NEW YORK — Pawing lank gray hair out of his eyes and cinching the cord of his cowboy hat under his chin, Hasil Adkins looks like a countrified Rip Van Winkle. He may have finally woken up to his teenage dream of rock 'n' roll stardom, at 65.
With taped fingers, Adkins churns out a frenzied shuffle on his guitar, keeping time with his feet on a bass drum in a sold-out club in downtown Manhattan. His lyrics tumble out and audience members — most less than half his age — gawk as the one-man band breaks his strumming to whack a cymbal with the back of his hand.
Beside the stage stands a grinning Billy Miller, co-founder of Norton Records, a label built around the primal recordings Adkins has been hewing in his West Virginia mountain home since the Eisenhower era.
Since first issuing Adkins 15 years ago, Norton has acquired a full roster of musical misfits and underdogs, not a household name among them. Like rock 'n' roll anthropologists, Miller and Miriam Linna, his wife and partner, track down the primitive musical tribes that evolved in America's garages and basements.
Their efforts began in 1979 with a magazine called Kicks. They published profiles of their unsung heroes. But few readers could ever hope to hear them.
Sharing the music "seemed like an essential extension," Linna says.
Norton Records was inaugurated in 1986 with a collection of Adkins' early recordings, titled "Out to Hunch."
As an independent reissue label, Norton — named for Art Carney's character (Ed Norton) on "The Honeymooners" — is not alone. Similar small operations include Crypt, Get Hip, Sundazed and Bomp in the United States, Ace in England and Bear Family in Germany.
For many enthusiasts, though, Norton stands out.
The label is a fixture at WFMU, a New Jersey-based free-form radio station with a reputation and influence that exceed its modest broadcast range.
"They are supreme purveyors of quality," says WFMU music director Brian Turner.
Nowhere is Linna and Miller's enthusiasm for their work more apparent than in the Norton catalog, some 80 pages crammed with breathless product rundowns in eye-straining type.
Not every record in the catalog is a Norton release. But they all remain true to the mission: explore the musical unknown, preferably at loud volume.
To Linna, 46, and Miller, 48, a record's story can be as delectable as its music. To tell it, they work backward, starting with the label that first issued the record. Because many of these operations folded long ago, field research is often essential. Fellow collectors provide a rich source for clues. If they're lucky, the pair unearths the artists and the master recordings. Then they negotiate a license to reissue the material.
The jukeboxes, movie posters, pulp novels and thousands of records that fill Linna and Miller's home (and business headquarters) in Brooklyn are the fruits of their research.
Linna and Miller are astonished that their personal tastes have supported a 16-year business.
"We weren't looking to get into the record business. We're first and foremost fans," says Miller.
For a label Norton's size, selling 10,000 copies is a gold record, says Miller.
Most musicians they champion hailed from the rock bonanza of the 1950s and '60s, when homemade acts cropped up all over country. The passing decades seasoned their sounds — but also erased their trails.
Linna spent 10 years searching for one early rocker, Ron Haydock, only to find that he was dead. One frenzied single, "99 Chicks," fueled her quest for Haydock that led to Chicago, Texas and the West Coast. In Haydock she discovered a low-brow renaissance man after her own heart. He not only led a band, but also acted in B-movies, created monster magazines and wrote risque novels. But haunted by depression, Haydock never achieved mainstream success. He died in 1977, struck by an 18-wheeler on a Las Vegas exit ramp.
"There's a really sad element, to never have been able to pierce the veil of real fame," says Linna. "It would have been so great for him to see" how Norton had celebrated his work.
In 1959, James Shaw took the name Hannibal and became a minor R&B sensation with songs like "Jerkin' the Dog." As a publicity stunt he once rode an elephant down three blocks of Fifth Avenue before police halted him. But his ride in the music business only took him into the early 1970s.
Eventually, a disc jockey sought Hannibal out in Harlem and introduced him to Linna and Miller, who anthologized his recordings in August 2001. To support "Hannibalism!" Shaw took the stage in New York in December for what he said was his first performance in 20 years. This summer, he's scheduled to appear at a festival in Holland.
The old music was "picking up dust, making no money," says Hannibal. "Now I'm making money with it and getting back in the game. I got nothing to lose and everything to get."
Complimented by handsome layouts and photographs, Norton's comprehensive liner notes report the odd, colorful biographies of these would-be stars.
"The sheer knowledge that goes behind each release is totally reflected in their liner notes," says WFMU's Turner.
Their efforts to share these unpolished gems is what makes Linna and Miller more than just students and collectors of music. Because rare records are trafficked for high prices, "you think of how young people are going to be able to get into this," says Linna. "That's answered by labels like ours and several others."
Not only do the pair bear a torch for a genre considered extinct by commercial standards, but also for its original format: vinyl records. At Norton, 45-rpm records represent the ultimate sonic delivery system. Never mind that they appeal to a niche within a niche of customers.
"It's really up to the little labels like Norton to keep those formats alive," says David McLees, vice president of A&R at Rhino Records. Part of AOL Time Warner, Rhino is the giant of the reissue business.
McLees equates Norton with the Rhino of 15 years ago.
Linna and Miller say they'll never run short of characters that fit the Norton criteria of having "plenty of guts and something to say."
Though he has secured his status as a cult hero, Adkins struggled for decades to get noticed. Fishing for a record deal, he says he mailed out thousands of tapes and records over a 30-year period.
Even Richard Nixon got one. The president's reply came on White House stationary in 1970: "I am very pleased by your thoughtfulness in bringing these particular selections to my attention."
That perseverance helps explain why Adkins, whose style remains as raw as ever, is Norton's original star.
"People told me they wondered how I could stick with it, so many heartaches and letdowns. I had 'em by the hundreds; millions I guess," says Adkins. "I said, well, I didn't start to quit."
On the Net: www.nortonrecords.com