Antique

Decades ago, the Washington, D.C. artist who goes by Mingering Mike channeled his musical aspirations into a series of meticulously hand-painted LP covers for albums that didn't exist. This piece from 1972 is called Joseph War & Friend, 'As High As The Sky' (mixed media on paperboard).

Smithsonian American Art Museum

"I'm Superman" b/w "Blind in One Eye," 1975 (mixed media on paperboard).

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has just added a handful of soul records to its collection — or at least that's what you might think when you first see the work of Mingering Mike. A self-taught artist, he grew up in a tough part of Washington, D.C., just a few miles from the museum, though his family didn't spend much time there. Now, his work is in the museum permanently.

Mike's work might never have been seen by anyone if it weren't for Dori Hadar, an obsessive record collector. One morning in 2003, Hadar showed up early at a flea market in Washington, DC and started to dig through crates of used LPs.

"I came upon this one crate that contained albums like I had never seen before," Hadar says. "There were approximately 40 LPs that had hand-painted covers and handwritten liner notes and lyrics. And they were all made by someone named Mingering Mike."

At a glance, the albums look like other soul records of the 1960s and '70s — except they're obviously drawn by hand in colored pen and pencil. They feature a young black man with an afro and sideburns, sometimes alone, sometimes with other musicians and dancers. The titles seem to trace the arc of a real career: Grooving with Mike, Boogie Down at the White House, and The Mingering Mike Show: Live from the Howard Theater. Hadar reached into the sleeves to check the condition of the records inside.

"They weren't in very good condition at all, because they were made out of cardboard. And someone had painted them with shiny black paint so that they looked real," Hadar says.

Hadar didn't know why anyone would go to these lengths to create an imaginary music career, but he wanted to find out. It happens that Hadar is a private investigator by trade, and a couple of weeks later, he and a friend were knocking on a door in southeast D.C.

"The door sorta cracked open, and this guy peered out at us. We said, 'Mingering Mike?' And he didn't say anything," Hadar says. "We told him, 'We found some of your things at the flea market.' And he said, 'My babies?'"

Mike was glad to know his albums were safe — but initially, he was not happy to see Hadar at his front door.
"Coming in the ghetto and saying, 'I have your stuff' — what would you think?" Mike says.

Mike still doesn't want to use his real name. At first he didn't want anyone to see the album covers he made either.
"I thought a lot of it, but it was just something private I did," he says. "That's the only way I could say things at the time, 'cause I was an introvert.'"




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