Thanks to the Four Men with Beards label, I now own more Moondog records on vinyl! Even his major label releases can go for like $200 these days, so this is seriously a big deal. Well, for me anyway.

A tall and hefty dude, Moondog cut an imposing figure with his long beard, hand-made leather poncho and clothing, clutching a large staff and various funky-looking instruments. Moondog made his living on the streets for many years, from much of the ’40s through the ’60s in fact. He befriended Leonard Bernstein, Marlon Brando, Julie Andrews, Diane Arbus (who snapped him several times), even Charlie Parker. He’d reel off poems, sell mimeographed copies of his book “The Art of the Canon,” and collect money for playing his music.

After famed columnist Walter Winchell wrote about him, small companies began to release ’78s of his music, then larger labels released full-length albums of orchestral work, and he became an icon of the burgeoning counter-culture. He performed in concert with Lenny Bruce and Tiny Tim and appears in Conrad Brooks’ artsy movie “Chappaqua” alongside William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. On their first record in 1968, Big Brother and the Holding Company covered his “All Is Loneliness.” Since then he’s been sampled by Stereolab and dozens of others.

The thing about Moondog is he’s been lumped in with all these counter-cultural freakweirds and margin-walkers. Most people assume that Moondog’s music is gonna be art brut koo-koo nonsense or like Harry Partch Lite or something. In the tradition of the American visionary artist, Moondog has worn the cloak of eccentricity to attain a certain notoriety. Sure, he did perform in the street, he did dress funky, and he incorporated urban field recordings and his lively poetry into his compositions. But his music is nothing if not a total joy. Delightfully accessible, interwoven melodies float atop shuffling beats, accompanied by washes of strings or maybe lush blending vocal harmonies, and perhaps punctuated by sweetly stampeding saxophones, or maybe a brash-sounding men’s chorus—it depends on the piece. But trust me, it’s all really, really good.

—DJ Yeti