Pinned
THE RETURN OF MR. MONK MONK
The music world is absolutely hummbuzzing tonight with the revelation of yet another treasure unearthed from the fabled "Lomax Secret Tapes."
Alan Lomax, the famous archivist of Rural Americana, was notoriously secretive with items he deemed too sensitive for public consumption. They are slowly coming to light offering a spine tingling record of one iconic career in particular, one that has only been known until now through contemporary police reports. It's a name spoken like a digestive complaint; low at first, and then louder as the incidents bubble up from the depths, "MonkMonk."
Mr. Monk Monk facts:
1. Sam Phillips once chased him out of Sun Studios in Memphis with a broom.
2. MunkMunk is believed to be the only person ever to have been physically assaulted in turn by Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Ed Sullivan.
3. The only time Lomax ever mentioned him was in an agitated letter to his father where in he complained of having his field recorder stolen by a, "…fuzzy drunken hooligan the size of damned cola nut," who made "...insensible howls and shrieks and demanded I give him a skinned possum before he'd return my equipment."
4. It is believed to have been on the above evening in early 1940 when the bulk of the MonkMonk oeuvre was recorded as Lomax haggled and bartered within the local hobo economy for a whole possum and the wherewithal to have it skinned.
5. On his way east a well spoken young Jewish boy from Minnesota with tidy hair and perfect diction met MunkMunk and spent a fortnight shadowing him as he performed on street corners, stole pies from window sills, and relieved himself in mason jars. That young man would become Bob Dylan. And as he himself will say when asked, "MuhnMuhn Tawmeh erthen ahyyoh" Which most Dylan experts take to mean, "MunkMunk taught me everything I know." Of course consensus on the matter is by no means complete.
6. As events in the larger world accelerated to a pace more suited to a character such as MunkMunk he continued to pop up in iconic situations long enough to make himself a memorable nuisance. The last confirmed sighting was with William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin in Tangiers in the early '60's. Although many insist he was a conversational whirligig on the Merry Pranksters' long strange trip, hanging out in their bus's wheel well and emerging occasionally to soil Tom Wolfe's ascot.
His latest track, still officially untitled, has been disavowed by Smithsonian Folkways and left to fester on the internet.
Listen to it HERE