Irwin Chusid (born April 22, 1951 in Newark, New Jersey) is a journalist, music historian, radio personality, record producer, and self-described "landmark preservationist". His stated mission[1] has been to "find things on the scrapheap of history that I know don't belong there and salvage them." Those "things" have included such previously overlooked but now-celebrated icons as composer/bandleader/electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, Space Age Pop avatar Esquivel, illustrator/fine artist Jim Flora,[2] various outsider musicians (including William "Shooby" Taylor, a.k.a. "The Human Horn"),[3] and The Langley Schools Music Project.[4] Chusid calls himself "a connoisseur of marginalia," while admitting he's "a terrible barometer of popular taste."[5]
Chusid oversees the catalog of the late Afrofuturist artist/composer/bandleader Sun Ra and administers Ra's music rights on behalf of the artist's heirs.[6] His book, Sun Ra: Art on Saturn — The Album Cover Art of Sun Ra's Saturn Label, compiled with Chris Reisman, was published by Fantagraphics in November 2022.[7]
Chusid has lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, since 1992.[9] He describes his political views as "leaning libertarian".[10]
Radio
Since 1975 Chusid has been a DJ on free-form radio stationWFMU, where he hosts an unpredictable and idiosyncratic weekly program whose content he calls "genre-surfing tokenism".[11] Prior to his involvement at WFMU, he worked briefly at WPKN radio from 1969-1971 while an undergrad at the University of Bridgeport (which he left after two years); in 1977, while living in New Orleans, he hosted a weekly program on WTUL. In 1988, he served as a comedy writer for author/humorist Tom Bodett's syndicated radio series, The End of the Road.
In the late 1970s, Chusid was one of the first DJs to regularly air recordings of Jandek, The Shaggs, Lucia Pamela, and R. Stevie Moore on the radio. In the early 1980s he programmed a weekly segment entitled The Atrocious Music Hour, which featured recordings from such non-musical celebrities as William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.[12] This subgenre was eventually chronicled by Rhino Records on their Golden Throats series of albums, for which Chusid authored liner notes.[13][14] These compilations contributed to Shatner's revived celebrity, albeit with overtones of self-parody.
Between 1997 and 2002 Chusid was the co-host (with Michelle Boulé) of the Incorrect Music Hour on WFMU.[15] From 2005 to 2007 he programmed vintage Calypso, Soca, Goombay, and Mento on a one-hour weekly program entitled Muriel's Treasure.[16]
In 2000, Chusid discovered two LPs of privately pressed western Canadian schoolchildren recordings made in 1976–77 by music teacher Hans Fenger. After much legwork and ten label rejections, Chusid licensed the project to Netherlands-based Basta Audio-Visuals and (for North America) Hoboken-based Bar/None Records, who in October 2001 released the recordings on a CD entitled The Langley Schools Music Project.[20][21] Within one week of its release, the album went to #1 on Amazon.com. The popularity of that CD led to a VH1 documentary in 2002, which sent the CD back to #2 on Amazon.com. Jack Black's 2003 hit film School of Rock was admittedly inspired[22] by the Langley CD. In 2005, the story rights to the project were acquired by an undisclosed Hollywood film writer/director, who hopes to bring the story to the big screen. In a dismissive review of the album, former Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau referred to Chusid as "a tedious ideologue with a hustle."[23]
In 2002, Chusid produced the sole album by the New York-based septet The Raymond Scott Orchestrette (a band he formed in 1999).[24] That same year he produced the first solo sessions of former Suddenly, Tammy! singer/songwriter Beth Sorrentino, released in 2006 as Nine Songs, One Story.[25] In 2011, he co-conceived and coordinated Sorrentino's album Would You Like To Go: A Curt Boettcher Songbook, a collection of reinterpretations of songs written by and/or associated with sunshine pop progenitor Curt Boettcher. (The album, produced by Sean Slade, was released in April 2013 on the Basta label. Chusid was credited as "Solicitor and Overseer.")[26] In 2013, he undertook administration of Boettcher's publishing on behalf of the late songwriter's son, Varek Boettcher.
In 1997 Chusid co-produced (with Edie Adams and Josh Mills) the Ernie Kovacs Record Collection (Varese-Sarabande), a compilation of songs and themes used by the legendary TV comedian in his programs during the 1950s and early 1960s.[27] The package was designed by noted illustrator Chris Ware.[28] In 2004 he curated Interesting Results: Music by a Committee of One for UK's Sonic Arts Network, a CD-publication of DIY music with cut-out figures of the featured artists.[29]
In 2010 Chusid compiled for WFMU Don't Mess With the Power Child, the first collection of late 1980s recordings by an uninhibited, hyperactive 10-year-old Alabama girl named Amanda (Whitt).[30] These recordings aired frequently on WFMU and subsequently achieved widespread notoriety via the web. A follow-up, Let's Get Plastered and Raid Circus World, was compiled for WFMU in 2011.
Besides administering the Raymond Scott, Esquivel, Bob Thompson, Sun Ra, Curt Boettcher, and Shooby Taylor musical estates, he oversees the business affairs and publishing of R. Stevie Moore, Beth Sorrentino, the Mighty Sparrow, and Wendy & Bonnie. In 2019, under his BMI imprint Railroad Town Music, he became the U.S. publisher for the works of the late jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler.[31]
In 2014 Chusid became administrator of Sun Ra LLC, the heirs who control the catalog of the late, eccentric Afrofuturist bandleader/composer.[32] That year, he and Michael D. Anderson of the Sun Ra Music Archive co-produced a digital-only series of classic Sun Ra albums remastered for iTunes from original Sun Ra session tapes.[33][34] Since then Chusid has produced, co-produced, or consulted on a series of remastered Sun Ra recordings, including previously unissued material, released on the Cosmic Myth, Modern Harmonic, Strut, and Corbett vs. Dempsey record labels.[35] As of late 2020, there have been over 100 Sun Ra titles digitally reissued on the catalog's Bandcamp site.[36] Chusid has provided historical annotation for many of these releases. In 2019 he co-produced (with Brother Cleve) The Barrence Whitfield Soul Savage Arkestra: Songs from the Sun Ra Cosmos (Modern Harmonic), a collection of Sun Ra covers by rock vocalist Barrence Whitfield; Chusid played drums on several tracks.[37][38] Also in 2019 Chusid produced June Tyson: Saturnian Queen of the Sun Ra Arkestra (Modern Harmonic), the first compilation of recordings spotlighting singer-dancer-costume designer Tyson, the only female member of Sun Ra's Arkestra.[39]
In 2013, Chusid created the first website devoted to the late record producer Tom Wilson,[40][41] including a comprehensive discography of Wilson productions.[42]
Outsider music
In a July 1996 Pulse magazine article entitled "You Want Alternative?", Chusid coined the term "outsider music",[43] which he defines as "crackpot and visionary music, where all trails lead essentially one place: over the edge". Chusid has drawn a distinction between the terms "incorrect music" (as used on his WFMU radio program) and "outsider music", which he insists are not synonymous and overlap only slightly. Chusid has explained that Incorrect Music was a radio concept, which included all manner of musical "wrongness", often by people who should have known better, or whose sincerity was questionable. Outsider musicians, on the other hand, he defines as "artists who are often termed 'bad' or 'inept' by listeners who judge them by the standards of mainstream popular music. Yet despite dodgy rhythms and a lack of conventional tunefulness, these often self-taught artists radiate an abundance of earnestness and passion. Most importantly, they betray an absence of pretense. And they're worth listening to, often outmatching all contenders for inventiveness and originality."
His book Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (2000), published by A Cappella Books, covered musical oddballs and obscure visionaries. Reviewing this testament to twisted tunesmiths, Publishers Weekly commented:
He profiles 20 darlings of dissonance. Several of them -- including Tiny Tim, Captain Beefheart and Pink Floyd's former acid troubadour Syd Barrett -- have made a few compilation bangs, but the great majority have enjoyed mere dog-like whimpers of success. Take Eilert Pilarm, the Swedish Elvis; Joe Meek, who produced the 1962 instrumental hit 'Telstar' before committing suicide; and The Shaggs, three sheltered sisters from Fremont, N.H., who recorded the 'aboriginal rock' masterpiece 'Philosophy of the World'. Careful not to ridicule his more eccentrically volatile subjects (e.g., Wesley Willis and Daniel Johnston), Chusid narrates each musician's vital statistics and career with rhythm and respectful compilation wit. The book also includes brief profiles of numerous lesser-known outsider musicians, including Arcesia, Bingo Gazingo, and Y. Bhekhirst.
BJ Snowden, Shooby Taylor ("The Human Horn"), Wesley Willis, and other musicians profiled in the book can be heard on two CDs produced and annotated by Chusid. Bill Meyer reviewed the first CD:
This collection is a compilation companion to Irwin Chusid's book of the same name. It celebrates outsider music, music "so wrong it's right", and if you're drawn to sounds that make you wonder just what the musician was thinking, this collection is for you. The compilation is enthusiastically, if not always respectfully, annotated by Chusid. His selections range from the output of blissfully un-self-aware but basically functional individuals to the certifiably insane. Among the former are Lucia Pamela, an Ethel Merman sound-alike who contributes an infectiously enthusiastic celebration of "Walking on the Moon", and Congress-Woman Malinda Jackson Parker, a late Liberian lawmaker whose "Cousin Mosquito #1" cautioned against contracting insect-borne disease. The latter includes Daniel Johnston, whose "Walking the Cow" weds a sublime melody to puzzling lyrics and a toy keyboard arrangement, and Wesley Willis, who pays tribute to Chicago's "Rock 'n' Roll McDonald's". Some of the artists are quite famous (Tiny Tim), some anonymous (the unknown writer and performers of song-poem "Virgin Child of the Universe")—they're united by their blithe certitude that the world needed to hear their unlikely but singular creations.
Volumes one and two of the digital audio releases of Songs in the Key of Z were reissued in expanded (25 tracks each) and remastered format in September 2013, along with all-new volumes three and four.
Visual arts projects
Chusid chronicled the overlooked work of innovative record cover artist/commercial illustrator Jim Flora (1914–1998)[44] in his colorful 180-page trade paperback, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (Fantagraphics, 2004). A follow-up, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, co-authored with (former KFAI radio host) Barbara Economon, was published by Fantagraphics in February 2007. The latter book unveiled Flora's bizarre and rarely seen paintings, woodcuts, sketches, and early works. A third anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, was published in July 2009. A fourth book, The High Fidelity Art of Jim Flora, focusing on Flora's illustrated album covers and music ephemera for Columbia and RCA Victor Records, was published in September 2013.[45] Chusid and Economon serve as co-archivists for the Flora collection, and produce a line of fine art prints of the artist's work.[46]
In 2020 Chusid curated the first website devoted to the artistic legacy of musician/painter Ayé Aton, who had played with Sun Ra for a number of years.[48]
Related Research Articles
Outsider music is music created by self-taught or naïve musicians. The term is usually applied to musicians who have little or no traditional musical experience, who exhibit childlike qualities in their music, or who have intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses. The term was popularized in the 1990s by journalist and WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid.
Le Sony'r Ra, better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led "The Arkestra", an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up.
Raymond Scott was an American composer, band leader, pianist, record producer, and inventor of electronic instruments.
Space Is the Place is an 85-minute Afrofuturist science fiction film made in 1972 and released in 1974. It was directed by John Coney, written by Sun Ra and Joshua Smith, and features Sun Ra and his Arkestra. A soundtrack was released on Evidence Records.
William "Shooby" Taylor was an American jazz vocalist famous for scat singing over various records, including those of the Ink Spots, the Harmonicats, Johnny Cash, Miles Davis, Mozart, and Cristy Lane, in a baritone voice.
Marshall Belford Allen is an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz alto saxophone player. He also performs on flute, oboe, piccolo, and EWI.
The Lost Patrol is an American rock band whose music falls into the categories of experimental, gothic, post-punk, dark wave, ethereal wave, folk, alternative country, shoegazing, Spaghetti Western and "surf-a-billy". The band uses electric guitars, 12-string acoustic guitars, Moog and other synthesizers.
Y. Bhekhirst is an outsider musician based in New Hyde Park, New York.
The Langley Schools Music Project is a collection of recordings of children's choruses singing pop hits by the likes of the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, and David Bowie. Originally recorded in 1976–77, they were found and rereleased only 25 years later and became a cult hit and a successful example of outsider music. It was rereleased on vinyl March 9, 2018, by Bar/None Records.
James Flora, best known for his distinctive and idiosyncratic album cover art for RCA Victor and Columbia Records during the 1940s and 1950s, was also a prolific commercial illustrator from the 1940s to the 1970s and the author/illustrator of 17 popular children's books. He was a fine artist as well, who created hundreds of paintings, drawings, etchings and sketches over his 84-year life.
Elizabeth Sorrentino is an American pianist and singer-songwriter from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She lives in Los Angeles.
Atlantis is an album by American jazz musician Sun Ra and his Astro-Infinity Arkestra, released in 1969 by El Saturn Records.
Songs in the Key of Z is a book and two compilation albums written and compiled by Irwin Chusid. The book and albums explore the field of what Chusid coined as "outsider music". Chusid defines outsider music as; "crackpot and visionary music, where all trails lead essentially one place: over the edge." Chusid's work has brought the music of several leading performers in the outsider genre to wider attention. These include Daniel Johnston, Joe Meek, Jandek and Wesley Willis. In addition, his CDs feature some recordings by artists who produced very little work but placed their recordings firmly in the outsider area. Notable amongst these are nursing home resident Jack Mudurian who sings snatches of several dozen songs in a garbled collection known as Downloading the Repertoire and the obscure and extreme scat singer Shooby Taylor AKA 'The Human Horn.'
Judson Fountain was an amateur actor-director who recorded a series of now-legendary "radio dramas" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which are today hailed as a foremost example of "outsider dramatic art." He has been referred to as the "Ed Wood Jr. of Radio Drama." Fountain was born and died in New York, though the exact whereabouts are unknown.
We Travel the Space Ways is an album by the American jazz musician Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra. Recorded mostly in 1960, the album was released in 1967, on Sun Ra's own label Saturn. The album brings together a number of eras and personnel of the Arkestra, and was probably mostly recorded by Ra himself during rehearsals.
Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow is an album by the American jazz musician Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra. Often considered the first of Ra's 'outside' recordings, the album was the first to make extensive use of a discovery by the Arkestra's drummer and engineer Tommy Hunter:
'Art Forms of Dimensions Tomorrow.... contained "Cluster of Galaxies" and "Solar Drums", two rhythm section exercises with the sound treated with such strange reverberations that they threatened to obliterate the instruments' identity and turn the music into low-budget musique concrète. While testing the tape recorder when the musicians were tuning up one day, Hunter had discovered that if he recorded with the earphones on, he could run a cable from the output jack back into the input on the recorder and produce massive reverberation:
"I wasn't sure what Sun Ra would think of it... I thought he might be mad - but he loved it. It blew his mind! By working the volume of the output on the playback I could control the effect, make it fast or slow, drop it out, or whatever." [Tommy Hunter]
'By the 1950s commercial recording companies had developed a classical style of recording which assured that the recording process itself would be invisible... but Sun Ra began to regularly violate this convention on the Saturn releases by recording live at strange sites, by using feedback, distortion, high delay or reverb, unusual microphone placement, abrupt fades or edits, and any number of other effects or noises which called attention to the recording process. On some recordings you could hear a phone ringing, or someone walking near the microphone. It was a rough style of production, an antistyle, a self-reflexive approach which anticipates both free jazz recording conventions and punk production to come.' John F Szwed
Jesse Krakow is an American musician, bassist, producer, and composer based in New York City.
Barrence Whitfield is an American soul and R&B vocalist, best known as the frontman for Barrence Whitfield & the Savages.
In the Beginning 1963–1964 is a 4-CD compilation album by American free jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders recorded in 1963-1964 and released in 2012 on the ESP-Disk label. It features previously unreleased recordings of Sanders performing with groups led by Don Cherry and Paul Bley, complete concert recordings of Sanders' appearances with Sun Ra, a re-release of Sanders' first album, and various interviews.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
