. at the same address. I called the
number and was greeted by something that could only be described as
sub-human animal sounds.....Uhhhhhoooerrruggyhg....I could not make
out a single english word this guy might be uttering. Then a second
party picked up another line and told "Jr." to hang up. It was
Harold Moore Sr. and he was one very friendly guy.
It was late winter and by 6:00 it was starting to get dark, yet
Hariold Sr. invited Mark and I over to his house with the promise
that "I have a whole suitcase filled with those old rekkids, you
fellas come on over". We got directions and began to drive to the
house......it wasn't long before we realized we were going to the
worst part of OKC.
In the South it's pretty well known that if you live near the
railroad tracks or by the river, you're probably in the bad part of
town. The Moore house was built on stilts, with the river on one
side and the railroad tracks on the other. We parked, went to the
front door and rang the bell.....no answer. Then we knocked on the
door pretty hard.....again, no answer. mark walked around to the
side of the house and followed some very loud "Disco" music to a
room in the back of the house. He looked inside and saw Harold Sr.
sitting in front of a column of amps and receivers that were
producing this very bass heavy music. he banged on the window, got
Mr. Moore's attention and he waved for us to go back to the front
door.
Harold Sr. opened the front door and acted as if we were long
lost friends...he quickly invited us in while yelling up the stairs
at "Jr." while apologizing to us for his "effed up son". He brought
us back into the "music" room and it was pretty bizarre. In the
middle of the room stood a camera on a tri-pod. In each corner of
the room that the camera was facing were little triangular stages
built into the floor with a full length piece of plexiglas from
floor to ceiling in front of each "stage". The stage was about large
enough for one person to stand on.
Mark was an electronics engineer and in an attempt to start a
conversation he asked Mr. Moore if he had the "schematics" for this
contraption he had built out of about 20 amps and receivers. His
response was "Schematics!! I just found this stuff in the garbage
and makes it". Our goal was to get some LP's and get back to Dallas
but Harold had alot to talk about and wanted us to stay.
After being there about 15 minutes Harold says..."You boys wanna
see my puppet"!! How do you answer that question to a grown man??
Of course we said "Sure!!"....He opened his drawer and pulled out a
puppet made out of a sock. You know, one of those winter socks that
they make "Sock Monkey's" out of. "This here is my snake" and I'll
be damned the thing had a hat that could not be described as
anything but a "Pimp" hat and a big fat set of lips.
He then went on to explain that everything in the room was set
up for the puppet....the music, the camera, the stages. He also
explained that all his grandkids loved the puppet but he couldn't
tell them about the puppet's "night life". He then pulled out a
video, put it into a VCR and began to show us just what the puppet
was all about. Before I attempt to explain what we saw I have to say
that this moment was surely the most surreal in my life and I'd have
given anything to have had a camera as I knew I would have to repeat
what I saw and that no one would believe it.
The video starts off with that same bass heavy, thumping, Disco
music and the pimp puppet "dancing" to the beat. Then a black woman,
a naked black woman comes into the frame and begins to dance with
the puppet. This goes on for about 5 minutes with the puppet doing
various obscene things to what appears to be this super-imposed
naked woman. The video stops, a new song starts to play and now the
puppet starts dancing with a different, nude, black woman. Friggin'
Amazing!!!
After about 10 minutes we've seen enough and tell Mr. Moore that we
have to be going. Harold then explains at Mark's request just how he
makes these movies. On a Friday or Saturday night Harold usually
goes out and picks up a hooker. Not for sex, but to dance with the
puppet. The naked hooker stands behind the plexiglas in one corner
of the room while Mr. Moore operates the puppet behind the second
piece of plexiglas in the opposite corner. The way the camera is set
up on the tripod, it is able to not only record the puppet, but uses
the plexiglas to make a reflection of the woman in the opposite
corner so he gets the effect that they are actually dancing
together!!! GENIUS!!!!
Getting down to business we asked for the LP's promising to pay
him some big bucks. He goes into a closet and drags out a very old
and beat up suitcase. He opens the suitcase which is FILLED with
sleeveless 45's. Not an LP to be seen. "Oh you boys are looking for
those BIG rekkids" he said....."I don't have any of those, they were
all ruined". Needless to say we were disappointed but we bought a
few of the 4 different 45's from him, two of them being non-LP cuts.
Harold apologized for not having any of the LP's and told this
story.....
He had 4 children, Jr. and his three sisters who had been
abandoned by their alcoholic Mom. Harold Sr. worked for a very rich
Jewish woman who took a liking to the kids and bought them musical
instruments and paid for lessons(This explains the Gibson Firebird).
She made the kids a deal that if they learned how to play at least 3
songs she would get them a slot on some local TV Telethon. The kids
took to music very quickly and within a year were appearing on local
TV. The response was so good that the woman paid for them to record
an LP but suggested they write "original" songs.
This is where Harold Sr. comes in, writing all the songs that
appear on the LP, with most of them being attacks on the drunken and
supposedly abusive ex-Mrs. Moore......"Mama drinks Tequila, She
stays drunk all the time"......once the LP was recorded and pressed
the next step was to get them in the local record stores. At least
one store told Mr. Moore that they could not stock them unless they
were shrink wrapped. Harold went to a butcher shop where his brother
worked and used their shrinkwrap machine to seal the
LP's....unfortunately this was a high heat machine and he melted
every single LP in the process. This wasn't discovered until someone
bought one and brought it home....all the LP's were pulled from the
stores and rather than re-press it, the woman decided to release some
45's.
The 45's themselves are a work of art....with photos of each of
the kids heads on the label....very home made and cheesy looking. As
Mark and I were leaving the Moore's home he asked for two favors.
One was to write to the Guinness World Book Of Records and request
that his kids be put in as "The youngest group to make an LP and
play their own instruments" which we did to no avail. The second was
to never tell his grandkids what we saw the puppet doing...which has
not been a problem to uphold.
No matter how well I told that story there is no way you can
begin to understand just how weird it was. If I ever win the lottery
this will be just one chapter in a film I'd like to make about some
of the folks I've met in this wacky world of music....hope you
enjoyed.
Rich
P.S. The day after we got home I made a cassette of the LP and a
xerox of the cover and sent it to legendary Psych dealer Paul Major. Paul truly thoughtthat I had made this whole thing up and that there was NO WAY an LP
like that existed......he eventually believed me.
