Leon Russell, Erin and Me….

When he called me and asked me if I'd like to do an album, I hadn't spoken to him in thirty-five years. I was basically sitting home watching soap operas at the time, because I had taken two years off. When I came back, it was pretty much all gone — hard to get bookings, and then they were considerably different than before. I kept thinking somebody was gonna come back and get me, but they never did — except for Elton. That's why I tell people he came and found me in a ditch by the side of the highway of life. Then I showed up an hour late for our first recording session — I'd been in the hospital — and Elton had written four songs already! So I thought, "Well, this should be easy!"

Leon Russell on Elton John and their collaboration on The Union in 2009

I learned a lot from that guy, both up close and from a distance. He's not known for spilling the beans, but he answered every question I ever asked him about the music business or songwriting. In between shows at the Concert for Bangladesh, Bob and I sat on one side of the dressing room together, and he played a little concert for me. I'd say, "Play 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue,' " and he'd play it. He played about 20 songs for me. He'd been off for two years since his motorcycle accident, and he wasn't sure we'd sell out the second show, but we did!

Leon Russell, playing with Bob Dylan, Concert For Bangladesh, August 1, 1971, Madison Square Garden, NYC

Leon Russell (1971) signed by Leon

A few years ago I was driving down Pacific Coast Highway and saw a big, black tour bus that was parked in front of a venue announcing that Leon was performing there that night. I pulled over and knocked on the bus door. Leon opened the door with a smile when he saw me, welcomed me in, then went back to lying down in the back as we talked for a while about our great memories. We were both happy to see one another. It was clear to me that his health was a challenge but there he was, in his bus, on the road, doing one nighters. That was the last time I saw Leon. I’m glad I stopped. I’m glad he was in my life.

Herb Alpert

I'm not as aware of categories in music as some people are. To me, it's just music. I'm interested in all kinds of music.

Leon Russell

A long time ago, no shoes on my feet
I walked ten miles of train track
To hear Hank Williams sing

His body was worn but his spirit was free
And he sang every song
Looking right straight at me

Just a tramp on your street
You must understand
You got my soul at your feet
And my heart in your hand

Billy Joe Shaver

The late, great singer-songwriter Billy Joe Shaver wrote “Tramp On Your Street,” a paean about his long ago trek to hear Hank Williams sing in a nondescript bar near the end of Hank’s troubled and turbulent life. “The Hillbilly Shakespeare,” Hank Williams had an enormous impact on Billy Joe as did most songwriters who followed in the wake of Hank’s enormous talents. Fortunately, Erin and I didn’t have to walk ten miles of train track to see Leon Russell perform in 2004, it was a rather breezy, twenty minute drive from our home to the Boxcar Cafe in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a now shuttered dive bar located in a scenic underpass off a desultory I-95 exit. It was startling to us that Leon would be relegated to performing in such an inglorious venue, yet there he was, body worn and spirit free, shoehorned into the corner of the bar, banging out twenty-five plus songs in his ninety minute set, performing relentlessly for maybe one hundred-twenty five patrons. His passion was as undeniable as his talent. It was hard to tell who Leon was looking at, his trademark mirrored aviator sunglasses reflected and obscured all inquiries. It was not always like this…

Born Claude Russell Bridges in Lawton, Oklahoma in 1941, Leon Russell had a remarkable career. He started playing piano at four years old and showed prodigious talents as a bunny youngun. Initially, Leon wanted to become a classical pianist, "I studied classical music for a long time, maybe ten years, and I realized, finally, I was never going to have the hands to play that stuff. It was too complicated. I invented ways to play in a classical style that was not the real deal." Part of Leon's inability stemmed from his difficult childbirth, a disability which left his right side partially paralyzed. Leon recounted his affliction with characteristic aplomb, "The doctor who pulled me out at birth damaged my second and third vertebrae. But without those tugs, I probably would have been a regular guy selling insurance in Texas or something.”

As sports and other activities were not viable options, Leon focused on music. While attending the Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Leon started his first band with David Gates, an aspiring singer-songwriter who would later form the pop rock group Bread, which yielded the easy listening 1970s radio hits, “Make It With You,” “Baby I'm A Want You,” “The Guitar Man,” and “If.” Bread had eleven hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1970-1973 which Gates sang and wrote. This proved to be so lucrative that Gates eventually retired and became a cattle rancher in Northern California, but I digress. This would not be the path which Leon trod…

Wedding Album: Leon & Mary Russell (1976) signed by Leon

When he was fourteen years old, Leon honed his skills performing in bars in Tulsa. He needed a fake ID which a friend had lent him so he could get in. So long Claude Russell Bridges, hello “Leon Russell.” He was asked to tour briefly while still in high school with Jerry Lee Lewis as The Killer had heard about his fearsome chops. Leon didn’t flinch, accepted the challenge, played wonderfully and, upon graduation from high school, Leon lit out for new territory, "There was just a lot of opportunity at that time, but I left for Los Angeles the week after I graduated from high school, and I actually left to try to get into the advertising business. That was really why I went out to LA, my music career was almost an accident." Some accident, instead of peddling insurance, Leon became a revered studio session musician, part of the famed Wrecking Crew which included drummer Hal Blaine, bassist Carol Kaye, guitarist Glen Campbell, among many other talented studio musicians. Leon performed on such classics as “California Girls" with The Beach Boys, "River Deep - Mountain High" with Ike and Tina Turner, “Hey Mr. Tambourine Man,” with The Byrds, “Be My Baby” with The Ronettes, and "Whipped Cream & Other Delights" with Herb Alpert. And he also worked with producer Phil Spector on countless sessions, contributing to Spector's famed Wall Of Sound.

Herb Alpert remembered Leon fondly, "Leon was on several sessions that I produced with the Tijuana Brass. He was always dressed in a suit and tie, with short hair and no beard! This was soon after he arrived in Los Angeles from Oklahoma. We would go through the same routine each time I started rehearsing the music. He would sit at the piano and he would always say, ‘I don’t know what to play.’ And I would say, ‘Just wait and see if you feel something, and if you don’t it’s okay. I just like your energy at the sessions.’ Well, he would always chime in with something special and affect the groove in a very Leon Russell way that was always unique. Leon was a wonderful musician and had a major effect on all of my recordings. His touch can be heard on many Tijuana Brass records, including “Whipped Cream” and “A Taste of Honey.” To top it off, Leon was a true gentleman with a special talent and he was a person that I had a great feeling for."

For his part, Leon was more impressed with some of the songs that didn't become universal hits. He recalled an early session for Columbia Records with a relatively unknown Aretha Franklin at the beginning of her career before she exploded as The Queen Of Soul on Atlantic Records. "A lot of the stuff that was the greatest for me was not necessarily a hit. I saw thirty violin players tapping their sticks on the stand after seeing her (Aretha Franklin) sing. I'd never seen that in my life."

While the studio work was gratifying, Leon yearned to write his own music, and an occasion to be the bandleader for Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour presented a perfect opportunity. Cocker had just come off of his triumphant Woodstock appearance, captured on film in his riveting performance of "With A Little Help From My Friends" with The Grease Band. The band had broken up, but Joe's record label wanted him to perform another tour, a forty-eight show extravaganza. Joe needed a bandleader, enter Leon. Leon cobbled together a crack team of session aces, mostly friends from the Delaney & Bonnie band, including Carl Radle on bass, Jim Gordon and Jim Keltner on drums, Bobby Keys and Jim Horn on saxophone, Jim Price on trumpet, and the heavenly vocals of Rita Coolidge and Claudia Lennear. The tour was a triumphant success, although the brittle ego of Joe Cocker was bruised because of all the attention Leon was garnering. Certainly, the copious amounts of drugs and alcohol didn't add to their respective tranquility, as Joe and Leon had a rancorous falling out which lasted for years thereafter.

Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs & Englishmen (1971)

The tour, and subsequent record release, Mad Dogs & Englishmen, a title lifted from a Noel Coward play, marked the first time Rita Coolidge sang "Superstar." an ode to the life of groupies that surrounded Leon's experience with Delaney and Bonnie, which preceded his time with Joe Cocker. Originally titled the less radio friendly "Groupie,” and co-written with Bonnie Bramlett, "Superstar" was released as a B side in 1969 for Delaney & Bonnie with a scorching Duane Allman on lead guitar. Remade with the soft rock deities The Carpenters, who altered the line "I want to sleep with you again" to "I want to be with you again," "Superstar" became a Number 1 hit and has been covered by everyone from Bette Midler to Peggy Lee to Sonic Youth, although Luther Vandross' 1983 smoldering, sensuous take remains the undisputed heavyweight champion.

Given the great success of the Mad Dogs’ tour, Leon entered the studio and recorded his first album, the eponymous Leon Russell, released in 1970, with an incredible cast of characters - Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Mick Jagger - providing support. The first track on the album, “A Song For You,” is probably Leon’s most famous composition. Over the years, more than two hundred artists have sung this song, everyone from Andy Williams to Amy Winehouse, Ray Charles to Donny Hathaway. It has become a standard and part of the ever expanding Great American SongBook.

It is one thing to want to write a standard, it is quite another to actually do it. But Leon was focused and determined, and he remembered where he was when he wrote “A Song For You,” “Yeah, I was in my studio in Hollywood and actually I was trying to write a standard. I was trying to write a blues song that Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles both could sing. I wrote it in 10 minutes. It was for a specific occasion, and I went in there and wrote it very quickly. Yeah, that happens sometimes. Sometimes they're very quick. It's almost as if one is not writing them. You know? Like they're coming from another place." A place of beauty and grace which few writers seldom ever attain but Leon was able to capture in this beautiful song and many others.

All the while, Leon confounded radio music programmers who had strict, parochial tastes in adhering to their on air formats. Mo Ostin, former Warner Brothers President, recognized Leon's vast talents but chided him for his broad musical palette. Leon was as comfortable playing country music as well as gospel, blues, jazz and rock and roll, "What that meant was I made it very hard on radio program directors. I was not always a brand that they could always expect was going to be the same thing." To wit, at the height of his commercial rock and pop powers in 1973, Leon adopted the persona Hank Wilson and released a hard core country album, Hank Wilson's Back, in an era when genres rarely blurred. Songs by Hank Williams, Lester Flatt, Bill Monroe and George Jones were anathema to rock and pop fans in those days, and Leon did not care, it was all music, music which deeply resonated within his soul. Despite his name omitted from album credits, Hank Wilson's Back sold well, hit #28 on the Billboard 200, and Leon released three other volumes under the Hank Wilson pseudonym, although the later volumes disclosed Leon Russell as the primary music source.

Hank Wilson's Back (1973) signed by 'Hank Wilson'

All these stylistic choices led Leon to a quieter artistic existence in which he seemed completely comfortable, “I didn't start out to become famous, so when it disappeared, I thought, well, that happens sometimes.” The royalties certainly helped, especially, the relentless, overwrought renditions of "A Song For You" which appear on seemingly every American Idol episode extant. Meanwhile, Leon toured incessantly, the old school way in a bus, the trappings of chauffeurs and private jets had dissipated long ago. That's why we saw him on stage at the Boxcar Cafe in Fairfield, Connecticut in 2004, hurtling through his vast songbook at breakneck speed. As soon as one song ended, he counted off "1,2,3.4" and it was on to the next. After the show, I thought Leon would rather speak with my beautiful bride Erin, so I handed her some albums and she knocked on his bus door. The door cracked open slightly, wider when Erin's comely visage came into view, and she climbed aboard the bus. Leon, unfailingly polite, was happy to sign the vinyl, including Hank Wilson's Back, which he signed as "Hank Wilson," a most welcome forgery!

In 2009, Elton John helped resuscitate Leon's career, a noble effort. "He was my biggest influence as a piano player, a singer and a songwriter," Elton said, a remarkable admission for the legendary pop star. They recorded The Union, a Grammy nominee, and Elton described the impetus for his help in Leon's resurrection, "I was kind of angry because I thought, you know, this man's been forgotten about... Look, the thing that astounded me throughout this whole thing, you know, he was never bitter about falling out of the spotlight because Leon, as I've learned, was never really a spotlight person, although he looked amazing. He had the most incredible image with the long hair and the Ray-Bans and the top hat." Though Leon's health, always precarious, was failing, Elton and Leon's subsequent tour was a great success, as he remembered fondly, "Elton came and found me in a ditch by the side of the highway of life. He took me up to the high stages with big audiences and treated me like a king. And the only thing I could say is bless your heart." Leon wrote a song in tribute to his mentee turned benefactor, "In The Hands Of Angels," a glorious song infused with traces of gospel, blues, pop and rock, music which Leon consumed so wholly. And Elton was not done proselytizing for all things Leon Russell. Elton spearheaded an effort to get Leon admitted to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame which was successful when Leon became a member of the Class of 2011.

Leon Russell, a remarkable arranger, musician, producer, singer, songwriter, a master of space and time.