It gives me incredible pleasure to announce one of our eMusic Selects artists for June: the incomparable imaginary soul superstar, Mingering Mike.

I’ve written about Mike twice before in this space, but in brief: four years ago record collector Dori Hadar is in a flea market in DC when he comes across about 50 albums from a guy named Mingering Mike. The covers appear to be hand-drawn and, when he looks closer, he realizes all the LPs are made of cardboard. The artwork is amazing, though — unbelievably detailed, all of the albums sporting different record labels and catalog numbers. Dori tracks down Mike, who had been separated from his beloved artwork in a strange and unfortunate turn of events. After that, the legend of Mike exploded: the covers — more than 50 in all! — were displayed at the Hemphill Fine Arts Gallery to an adoring public; stories ran in the New Yorker and the New York Times and the Washington Post. Mike — justifiably so — was praised for his astonishing artwork, his dedication to his vision and — and this is the part that I love — for his love of music, a love that ran so deep and so strong that it led him to create elaborate album covers for records that didn’t even exist.

Or didn’t they? In June, eMusic Selects will unveil the never-before-heard actual teenage recordings of imaginary soul superstar Mingering Mike. When Dori found Mike’s imaginary album covers, he also found boxes of reel-to-reel tapes — recordings of the songs Mike had made with his cousin the Big “D” when they were teenagers. The songs themselves, as you might expect, are a little primitive: there are no instruments, aside from Mike and “D” replicating the sound of brass and guitars with their voices and creating a rhythm track by beating an afro pick against a phone book. But the songs themselves are marvelous: absolute soul classics, full of heart and sweet spirit. They’re not stray, formless doodles: these are songs with verse 1s, choruses, verse 2s, middle 8s — the whole shebang. Anyone who has ever whiled away their teenage years listening to records will feel and instant kinship with Mike. And after a 40 year wait, I am thrilled that eMusic will be the home of the very first Mingering Mike full-length.

I took a trip to DC a few weeks ago to hang out with Mike, and turned my visit into a feature which will run on the site (complete with quote from David Byrne!), accompanying the debut of Mike’s album. In so many ways, I feel like his story is that of the ultimate music lover: someone so deep into records they memorize every stray line on the cover, and measure the space between the grooves. I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I do!