Mingering Mike: Souled American
Remember soul singer G. M. Stevens's Sit'tin By the Window? It was released in 1968 on Mother Goose Enterprises and contained the poignant loner tracks "It's a Boy's Life (But a Man's World)" and "Everyone's Goin' Somewhere Except Me." Jack Benny wrote the liner notes, describing "G.S." (somehow his initials changed from front cover to back) as "a bright and intelligent young man with a great, exciting future." Or perhaps you recall Mingering Mike's 1972 gospel holiday album, Just in Time for Easter. Or the Outsiders' seventies release, Mercy the World, containing "The World Is Just a Big Ball of Air" and "We Mercy the World."
But you probably don't, because all these records exist in editions of one. Or less than one, if you take into account that their elaborate hand-drawn covers, often sealed in cellophane and slapped with price tags, contained no actual vinyl. They, and a hundred other imaginary albums and singles, were created on cardboard by a Maryland man who still goes only by the Mingering Mike moniker. In 2003, they were rediscovered in a Washington D.C. flea market by soul-obsessed record crate digger Dori Hadar, who manged to track down the artist. Mike informed him that his find was the sad result of Mike's inability to pay the rent on his storage space.
While Mingering Mike's fantasy recording never took off, he has since been rightfully lauded as one of the more fascinating so-called outsider artists to emerge in recent years. And though his music can't be heard, it can certainly be seen: through July 28 at the Hemphill Gallery in Washington, DC; in the handsome Princeton Architectural Press tome Mingering Mike: The Amazing Career of an Imaginary Soul Superstar; and on a website. Every great unknown soul singer should enjoy such an afterlife.