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Jr & the Soulettes

holmesholmes 3,532 Posts
edited March 2009 in Strut Central
Who on here posted that crazy story about finding the LP, then finding the father & his puppet video scheme etc?? A friend & I were talking about the Jr & the Soulettes CD at the Stray Cats show last night & I'm trying to remember what the whole story was.

  Comments

  • hcrinkhcrink 8,729 Posts
    Paging Rockadelic
  • holmesholmes 3,532 Posts
    ah ha, thanks, will PM when I get a chance.
  • karlophonekarlophone 1,697 Posts
    one of the greatest SS stories evar. (especially for me as a playable copy surfaced for me in upstate ny a few years back, which beggars belief let alone the laws of physics)

    anyway i copied/pasted his and D.C.'s comments back then:


    Rockadelic:


    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 S r. 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.


    About a year after this happened another Oklahoma dealer/collector named Doug Davis found a clean copy....apparently some got out before the Butcher Shop got a hold of them...I'm not sure who did the re-issue but I understand it was mastered from that copy....I know Mr. Moore did not have the Master Tapes...I have heard of only two clean, playable copies that have ever surfaced...you guys probably have a better take on that than I do.

    Rich

    -------------------------------------------------------
    I know of these 45s:

    "Do Your Funky Thing/ Pop Little Jr. Pop" (Hammon 1022)
    "Fue/ Ten O??? Clock, Loving Kids" (Moore???s 6282)
    "2009 Cherry Soul Sound/ Natural Little Red Riding Hood" (HMM Jr. LH-8766/8767)
    "Gee Baby/ Share Him" (HMM Jr. 1001)
    "Dum Dum Huch E??? Koo/ Count Bump" (HMM Jr. 13451/13452) 1975
    "Bo-Yea/ Fou-Da-Lee" (HMM Jr. 14387/14388) 1975
    "Boogie Gerldine/ Disco Mama" (HMM Jr. 1009) 1977
    "Disco Mama/ Baby Boy Cartrece" (HMM Jr. 1010) 1977

    At least two of these have picture sleeves.
    I could post up pictures of most of these later.
    Needless to say, "Dum Dum Huch E' Koo" is probably the most tore up of all the recordings, and that's really saying something.

    -Dante Carfagna
  • GrandfatherGrandfather 2,303 Posts
    holy crap that's an awesome story
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