F QUILT BY ASSOCIATION INVESTIGATING THE SECRET WORLD OF AN ENIGMATIC RECORD LABEL By Nick Spacek
MUSIC
rom the ‘50s through the ‘70s, some of America’s “budget” record labels gained notoriety for seemingly random output. They released what they could afford to release and, as such, created a connective thread between musicians and styles that otherwise could not be more disparate. Few encompassed this scattershot set of sounds quite like Quilt Records. A scan through their catalog is to see the tympanist stylings of Mrs. Helen Marf; the “spirited, lazy blues walks” of Jumbo Puny O’Dainty; Clyle Davenport’s incidental music from cult British television series Efron’s Flight; and the surfrock of Sparta, Minnesota’s The Dumpster Lads. A random smattering of acts, still somehow cut from the same cloth. It’s a fascinating legacy. Even the most encyclopedic music historian would probably be stumped when it comes to Quilt’s three decades of releases. That’s because Quilt Records isn’t real. All of the music from Quilt’s diverse portfolio of artists is the product of a single Kansas City musician: Jason Beers. Those familiar with Beers’ musical output under his own name—as part of The Brannock Device, Dead Voices, and Wild Chipmunk & the Cuddly Poos—won’t be surprised. Beers is exactly the musician you’d expect to develop his own fictional musical universe in which to play God. It all began with the July 2010 release of A Small Collection of Gargantuan Hits By the Many Pseudonyms of Jumbo Puny O’Dainty. Dropped on Beers’ Bandcamp page, it purports to be a compilation of songs
recorded by the man born Melvin O’Dainty in Wooly Bully, Nebraska “from 1952 until his death in 1959 due to complications from wounds received during a gig at McGonigle’s Happy Times Pub.” How did one eccentric release spawn an entire alternate multi-era musical roster? “It started out as a goofy pun for the Big Tiny Little albums–the guy from Lawrence Welk,” explains Beers. “There are other albums that he did under different pseudonyms. I always thought that was kind of hilarious. One night I wrote out all these different things: ‘big and tiny,’ ‘big tiny little,’ and combined them all.” Beers’ initial thought was that this would be a hilarious album, mostly for himself. The names of the various labels within the Jumbo Puny O’Dainty liner notes, such as Valvotrix, Happy Tunes, and Mighty Mite, were the inspiration for Quilt’s eventual cadre of artists—with Quilt Records being the label for which O’Dainty recorded the song “All Broke Down” in 1952. “The fun was coming up with these weird record label names,” Beers says, acknowledging that they’re not too outrageous to be believable for the era. So why not keep trying to branch off from the initial Jumbo Puny O’Dainty stuff? Mrs. Helen Marf came in to assist on Tympani Blues (At Last), a mind-boggling conjunction of piano blues stroll and massive, rolling timpani drums. It sounds as though it came straight from some low-level trickster demon, with the mission to blow minds and confound listeners. Diving the bargain bins at any Goodwill will uncover two distinct genres of “forgotten” music from a time period. You’ve got
Jason Beers’ Quilt Records output, along with his own solo work, can be found at jasonbeers.bandcamp.com.
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THE PITCH | February 2022 | THEPITCHKC.COM
