The Ballad of Mingering Mike

It all starts, as many great things do, with a flea market.

Hiding amid a large collection of LPs. 8-tracks and 45s was a crate full of drawings. They depicted imaginary album covers, meticulously drawn by hand, completely realized with titles and track listings, and inside these hand-drawn album covers were imaginary records – drawn on cardboard, grooves and all. The artist had created the whole imaginary package – but why? And when?

The only identifying marks on these artworks were a musician’s never-used-in-public stage name, Mingering Mike, and a general area of origin. They told a complex story of a prolific musician with a diverse recording history – only he didn’t actually exist. Using Batman-like detective skills, and some personal correspondences that happened to be slipped in with the records, the man who found this unusual collection of drawings eventually tracked down the original artist, whose reply was simply, “You found my babies?”

The drawings were returned to Mingering Mike, though the collection remained incomplete, as Mike has recovered only about 25% of what he’d created as a teenager – dreaming of being a soul musician in the late 60s, drawing album covers, and even recording a few acapella performances on a reel-to-reel tape recorder with friends and relatives. Mike had his album covers (as well as a large collection of actual albums) taken from him after a management change at a storage space where he was keeping them, and the whole lot went to auction. Presumably, they were split up after this point, and three quarters of Mike’s collection remains out there, untraceable. So, what I’m saying to you collectors is to keep an eye out – there are probably some original Mingering Mike artworks out there still.

No monetary value has been assigned to these ‘records’, despite Mike’s cult following, because every known Mingering Mike record has been returned to the original artist, whose reaction to their discovery speaks volumes about their personal value. I’d like to think that anyone who discovers a Mingering Mike album and knows what it is would give Mike his record back without seeking personal gain, glad in their own role in the Mingering Mike legacy.

Of course, Mike has chosen to remain largely anonymous, much in the tradition of Leon Redbone, Jandek and The Residents. What we do know is that he’s not interested in allowing his minor stardom to endanger his employment, he values his privacy, and most current images of him put him behind sunglasses or some other disguising element. Contact can be made through Dori Hadar, the discoverer of these artworks, and the author of ‘Mingering Mike : The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar‘, which tells this story in full.

Last month saw the release of Mike’s first full-length album, 40 years after the aspirations began. At the moment, it’s only been released as a download on eMusic (to which I belong, fortunately), and it’s composed entirely of the reel-to-reel recordings that he did back in the 60s, unedited and raw. There’s no instrumentation involved – just tapping and voices, and even with the occasional car horn in the background or bump into the microphone. The ten-minute ode to Coffee Cake, and the exceptionally melodic ‘But All I Can Do Is Cry’ (which he wrote when he was drafted into Vietnam) – it all expresses a completely do-it-yourself attitude towards music and recording, and a natural aptitude for the music that he loved.

Mike completists should note that a hand-numbered 45 with Mike’s artwork and a recording of ‘There’s Nothing Wrong With You Baby‘ (which is also included in the eMusic album) has been released and can be found at Mike’s new website for a scant $9.50. The rest of the collection is out there, somewhere, waiting to be discovered.