The story of America's musical enigma, Mike Billo
Very little has been known about this highly influential artist until recently. This monograph attempts to put together the facts that we do know.
Mike Billo was born in the early 1800's, the only child, of a pair of reclusive hermits in San Francisco's outer Sunset District.
Attempts to locate the Billo family home have proved futile because the dense fog that plagues the area makes finding anything impossible.
As a child, he was infatuated with the music of America's Blue Yodeler, Jimmie Rodgers and, inspired by Rodgers, built his first home made instrument out of a cigar box and a dead cat. In no time at all, he had mastered enough of a repertoire of Blues, Rags and Hollers that it put him in demand as an entertainer at barn raisings, corn shuckings, wing-dings, sukey jumps, cholera epidemics and other popular social gatherings of the time.
At night, around the campfires of the hobo jungles, he would take out his false front teeth, make a hand puppet out of them and let the puppet, "Chopper", explain
German Cinema of the 1920's to the "Knights of the Road"
Everybody knows Hobos love Expressionism.
He soon joined a travelling Medicine Show, entertaining crowds by playing the Harmonica through his nose, while selling a bottled mixture of laudanum and tobacco juice.
His travels landed him in Clarksdale Mississippi where he attracted the attention of the finest Bluesmen of the day. One of them, Cleophus "Gimme back my Doo-Dads" Washington was so impressed with Billo that he said "Dat Mike Billo can play dem' Old-Time songs like a monkey fartin' through a stovepipe". A phrase that stayed with Billo for the rest of his life.
During his incarceration, Billo would entertain his fellow inmates, by inflating the bladders of dead animals and twisting them into cute, recognizable shapes.
Everybody knows Murderers love balloon animals and whimsy.
After he served his sentence, Billo immediately resumed his musical career with a recording session in New York that produced his canonical works.
After the recording session Billo reflected upon more than a century spent in freight trains, medicine shows and prison and decided his native San Francisco was where he wanted to be. He returned home and dropped out of sight.
My own acquaintance with the music of Mike Billo began during the 1960's, when record collectors spoke in hushed tones about a legendary One-Man-Band.
It wasn't until the late '70's, when Yazoo Records released "Like A Monkey Fartin' Through A Stovepipe", the Best of Mike Billo, 1925-1932 Vol 1" that I finally got to hear the man himself. There were all the songs that the legend was built upon, "Bed Bug Varmints and Beanbags", "She Wants To Strangle My Monkey" and the instrumental tour-de-force, What'd'ya Mean, No Tweezers?". To this day, Musicologists are baffled by how one man, without the aid of mechanical device, can play the Ukulele, Harmonica, Bass, Accordion, Banjo, Mandolin, Guitar, Musical Saw and Nose Flute, simultaneously, while singing.
My quest was over! I had finally located America's forgotten oddball.
I introduced myself to the ornery Curmudgeon and we spent the day drinking shoe polish strained through white bread and talking about the "Good Old Days".
As it turns out he is still extremely active and constantly "on the grift" as a One-Man-Band/Evangelist. To read more on that, click here