Billboard : 09/08/1956
Score of 67

Moondog is one of Manhattan’s more startling “sights.” He writes a kind of music that is as unconventional as he is himself in appearance. His approach is basically percussive, utilizing a variety of rhythm instruments more closely related to Oriental than to Western ensembles. His harmonics also have a strong Oriental character and Moondog’s music is impossible to clarify, but has an exotic appeal. Modest sales.

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Cashbox : 09/15/1956

Moondog is a name familiar to many New Yorkers. He is a sightless man who, in strange garb, provides his street corner listeners with strange music. It is descriptive music played with a rhythmic and primitive beat. Both words and music to the 13 original (and he means original!) compositions here were composed by Moondog and are performed by him and the group often under the backdrop of city noise and unusual narration. Sales are restricted to those willing to explore music’s frontiers.

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Pittsburgh Courier : 10/06/1956
Harold L. Keith : 4 stars

Bob Altshuler, major domo of Prestige records, advises that this is the first of several Moondoggers.

In the wake of the weird sounds emanating from this talented source, we can only shout… hurray!

Moondog presents here what might well be termed semantics in music. The entire album is food for the intellectual, a strictly intellectual offering based upon unique sounds involving the elements of everything.

Moondog has successfully wedded the five-noted Oriental scale with that of the rhythmic Afro-Cuban. Here he has borrowed from the Indian, from Bach, from jazz, from the classics and produced a work that is, to grossly understate, quite out of the ordinary.

It is not music played merely for the sake of listening. It is music for the mood… music upon which to feed… music of things, of people, and for that reason, vibrant music in the sense that it combines the esoteric with the mundane, the modern with the old.

This album is strictly for the well read musician who has studied the medium and not for those who do not appreciate the sounds of everyday life, such as the cooing of an infant, the tapping of a dancer, the honk of an automobile horn in some half-deserted concrete canyon.

Moondog’s selections include Surf Session (as an ex-fiddler I’m a sucker for a violin, so this one really rang the bell), Trees Against the Sky, Tap Dance, On Debut, Drum Suite, Street Scene, Caribea, Lullaby, Tree Trail, Death When You Come to Me, Big Cat, Frog Bog, To a Sea Horse, and Dance Rehearsal.

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Liner Notes by Robert S. Altshuler

Sometimes, MOONDOG the enigma, defeats an unprejudiced view of his music. But, if we ignore the cloak of seeming inscrutability and concentrate on the music, the experience can be astonishing.

MOONDOG possesses an admirable virtue: he perceives music everywhere in life. The collection of vignettes contained in this album are fully realized attempts to integrate music and sound. Music and life’s sounds are inseparable to MOONDOG. Thus, the complete LULLABY contains the cry of the baby: a string duo appears comfortably at home in a FROG BOG setting: a New York STREET SCENE includes (American Indian inspired) drum solos, the wisdom of a far eastern philosopher, and the strident blowing of a police whistle commencing the flow of traffic.

A vast amount of the world’s music is part of MOONDOG’S working vocabulary. This reservoir of material serves his eclectic approach to composition. MOONDOG chooses deftly amongst all of music to elicit his surprising couplings. A pair of violins bowing Bach influenced counterpoint might be heard over o rhythmic pattern of Cuban drumming. The ability to find unexpectedly complementary areas of music is an essential ingredient in these miniature portraits of life’s many parts.

MOONDOG, the man (like his music) is a satisfying blend of many fibres. To many of New York’s millions, MOONDOG’S vigil on street concerns presents an extraordinary contrast to his physical background. Dressed in his famous army blankets, MOONDOG’S handsome visage and Royal Hussars’ physique challenges the steel towers amongst which he has chosen to dwell. While selling the sheets of his music, hung around his waist, his active hands are inconspicuously composing new music on a braille board, discreetly hidden under the folds of his protective garments. At night from well chosen sites, MOONDOG the street musician, performs on his singular assortment of instruments. Using a maraca and a clava as drumsticks, he plays upon two triangular-shaped drums. With his self-styled instrumentation he obtains a music both melodic and rhythmic in structure, The countless hours spent by MOONDOG on the streets of New York provides a constant stream of material for this great silent observer. MOONDOG’S music is what he has found in the world in which he lives. Through him we can view the world in a more perfect form.

CARIBEA (sextet: featuring Moondog at the piano) 5/4

LULLABY (sextet: featuring Moondog’s wife, Suzuko, singing to June, their six-week-old daughter) 3/4

TREE TRAIL (quintet; featuring the Weiner-Sabinsky Duo) 5/2

“DEATH, WHEN YOU COME TO ME, may you come to me swiftly; I would rather not linger, not linger”. (sextet; a Moondog quotation, translated into Japanese, and recited by Sakura Whiteing) 5/4

BIG CAT (sextet: featuring Moondog, playing the recorder in a portrait of a tiger) 1/4

FROG BOG (quintet: featuring the Weiner-Sabinsky Duo) 5/4

TO A SEA HORSE (solo; Moondog at the piano) 5/4

DANCE REHEARSAL (Naila stages a routine for her pupil Violetta and Moondog accompanies) 5/8

SURF SESSION, in three parts quartet; featuring the Weiner Sabinsky Duo, in a performance of Euphony No. 11) 2/4

TREES AGAINST THE SKY, fields of plenty, rivers to the sea: this, and more, spreads before me. (Moondog records his own voice twice) 5/4

TAP DANCE (Ray Malone ad libs to Moondog’s drumming) 5/4

O. DEBUT (solo; Moondog plays oo and trimbas, simultaneously) 7/4

DRUM SUITE (Sam Ulano plays on Japanese drums, as Moondog plays on trimbas) polyrhythms

STREET SCENE (drums solos and dialogues, against the sound of Manhattan traffic) 5/4
Meter is shown after each composition.

This is the first in a series of recordings by MOONDOG to appear on PRESTIGE RECORDS.