Occasionally I see porno paperbacks online with cover photos of pornostars – and I click click save, and here’s one. Hard Riders by Mark Scott – not sure if he’s written anything else, but it’s part of the
Surree Stud Series. I’ve bought and sold porno paperbacks (I know some call them “pulp novels, “pulp fiction” or “sleaze” – but the first two really refer to the earlier books – before the mid 60’s and books started to get more explicit – so sleaze is a better term, but that also can refer to those “r-rated” books) – anyway, yes, bought and sold on eBay (I also got a huge amount from our gay library – or rather the NYC one). I think the first breakout explicit paperback was Richard Armory’s Song of the Loon (made into a major motion picture in 1970. I sold my copy some years back (wait, I sold a copy, I am sure I’ve kept one – it’s actually a pretty good read!) Anyway, where was I? rambling about porn stars on covers of pornopaperbacks. OK.
5 replies on “hard rider”
Doing research for an upcoming review, and I thought I’d see if you ever mentioned Song Of The Loon before. Searching ‘loon’ led me here and one post where you mentioned the word saloon, so I guess this is it.
I learned a few things looking at the wikipedia article for Richard Amory (no R), who wrote Song Of The Loon in 1966:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Amory
Apparently Richard also wrote a few sequels, including Song Of Aaron and Listen The Loon Sings. But this line from the article jumped out at me:
“Song of the Loon was adapted as an erotic film in 1970 without Amory’s involvement and much to his disgust. It also inspired a spoof, Fruit of the Loon by “Richard Armory” (in reality veteran porn writer George Davies who wrote under pen names including Clay Caldwell or Lance Lester).”
Which makes me wonder how widespread the ‘Fruit Of The Loon’ book was, since that would certainly seem to have been a pulp fiction / porno paperback. And how many people were fooled by the knockoff writer deliberately coming as close to Amory’s name as he could, by simply adding an R to the last name.
Did you ever check if you have a copy of either book, and if so which one? Don’t go digging just because I asked but the next time you’re down in the porn dungeon and happen to think of it I’d be curious about that, and if you (or anyone) know how different the books are.
I’d guess the knockoff one by Armory with an R has a lot more explicit sex acts depicted, even though what I remember about those books was that they took forever to describe a simple blowjob for example. I used to have a few but parted with them years ago, I know a couple I bought almost exclusively because of some Tom of Finland or other erotic artwork on the cover.
Very interesting. I’m not familiar with the Armory books.
I do love old porno paperbacks, mostly because of the cover art as you said. Unfortunately, they can be sooo badly written. You do find a gem from time to time though.
I liked the original SONG OF THE LOON – it might be too flowerly for some – “Ephraim watched the naked Indian as he chopped wood with great, swinging axe-blows, watched the interplay of muscles on his back, his buttocks, his chest; watched the heavy penis swinging as he walked. He remembered Montgomery, who had first taken him in a drunken frenzy, who could offer his love only when witless with liquor, and who woke up screaming curses in the middle of the night.” – but I appreciated the notion of men, in the wilderness, in nature, could truly be themselves (gay) and the booming porn book industry sometimes produced some good stuff – there’s a vampire one, I have to look it up, i absolutely adored that one
so you are reviewing the film? I have only seen snippets, but I really enjoyed the book – if you search the older blog (blogger) – you’ll find a couple entries – SONG LOON – back to the actual book, I did not mind the lengthier sex descriptions, although usually I stay away from such verbose books (think that lady who did all the vampire books – ugh!) I am fairly sure I have the original, and possibly the sequels – Song of Aaron – 1967, and Listen, the Loon Sings – 1968.
And I amy even have had, but possibly sold, Fruit of the Loon – all this needs some digging to see if I
still have, and while I haven’t delved much into the porno paperbacks that DON’T feature uncredited porn models, this winter would be a good time to explore some of these earlier ones!
Those four book cover images are like the old song on Sesame Street I think, ‘three of these things belong together, one of these things does not’ .. I had found the cover of the knockoff Fruit of the Loon book on a page that talked about the real Richard a bit (I guess the Fruit cover says Ricardo Armory for the first name, as well as the extra R in the surname), anyway it’s one of the links in my review that I did earlier:
https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageGayVids/comments/15c2wxu/song_of_the_loon_sawyer_productions_1970/
The only thing missing from the clip I found are the closing credits, but it does include the theme song, which I included a link to just the audio as well as some other stuff I found. John Iverson was known as David Elliott when Bob Mizer photographed him in 1965, so he’s a few years older by 69/70 or whenever they filmed Loon. It’s softcore and the cinematography looks beautiful, filmed in the mountains in northern California for the most part.
I don’t think I’ ever read the original Loon let alone the sequels or the knockoff, but I’d like to read the first one at least once. It seems like it was more bridging the gap between erotic ‘sleaze’ as you put it, and more mainstream or legit literature. But that can still be good.