On this day when the world of celebrity merges with the world of government, we visit the life of another unlikely personage who brought happiness-- however fleeting-- to many.

Leo Ezekiel Mannes was born Oct. 10, 1911, in San Francisco, on a hill. The latter detail would follow him through his career and the city of birth would mean nothing at all.

His father was an accomplished violinist. The family moved to Los Angeles, where as a young man he performed in a tent show. During the 1920's he began hanging around the radio station KPMC, where he did some children's shows and performed with a jazz trio.

The radio station wanted to lasso the rural folks who, fleeing the Dust Bowl, had landed in California. So it was that one day, the station manager, Glen Rice, excitedly broke into regular programming to tell a most unusual story. He said that as he was riding in the hills in Malibu, he had lost his way and by chance, stumbled upon a small village of hill folk who had been out of touch with civilization for 100 years. They lived in log cabins, had a blacksmith shop, and lived as people did in the 18th century.

Day by day, the radio station disclosed more pertinent facts, such as the tidbit that the hill people were directly descended from Daniel Boone. On April 6, 1930, some of the "hill people" showed up at the radio station studio on mules. Their leader was Zeke Craddock.

Zeke Craddock was Leo Ezekiel Mannes, and the whole thing was a stunt out of his busy imagination as a radio promotion man. It was so successful that crowds of radio listeners were soon camping outside the radio station in the hopes of following the "hillbillies" home to their secluded hideaway. Zeke Craddock and his actors outwitted the fans by disguising themselves in coats and ties and they stole away undetected. The ersatz bumpkins were periodically trotted out to large crowds at Grauman's Chinese Theater and other radio promotion events.

"Zeke" changed his pseudonym from " Craddock" to "Manners" and his gang of miscreants broke up into three different musical groups. Zeke Manners and one of his pals, Elton Britt, said to have been the world's highest yodeler, set off for New York City in a Model A. Upon arriving they sang at radio stations, theaters and saloons and street corners.

Not every listener was enthralled. Mr. Manners once rather ruefully recalled being given $2 to stop singing in a hotel bar.

Not long after, the group got a spot on "The Rudy Vallee Radio Show" and soon were appearing on Fred Allen's show. For awhile, Mr. Manners was one of the Three Links of Sausage, with their sponsor being Armour & Company, the meatpacker.

When the sponsorship expired, the group tried being the Murray Hill Billies in reference to that Manhattan neighborhood. The name flopped. Their success came as Zeke Manners and His Gang. In 1935 they went to London and performed for the royal family.

In 1943, Mr. Manners joined the Army, serving with the Army Air Forces' motion picture unit. He appeared in "Winged Victory," Moss Hart's musical celebrating the Air Forces.

After the war, Zeke Manners shuttled between the East and West coasts. From 1950 to 1952, he was the host of one of television's earlies talk shows, on Channel 7, WJZ, which is now WABC. The show was a two-hour free-for-all. Eddie Cantor would pop in; Virginia Graham got her start as a television host by serving as Zeke's sidekick.

Back in Los Angeles, he became the nation's first cross-country radio disc jockey on the ABC network, according to a Newsweek magazine of the time. He managed this (echoes of Tom Joyner's early career) by exploiting the time differences. He would creep out of bed at 3:30 a.m. At 4:30 a.m. he would do a 45-minute show for East Coast audiences. An hour later, he would do another show for audiences in the Rocky Mountain time zone, etc., until the cycle finally ended at 7:45 a.m. Pacific Time.

In his "hill billy" persona, he banged out tunes on the accordion, piano and organ, often backed up by ABC's janitors clanking pails. His character was something between a cowpoke just off the Chisholm Trail and Li'l Abner, albeit one who happened to live in a Manhattan penthouse with a valet.

Times changed and so did Zeke. In the mid-1950s he worked as a rock 'n roll disc jockey. In the 1960s he appeared in Las Vegas with a bluegrass group. He can be spotted in a 1985 movie, directed by his nephew Albert Brooks. The movie was "Lost in America" and he was one of a couple living in a trailer park.

All his life, he wrote songs. He wrote "The Pennsylvania Polka" with Lester Lee, which was introduced by the Andrews Sisters in 1942, and was included eight times over in the 1993 movie "Groundhog Day."

His song "Fat Man Blues," a collaboration with William G. Cahan, a surgeon, included the line, "All this eatin' is defeatin' your chance / Of ever getting any good romance."

The Byrds recorded a song he wrote about the initial moon landing, "Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins."

Another of his original band names, from the 1920s, was the "Beverly Hill Billies." He was the only surviving member of that group when the television show of the same name appeared in the 1960s.

By that time, he had long been known as the "Jewish Hillbilly." So, when he sued the television show for stealing his name, he had no trouble proving it was his. After all, he was Jewish. And, if you recall, he had been born on a hill.

He was made musical director of the television show. When the show ended, he developed a nightclub act for himself and the show's star, Buddy Ebsen, which appeared in Las Vegas and elsewhere.

His deathbed request, dutifully fulfilled by his family, was to be buried "as a hillbilly." He was dressed for the hereafter in a baseball "gimme" cap celebrating the Spice Girls, red suspenders, and purple shades from the 99-cent store. A cigar was placed in his pocket.

So, though you may never have heard of Zeke Manners, take heart.

Ten years after she began singing professionally, in a West Coast production of "Finian's Rainbow," a very different Odetta Holmes reached a career "tipping point" in New York with with a solo concert at Carnegie Hall, accompanied only by Bill Lee on bass, on April 8, 1960. The album from that concert, Odetta at Carnegie Hall, is a bona fide classic in the history of folk music, Vanguard VRS 9076. The concert was a benefit for the Church of the Master, Reverend James H. Robinson, Minister, whose choir, directed by Theodore R. Stent, M.D., was known not only for spirituals but for performances of difficult classics such as the Brahms Requiem. At the time of this recording, the popularization of folk music was in the hands of a few people who had recognized its mass market potential. One of them was Odetta's, and later Bob Dylan's, manager, Albert B. Grossman. Another was Harold Leventhal, with whom I had the pleasure of visiting, in his midtown Manhattan office in the mid-1990s. Mr. Leventhal recorded the concert featured on this vinyl album, which we have one copy of here at moneyblows books & music.
Odetta's obituary appears in today's New York Times. She was a great singer, influencing everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Tracey Chapman.
If you are in the Durham, NH area this Saturday morning, we are having a barn sale featuring record albums for about $2, all genres. Here's a link to the craigslist ad. If you go to our home page, the address is published at the top.
The folk music movement, for all its faults, blanketed the growing American middle class and spoke deeply to a select few who spearheaded the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and other bastions of social justice. Almost fifty years later, our country has scarcely progressed except in small pockets of influence. Odetta had hoped to perform at Barack Obama's inauguration. He will have to do with someone else. Presidents have no shortage of people who can help them. Some things never change.

What have we here then? Oh, just a little fun inspired by a site sent to me by a reader. Check it out: http://www.sleeveface.com While we're doing this, another link I'd like to share with you, it's the vinyl search for amazon.com. Finally, they have a page you can search vinyl records from and it works pretty good. If you try to search for vinyl from any other amazon search page, it's almost futile. But this link will give you vinyl almost every time: Try amazon vinyl search.


Finally, how about one more link? We're going to sell some vinyl in the barn this weekend, so for more details check out our craigslist ad. Let me know if you need directions to the barn. We'll be offering albums, singles, 78s, you name it, most for $2 apiece. Probably some good sleeveface fodder!

I saw an ad in the New York Times that said "old bestsellers are affordable first editions." The advertiser was offering less than a half dozen "old bestsellers" for $50. This is a blatant deception, clever as it is. The books they refer to as "old bestsellers" had first editions numbering in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. They are by reputable and popular authors and are easily available online for 99 cents or less.
It's hard to give a sucker an even break, so I won't try.... other than to comment: clearly shoppers are upset to the point of killing store employees in a mad rush to find a "bargain." They don't stop to think that even the "bargain" may be vastly overpriced. Yes, some kind of unspoken covenant about shopping has been forever broken. Yes, the internet (initially a project of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency) had something to do with this. But, shopping really turned into a religion about the time the "consumer" movement gained traction back in the 1960s. As the movement grew--- industry and government regulation, "consumer"-directed advertising ("citi never sleeps" etc, which once referred to early ATMs)-- a notion formed, that it was not nice to exploit consumers with all their buying power. The effect of the movement has basically been opposite. Intelligent consumers have turned into chumps, to the extent they will knock over a Wal*Mart temp employee on their way to buy something that they don't understand the value of.
There was a variation on the "consumer" movement that started building in the early 1970s, the medical version of it was called HMO or PPO, etc. This was the idea that the consumer had the right to harness America's vast health care assets not just to cure problems, but also prevent them. Gee, guess what happened? Screwed again. Guerilla shopping didn't come out of nowhere. People are mad. Dine 'n dash is considered a game. Let's face it, if a restaurant operated like a hospital ER, you'd be paying for that meal the rest of your life. Unless you were flat broke when you got there, without a pot to piss in. Of course, the restaurant wouldn't serve you but the hospital would, the ER has to, the government says so. They pay the bill so the hospital won't kill you, at least not that day.
I digress. Where I'm going with this is, you're being overcharged, OK? You can't do much about it. At moneyblows books and music we have sold online since 1997. Almost everything we have is hard to find elsewhere. But, thanks to the internet, even hard to find stuff is easy to find. So, we have to price appropriately. We are still in business because we are self financed. Our prices reflect reality because our existence is month to month and a bank doesn't own us. There's no merit or virtue in this, other than, you can look for something, find it and buy it, at our store, without any more fear than any other transaction, and maybe even less, since we don't have a line of angry people outside.
Hey, what else can I say except, Shop Here! Or , if you want to find us on amazon, or abebooks, or gemm, or netsoundsmusic, or musicstack, or choosebooks, or biblio, or zvab, just ask and we will send you to the right place. If you want to use a search engine to find us, just type moneyblows. You will find us out there. You may even find some other funny stuff which we have no control over. People like to fantasize about money blowing in the wind. But let me tell you, in the last 11 years, people have bought stuff from us that is now worth more than they paid. We believe in collectible books and music and have plenty of it ourselves that you'll never see offered for sale. OK, I've rambled on long enough. C'mon in and enjoy the selection!

Money At Rest

We must do our part in lowering prices, so we have an unbelievable coupon deal for customers from today (Nov. 23rd) until the end of December 2008. When you are filling in your order, contact us for a code which will give you Half Off! And, whether you use the coupon or not, if your order totals $25, we'll throw in free shipping. That's at www.shop.moneyblows.com only. We've recently put up some DJ quality stereo 45 rpms for $2.75 each.
Kinks
Willie Nelson
Queen
Quiet Riot
Billy Joel
Petula Clark
KC and the Sunshine Band
Orchestra Manoeuvres in the Dark
Bette Midler
Murray Head
Paul Simon
Little Richard
Mickey & Sylvia
The Miracles
Rosanne Cash
Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
U2
Taco
The Clash
Stray Cats
Police
Bob James
Robert Plant
Meri Wilson

If you act quickly and use the coupon you could get all these 45 rpms (most of them stereo 7" singles) shipped to you free for around $30 total. That's a heap of value, and an example of what's available all over moneyblows.com for lovers of vintage music items, replacement record needles-- and, coming soon, thousands more music and books!

Hi, it's me from moneyblows books & music. As life catches up with original creation, we find that that the term "money blows" is being used by various innocent bloggers and other internet denizens. Many people do not realize that the term "money blows" was coined and copyrighted by none other than myself. I am not opposed to granting permission for "fair use" of this term, although I certainly did not create the economic conditions which make it so apt. I do recall, when discussing my creation of this term with someone on a bus in Chicago in the late 1990s, they asked me if it related to some kind of prosperity philosophy. Isn't that ironic, as they might say on NPR. Or, if it were proposed as a question, which many NPR interviews use to frame their comments, I might respond, "absolutely." I do "absolutely" own the term "money blows" or "moneyblows", whether expressed in one word or two words, and anyone reading this or not reading this needs to ask my permission for its use.
It really doesn't matter how you are using it. I am currently using it for my collectibles business, for moneyblows books and music. It is completely appropriate because the value of collectibles is as elastic as the value of money. But even if you are using the term to relate to money, you still need my permission to use the term "money blows" or "moneyblows" or anything like it. My attorney tells me to contact him if ever I have any problems with people thinking they can use this expression, but I told him, hey, I'll give permission if folks only ask. So, let me know if you have any questions. I should mention, some variations on the expression, I do not own. I do not own "honey blows", for example. Or "money knows," which you should use with abandon. Or "money flows," as google suggests without any particular justification. Think for yourself, and use any expression you want, but in any language, ask me before you use "money blows" or moneyblows". Thanks.

Shop.moneyblows.com

We have been gradually rebuilding our storefront where you can shop conveniently with us at shop.moneyblows.com
A quick run-through of the categories we've currently populated on the site:
10-in. vinyl records includes just a few items, never has been a big category for us. But, I should note a few very special items in this category: a Jazz at the Philharmonic Vol. 3 which is rare by any standard, featuring Al Killian, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. And, something from the 1960s, published by Scholastic under the direction of the National Gallery of Art: Music of the Shakers. It's got some pretty incredible songs and performances on it.
The next category is called 12-in. singles. Also a small category consisting of mostly dance singles.
The next category is 45 rpm vinyl records. These are the "big hole" singles, and we have quite a few in all musical styles. To find the single you're looking for, best to use the Advanced Search and enter the artist or title.
We also have 78 rpm vinyl records for advanced record collectors who like to dig deep into vinyl history. There's some great blues, jazz, and r&b here, a smattering of pop and country, and it's also best to use the Advanced Search and enter the artist or title.
Our biggest music category by far is LP vinyl records, with thousands of rare and collectible albums, and also some copies of albums that are very popular, including rock from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. This is the "bread and butter" category that put the "music" in our store title. An interesting piece of trivia, is that we were the first dealer to offer vinyl records on amazon.com. You can imagine that before amazon starting offering their site to anyone with a few records to sell, we pretty much owned the category of vinyl records in the early amazon "zShops." (zShops was the "z" in amazon's "everything from a to z.") Likewise, before we pioneered the category of records on amazon, we were a books-only ecommerce outfit.
Other categories: we have some audio CDs & tapes. Once again, a very small category, but with some very distinctive and hard to find jazz and classical items. We were also a pioneer in offering record replacement needles online, and you may find this category very helpful, for we have needles and cartridges not only for many vintage players, but also to replace the needles found on some inexpensive common turntables sold today at places such as Radio Shack and online from Audio Technica. Under the growing category of music history we currently have some rare copies of The Clarinet magazine, and Etude Magazine, both of which are music teacher type specialty publications. We have many more publications to add to this category, so keep an eye out if you are interested in music-related publications. Another popular category is vintage sheet music, not just for collectors but also for musicians who seek the rare verses to important tin pan alley tunes, or original arrangements or chords. Finally, we are building back our books and magazines category, starting out with the very popular Architectural Digest periodicals that have become such big sellers for us.
So, that's a rundown of the current categories, and watch shop.moneyblows.com for more every day!