Snopes sheds light on the origins of another beloved Christmas myth: “The story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer… was developed for commercial purposes by a Montgomery Ward copywriter at the specific request of his employer…”
Was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer created to bring comfort to a girl whose mother was dying of cancer?
CLAIM
The character ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ was created by a father to bring comfort to his daughter as her mother was dying of cancer.
WHAT’S TRUE
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created by a man whose wife was dying of cancer.
WHAT’S FALSE
The story of Rudolph was created by a father to bring comfort to his daughter as her mother lay dying of cancer.
ORIGIN
To most of us, the character of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, immortalized in song and a popular holiday television special, has always been an essential part of our Christmas folklore, but Rudolph is in fact a mid-twentieth century invention whose creation can be traced to a specific time and person
When a “Ëœcrate-digger” found a massive vinyl collection at a flea market, he couldn”t understand how a soul star who”d released over 100 records could just disappear. But the truth turned out to be even stranger. Jon Ronson goes in search of Mingering Mike
Intensely shy … Mingering Mike at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino for the Guardian
This story begins with a record collector unearthing something extraordinary at a flea market one dawn in 2003. His name is Dori Hadar. He worked as a criminal investigator for a law firm in Washington DC and he”d been up all night with a client at the jail next door.
“It”s a miserable place to be, the DC jail,” Hadar tells me. “It”s stuffy and muggy and everything”s old and decaying.”
“Do you remember what your client had been accused of?” I ask.
Hadar shakes his head. “It”s basically drugs, guns and murders. Mainly.”
Hadar finally left the jail at 5am, just as a nearby flea market was setting up. He was a regular there – a “crate-digger” – for ever rifling through boxes of secondhand soul and funk albums, hunting for rarities. “It”s very competitive, the crate-digger world,” Hadar says. “People guard their boxes, they don”t want you to see, they pull the records out really fast.”
But Hadar had never been at the flea market at 5am before, and was thrilled to find no other crate-digger in sight. “And suddenly this enormous collection turned up. There must have been 15 boxes of albums.”
“As a crate-digger, that must be “¦”
“It”s the dream.”
All artworks courtesy the artist/Smithsonian American Art Museum
Hadar was a true soul aficionado, with an encyclopaedic knowledge and 10,000 records at home. Which is why he was so amazed to discover 38 albums by a soul singer he had never heard of. His name was Mingering Mike. Hadar stared at the record covers. He read the liner notes. There was Mingering Mike”s 1968″s debut, Sit”tin by the Window. The cover art was a painting of a young man in a green T-shirt, good-looking, serious. The comedian Jack Benny had written the liner notes, calling him “a bright and intelligent young man with a great, exciting future awaiting him”.
So it transpired. There were greatest hits collections and a Bruce Lee concept album and movie soundtracks – including one for an action film called Stake Out. And there were live albums, like 1972″s Live from Paris, The Mingering Mike Review: “ËœTheir biggest show ever,” read the liner notes. “ËœWhat a night that was.”
Most of the song titles were upbeat and optimistic, like There”s Nothing Wrong With You Baby and Play It Cool, Don”t Be No Fool, Get Your Thing Together and Go Back to School. But other records had darker themes, like The Drug Store and Mama Takes Dope. Some were still wrapped in their original cellophane, price tags intact.
Hadar pulled out a few discs to see what condition they were in. Which was when he discovered to his enormous surprise that they weren”t vinyl. They were black-painted cardboard, with fake labels and hand-drawn grooves.
What had begun to dawn on Hadar was now totally apparent: Mingering Mike did not exist. He was somebody”s hugely detailed fantasy.
While performing with the Tiny Top Circus during the Perform Chinatown: Chaos Reigns festival in LA on July 26, 2014, BIGFOOT once again escaped. The $10 million dollar reward, which had been rescinded when he returned from his sojourn in New York, has been reinstated. Everyone is warned to approach with caution, as BIGFOOT can be extremely flatulent.
