KM 148 Auction HERE

Subject: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Mudjack
Date: 24 Jul 99 - 12:59 PM

All Proceeds go to THE MUDCAT CAFE and trust the honor system. Art Thieme's "Songs of the Heartland" Kicking Mule 148 produced in 1980. Auction closes Sat, Aug 7 Midnight Eastern standard time (9pm pst). A photo will follow as soon as I can figure it out. Good luck on the bidding. I believe MAG or Margarita offered an opening bid of $20. If so, please re-bid to this thread so all bids are here. Thanks folks.......
Mudjack

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 24 Jul 99 - 01:04 PM

$25

MA

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Night Owl
Date: 24 Jul 99 - 02:01 PM

$35

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Art Thieme
Date: 25 Jul 99 - 11:12 AM

(Is this thread creep?) There I go again...(R.Reagan)

The photo on the front of that LP was taken the exact day I had just lost 100 pounds on one of my many diets. One is happening as we speak. ED Denson at Kicking Mule needed a photo for the back so they went to their files. The picture they chose was 100 pounds heavier than the one on the front. There was a time I was glad it went out of print.

Art

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From:
Date: 25 Jul 99 - 11:18 AM

Is this LP or cassette?

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: katlaughing
Date: 25 Jul 99 - 11:39 AM

Whichever it is, phoaks, I have a copy, from the man himself, and this is one you don't want to miss. Beautiful, smooth voice, wonderful pickin' and every song a winner! When I first got it, we went to sleep listening to every night for the fist couple of weeks. Now, I cannot go a week without listening to it at least once.

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Mudjack
Date: 25 Jul 99 - 12:10 PM

It's LP like in vinyl, Sorry about that.I have forwarded an e-photo to Max with hopes of having it put into this thread. Art is indeed in his best welterweight shape on this album thus making it more of a prize.
By the way Art, it's on the auction block for reasons I have to cut down my inventory. Our home is beginning to resemble a junk store with all my albums and instruments and other "Folkie Stuff". It really isn't easy parting with things you treasure for so many years. I find it easier to let go this way knowing when I retire I won't have to deal with storage sheds and this way other folks can get the enjoyment and Mudcat can benefit the gains.
Mudjack

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 25 Jul 99 - 03:28 PM

$40

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Mudjack
Date: 08 Aug 99 - 12:10 AM

SOLD

Mag is the official winner of KM 148. The album should be in the mail Mon or Tue. Mag, you can send Max the $40.00. I'll cover the shipping and handling.
Mudjack

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 08 Aug 99 - 07:38 PM

Save the mailing, Mudjack; I need to be in Portland next Monday on the 16th; I'll message you about stopping by.

Been awhile since I saw that funky little museum at your exit off I84.

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 Aug 99 - 05:47 PM

This has to be inflation rearing it's ugly head.

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 09 Aug 99 - 06:43 PM

Gee Art, did you ever think you'd become a collecter's item?
Rick

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Mudjack
Date: 09 Aug 99 - 09:19 PM

OK OK.... I heard from MAG about how I'm to deliver the goods. She was so glad to get the LP and at the same time donate something to the Mudcat. But you still have the right to flutter those ego wings, That's a mighty fine album. I'm especially partialto it since it's where I first heard "Night Rider's Lament".Nice work Art.
Mudjack

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Art Thieme
Date: 09 Aug 99 - 10:34 PM

When I figure out how to get ten LPs into a CD mailer I'll be sending 'em to Max to distribute any way he wants. It's as close as I can get to doing a benefit these days. Mudjack, Thanks for the kind words!

Oh, the LP I have that will be heading to Max is "On The Wilderness Road"---Folk Legacy.

Art

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 10 Aug 99 - 12:24 AM

Art. "On the Wilderness Road" is a great album. That was the first time I'd ever heard your music, but I'd read about you for years - along with a man named Wyn Stracke. You've probably told folks about him before I came along on Mudcat, but I'd love to know a bit about him. I seem to remember that his picture made him looka bit like Burl Ives. Did he tour or record anything? Thanks.
Rick

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 10 Aug 99 - 01:29 AM

Oh my, Win Strake. Synchronicity strikes again. Over the weekend I was replaying his LP, reminiscing about him on the OTSFM stage, gesticulating cane in one hand.

Enormous man, deep bass voice, a real Chicago fixture.

"I'm back home, and I thank the Lord,/ I'm back home in the 43rd Ward."

You have to know Chicago politics to get it; it is (was?) the only independent ward.

and I have a special fondness for "Night Rider's Lament," for a variety of reasons, not least of which how beautiful it is out here.

MA

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 Aug 99 - 12:55 PM

Win Stracke was definitely a mentor of mine. Win, along with Dawn Greening---the mother of all us late 50s folkies in Chicago---and superb instrumentalist and teacher, Frank Hamilton (later a member of the Weavers after Eric Darling), FOUNDED the Old Town School Of Folk Music in Chicago. It was a low-key thoroughly friendly and rustic place at North Avenue and Sedgwick St.---upstairs in the old Immigrant State Bank Building. Downstairs was the Socialist Labor Party and a bar called the Blind Pig where Big Joe Williams played and where I first got the idea for a 9-string guitar from Joe. (That spot later became the Old Town Folklore Center--the retail outlet for the school--where I was asst. mgr. from '64 to '66.)

Win was a basso profundo voice that took hold of your heart and mind immediately. In my youth, he was the very first TV children's personality in Chicago. "Uncle Win" (and his ducks & animals) picked guitar & sang for us kids then. There was nobody doing that before Win because there was no television before that.

Win was also a man who took his political causes and labor connections very seriously. He would lend his voice to any good cause that was brought to his attention. He was a hard drinker from a family of preachers---who loved the comaraderie of Chicago saloon life--especially his old pal, Alderman Paddy Bauler's "saloon and office". He was a serious classical singer of Schubert lieder with great reviews from Chicago's toughest critic then---Claudia Cassidy. Win was a regular on Studs Terkel's TV show STUDS PLACE along with Big Bill Broonzy & pianist Chet Roble. For me---He was a friend and a teacher---a supporter of my music who went out of his way in writing to let me know that I was doing it the "right way". Here's an excerpt from a note he wrote me; I used to have it framed on my wall:

"...It's a matter of considerable gratification to me to see how you are coming along on the path I've been walking---that twisting trail which skirts education, history, and entertainment---but which always, I hope, is on the firm ground of TRADITION..."
Affectionately,
Win Stracke

I learned "STATE OF ILLINOIS" from Win-----a great song from pioneer days. It became a sort of Thieme song for me (pun intended). He'd learned it from Carl Sandburg who learned it from a settler on the Ohio River. We're all just links on the chain; Mark Dvorak is carrying on the traditions here now.

In the late 1980s I wrote this tale for a booklet on the history of the school:

It was 1964 (or '65 or '66)...the place looked normal when we opened the store that day. (the Old Town Folklore Center) But all the tape machines and a few instruments were gone. No sign of forced entry anywhere. We scoured the place for hours and then found a hole in the basement wall where the bricks had been kicked in. The damn guys had come in through a manhole on Sedgwick Street, crept under the hollow sidewalk, kicked in the wall and entered the store's basment. They'd hauled the hundred pound reel-to reel tape decks out of the building the same way they came in.
As usual the store was operating on a very tight profit margin so this was a crushing blow. We almost had to close the doors. Then WIN said that he'd talk to the alderman, Paddy Bauler. Anyhow the alderman (or someone) knew a fence who bought stuff from the street kids and adicts. We'd have to pay a price for our own stuff, but we could get it back. And we couldn't ask any questions. Well, we paid the price, got most of the stuff back, and no one ever said another word about it---until now! Yep, life was never dull around the Old Town School.

Or in Chicago--for that matter.

There's no way I could ever thank Win enough. And if I can extend those thanks to Win's old friend, mentor from afar for me and a true inspiration to so very many, STUDS TERKEL, who is as feisty and wonderful as ever, I'm gonna do that right here. I cannot tell Win Stracke's story (even if piecemeal) without huge notice to Mr. Terkel! (That's not Studs "Turtle"--as I've intimated in a tale I've told for many years about a trail drive of land terrapins up the trail from Texas---it took 40 years.)

What more can I say. There's tons more to tell you about Win Stracke, but you'll have to get that from Studs. Say, you can check out last weeks Chicago __READER__ ---Letters To The Editor section---for an insightful view of Studs' take on Pete & Win & why they aren't to be compared to Peter, Paul & Mary. The article which Studs is replying to so vehimently contains differences of opinion that, alas, seem to be more generational than anything else. Studs is trying to re-educate the author of the piece on the new and extremely successful OLD TOWN SCHOOL as to the historical realities from his point of view. I do think that many of our differences on what folk is can be laid to rest at the feet of the god of those generational ways of seeing things that so often do, truly, seem to divide us. As Bob Dylan once said, "You can be in my dream if I can be in yours!"

Those WERE good times.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 10 Aug 99 - 09:39 PM

Thanks for fleshing out Mr. Stracke. He sounds like a powerful guy who used that power in very good ways. One of the absolute high points of my life was being interviewed by Studs Terkel. Naturally I wanted to ask HIM a million questions rather than waste time answering them. He had two hearing aids which he constantly fiddled around with, and after the show was over he took me to a great little Italian restaurant for mussels! For the next 3 hours he patiently (and enthusiastically) told me story after story. I'll take that memory to the grave.
Rick

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Art Thieme
Date: 11 Aug 99 - 12:36 AM

I could tell ya 'bout a time I did Studs' radio show on tape to be broadcast that night to push my 30th anniversary of playing at a Chicago coffeehouse--the No Exit. For various reasons, the show "conveniently" was "lost" and never aired. Somehow it just disappeared? As I was leaving WFMT's studios, I was handed my copy of the show for posterity on a cassette. As far as I know, that is the only copy of a "unique" program.

Yeah, I could tell you. But I won't.

Art

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 12 Aug 99 - 10:44 PM

Studs wrote the liner notes on my one Win Stracke album, "Songs of Oldtown." I have no idea if it is still available anywhere. OK, WFMT; there's another fertile field for chicago folk stories. Tho' I DO wish I could get Midnite Special."

MA

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Jeri
Date: 12 Aug 99 - 10:48 PM

MAG, you know it's on Real Audio, right?

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 12 Aug 99 - 11:27 PM

Oh, I know the song; I play it in drop D; I just want the recording. I can be a greedy thing.

MA

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Jeri
Date: 12 Aug 99 - 11:41 PM

I'm just confused - I thought you were talking about the radio show 'Midnight Special' on WFMT, but you were talking about an album. Whoops. :-)

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: MAG (inactive)
Date: 12 Aug 99 - 11:59 PM

Oh, you mean the SHOW is on Real Audio; yes, I know; unfortunately this machine belongsto my employer and they won't let me put a sounbd card on it. I'm gonna hafta save for one of my own as soon as I collect the great new guitar I have on layaway.

thanks; I'll get the hookup someday.

MA

Subject: RE: KM 148 Auction HERE
From: Art Thieme
Date: 13 Aug 99 - 12:00 AM

Narrow it down to stories about WFMT and The Midnight Special radio program on New Year's Eve---when they'd give us each a personal bottle of the bubbly stuff before we'd even put our instruments down & got our coats off. After we'd downed 4/5 of it, Ray & Norm & Rich'd put us on the air LIVE and try to tell us we were responsible for what we said! There are some unique tales that can be told. Then again, I'm not sure of that... But if I had a bottle in front of me instead of the proverbial frontal lobotomy...

Art