BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
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As many of our readers are aware by now, Leon Redbone left the saloon for the last time back on May 30th. On that day we lost an enigmatic figure in American culture. This was the guy who gave trendy 1970's audiences vintage music at a time when nobody was asking for it.
What is interesting was the fact that he cultivated an aura of mystery surrounding his origins, background and personal life. This, in and of itself, drew people to his performances. From there he simply presented his music in an unapologetic, stripped down and decidedly “old timey” fashion.
For many it would be the first and perhaps last time they would hear authentic American music from the early part of 20th century. He mixed blues of various dialects and included them in his musical performances along with early country, ragtime, tinpan alley favorites, songs from the great American songbook and an occasional original that he might claim was written 70 years earlier.
He was a hit.
Much of this might have been because we knew so little about this man. I have always thought the less you know about most people, the more interesting they become. Leon Redbone proved this to be a fact.
So, what do we know about Leon Redbone and what is the truth?
What We Know:
Redbone was born Dickran Goblalian on August 26, 1949, in the eastern Mediterranean Island country of Cypress to Armenian parents. They moved to England before settling in Toronto, Canada, in 1965. Sometime in the late 60’s he officially changed his name via The Ontario Change of Name Act to Leon Redbone.
By the early 70’s he had developed a solid reputation on the Toronto folk/blues circuit to the point of being invited to perform at the prestigious Mariposa Fold Festival held on Toronto Island Park in Lake Ontario in 1972. This already well-established event had booked Gordon Lightfoot, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Bukka White, Neil Young, Bonnie Raitt, Roosevelt Sykes, Jackson Browne and others for the weekend of Friday July 14th through Sunday July 16th, 1972. For the record Leon Redbone was slotted in between Joni Mitchel and Taj Mahal on the Saturday afternoon line up.
In the festival’s program guide, his brief bio was colorful and fictitious. It stated among other humorous falsehoods that he “…moved to Toronto because of the incident in Philadelphia.”
Performers and patrons would take a short ferry boat excursion from Toronto to the festival. One fan took his own boat to the island; his name was Bob Dylan. It has been reported that he got off his Criss Craft and immediately asked where he could find Leon Redbone. He, along with a throng of festival goers following, headed to see the performance of Redbone. After his set the two were joined by Gordon Lightfoot. They hopped in Bob’s boat and left the festival to points unknown.
It created an instant buzz around Leon Redbone. Hanging out with Bob Dylan at a folk festival would be like hanging out with the Virgin Mary at a Catholic Church. It’s a big deal. Even Rolling Stone magazine got a whiff of this mighty wind and published a feature on Leon Redbone before he even had a record contract.
Bob Dylan himself said that if he owned a record company, he would sign Leon Redbone. Soon thereafter, Leon Redbone did sign with a major label, Warner Brothers.
His first album, which came out in 1975 On The Track included songs written by artists as diverse as Lonnie Johnson, Irving Berlin, Fats Waller, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmie Rodgers and others. His performances on this studio album did not make any concessions to popular tastes in music at the time. It did reflect the musical sensibilities of several early 20th century musical genres including blues. His smoky baritone vocal delivery and concise, tasteful acoustic guitar playing were in full effect. He was a vessel of vintage sounds.
The album went to # 87 on the Billboard Pop chart. I admit, I know less about the pop charts as any human being dead or alive but #87 sounds pretty good considering many people weren’t the least bit familiar with the type of material on the album. Most hadn’t even seen or heard the name Leon Redbone. That was about to change.
Most Americans' (myself included) first exposure to Leon Redbone came via late night television in 1975. It was that year that fellow Torontonian Lorne Michaels launched the television show called Saturday Night (later renamed Saturday Night Live). The program’s first musical director, Howard Shore, was also from Toronto. In this respect Leon Redbone caught a break via some regional provincialism. He made the most of it.
Leon Redbone was made for the small screen. The medium and performers were the perfect match. Saturday Night Live has of course become an institution. Yet, early on it seemed the network might pull the plug at any moment. The show was hip and edgy. The “Not Ready For Prime-Time Players” were complete unknowns who would become overnight stars and Leon Redbone came along for the ride.
The sketch comedy show’s format remains virtually unchanged after all these years, but in those early days, when Leon Redbone was introduced, many thought his performance was part of the irreverent hijinks. He was scheduled to be the program’s musical guest twice in the show’s inaugural season.
The idea that a man of his obvious talents would choose to play music that was closer in style to the turn of the last century was simply inconceivable. This wasn’t nostalgia as most folks had never heard or seen anybody perform in this manner. Very few were even alive when these songs were recorded the first time around and if so, they weren’t watching Saturday Night Live anyway.
Leon Redbone had to be a hoax. He was even labeled as a “performance artist” like another individual who made his network television debut on that program in 1975, Andy Kaufman. In fact, many believed that Leon Redbone was the alter ego of Kaufman. That notion was pushed aside for the more popular, and I suppose slightly more plausible, Frank Zappa theory. Of course, neither one of these turned out to be true. It took Leon Redbone outliving both men by several decades to put these theories to rest once and for all.
Leon Redbone did voice over work for television and motion pictures. He appeared on television shows and commercials and was a regular on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson.
He continued to make albums and perform to large sellout crowds until he retired from performing for health reasons in 2015. He never wavered in his commitment to present early 20th century American music to the public.
He passed away on May 30th of this year from complications associated with dementia. At the time of his death he was living in a hospice care facility in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Leon Redbone is survived by his wife, two daughters and three grandchildren.
The Truth:
When Leon Redbone was suddenly thrust upon the public stage via television there were only three (3) national broadcast networks on the tube, as it was sometimes referred to back in those days. There was no worldwide web or information super highway. No cable TV let alone Netflix, Hulu or Sling. No Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or social media of any kind. There was no YouTube. 1975 was so long ago that it predates My Space by several decades, if you could imagine such a thing.
If one was granted air time on one of these three networks you were expected to become a celebrity and trade every bit of privacy for that privilege. It was a Faustian deal that most, not all mind you, accepted even if that deal lasted 15 minutes, as Andy Warhol famously predicted. It was a deal that Leon Redbone turned down. In doing so he became kind of a cult figure and one who actually benefited by eschewing all the trappings of celebrity.
He played music that was so far out of the mainstream consciousness he was labeled an eccentric. The truth of the matter was that it was beautiful music played brilliantly. It was however (you better sit down and brace yourself for this) old fashioned. We aren’t talking Perry Como on the Andy Williams Show old fashioned. We are talking about music in some cases originally played by African-Americans such as Blind Blake or Tommy Johnson.
This of course meant pre-war music. For millennials who have only lived in a world where the United States is in a permanent state of war, the term pre-war refers to World War II. The 20th Century is divided by this cataclysmic event. Everything in terms of American culture before WW2 and the Great Depression, which preceded that war, was all but forgotten and definitely ignored. Leon Redbone was having none of it.
In the age of arena rock excess that included towers of Marshal amps all turned up to eleven, Leon Redbone performed acoustically. During a time of elaborate stage theatrics that might include various pyrotechnic displays and at the very least a light show, he played sitting down next to a small end table, his only accoutrement were a lamp and a glass of whiskey. It was personal. It was real. It was refreshingly intimate.
His avuncular image, which included a trademark suit and tie, hat and sunglasses, made it such that he could resume his life outside of performing and not be recognized. I think I sat next to him at Cozy’s nightclub on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley several years ago. I never for a moment even considered intruding on his privacy, so I’ll never know. I much prefer it that way.
The truth is he studied, practiced and woodshedded. He learned a wide repertoire of songs and offered it to audiences as it would have been presented back in and around the turn of the 20th century. He also added his own impulses, interpretations and improvisational flair to the material.
On stage he was an aberration, a ghost from the past who, with humor, presented this material as if he were a troubadour from another time. He made this old timey music his own and made it his gift to us.
By now many of our readers have read the many obits and appreciations that have come out since the passing of Leon Redbone. He has been universally described as being “intensely private.” Remember, no one is ever just “private.” The notion that a person who does his job in public and then wants to walk away from that public is treated as such an anomaly that the word “private” needs the obligatory suffix of “intensely” in front of the word.
What makes this cliché so absurd is that being private is not an intense activity, if it is an activity at all. It might even be a natural state of being. This, in and of itself, makes Leon Redbone a true throwback to a simpler time.
Here in the second decade of the new millennium privacy is non-existent. Our society has, with near universal acceptance, chosen vanity and narcissism over privacy. Leon Redbone exited the public stage just in time back in 2015 and this planet for good last May. His embrace of his own privacy was as old fashioned as was his music. I admire both of these things in equal measure.
He dodged questions about his background like Greta Garbo doing an impression of Yogi Berra. It was deft obfuscation, disguised as humor, made into some kind of performance art.
The self-appointed guardians of the blues could take a page out of Leon Redbone’s book. These blues societies and foundations wallow in insecurity by wanting others to like what they like in greater numbers. They do this by pandering to popular tastes…something Leon Redbone never did. The seduction of the moment, current styles, fads and trends have no place in the blues. If we were to eschew these things, we would have a much more attractive product. The world might beat a path to try and hear this music, which is a mystery to most people.
Leon Redbone put it best when in a rare moment of personal reflection and candor he said. “I don’t do mystery. The only thing that I do that may have created the cliché ‘mystery person’ is that I’m non-compliant and I’ve always been non-compliant.” He went on to say, “I’m not interested in anything that anybody else is interested in. I like what I like and that’s the way it is. It sounds a little harsh, but what else are you going to do?”
Here’s to you Leon Redbone. (raising my glass) Bravo… I dug your style.
- David Mac
Copyright 2022 BLUES JUNCTION Productions. All rights reserved.
BLUES JUNCTION Productions
7343 El Camino Real
Suite 327
Atascadero, CA 93422-4697
info