Moondog : 1. Early life.

Moondog

1. Early life.

Born in to an Episcopalian family in Marysville, Kansas, the young Louis Hardin started playing a set of drums that he made himself from a cardboard box at the age of five. His family relocated to Wyoming, opening a trading post at Fort Bridger and Hardin attended school in a couple of small towns. At one point Hardin's father took him to an Arapaho Sun Dance where he sat on the lap of Chief Yellow Calf and played a tomtom made from buffalo skin. It was this exposure to Native American instruments and rhythms that would shape his music.

Hardin played drums in Hurley High School before losing his sight in a farm accident at the age of 16. After learning the principles of music in several schools for blind young men across middle America, he taught himself the skills of ear training and composition. Principally self-taught, he studied with Burnet Tuthill and at the Iowa School for the Blind.

Hardin moved to Batesville, Arkansas. where he lived until 1942 when he got a scholarship to study in Memphis, though the majority of his musical training was self-taught by ear with some theory derived from books in braille. Hardin moved to New York in 1943 where he met noted classical music luminaries such as Leonard Bernstein and Toscanini, as well as legendary jazz performer-composers like Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman whose upbeat tempos and often humorous compositions would influence Hardin's work.