An Epiphany with Leon Redbone

Early October, 1976. I am about to start my third year at Edinburgh University, but the week before lectures start, before the year of stuffing my head with mathematics gets under way, I am wandering the Southside of Edinburgh on a rainy afternoon. At some point, I find myself in Greyfriars Market, a cavernous hall full of rather dreary hippy stalls.

By the one selling records, I hear something which holds me absolutely spellbound. It reminds me of  a stack of 78 records we have at home, by Jelly Roll Morton and other giants of early 20^th century New Orleans, but with 1970’s sound quality. The gravelly, lugubrious singing voice is especially evocative of The Big Easy fifty years back.

Now, although it sounds corny, I think of the ‘Chapman’s Homer’ quote. I was silent, upon a peak in Darien.

‘What is that?’ I asked the stallholder.

The contrast between customer and salesman could not have been greater. I was bowled over by the music, bursting with enthusiasm and anxious to obtain the recording. The stallholder, on the other hand, clearly had more weighty matters on his mind, and did not welcome potential clients interrupting his reverie.

‘On the Track, by Leon Redbone,’ he replied, in tones which can only be described as testy, and looking as if I were something he had stepped in and he was considering how best to scrape me off his footwear.

‘I’ll buy it,’ I enthused, breathily, not possessing the sensitivity to see that my attentions were unwelcome.

‘It’s not for sale,’ he now looked even less chummy, if that were possible. His demeanour suggested that I had just asked him to take me to the toilet.

‘All right,’ I beamed, ‘I’ll get it somewhere else,’ and I left, all smiles.

It was only when I regained the street that it occurred to me that the stallholder had been rude, unpleasant, and lacking in business sense. Stupid bearded longhaired twit, I thought, forgetting for the moment that at that time I had shoulder length hair myself, resembling, so my dad said, a collie dog looking through a hedge. During the heated arguments which characterised Duffy domestic life, he would sometimes say, ‘Shake not thy gory locks at me!’ I also recall his introducing me to a visitor once as, ‘My brother Edward. He dwells in a dungeon.’ Heaven knows what that was a quote from.

I’ll go to a proper record shop, I thought, and regretted not having said this to the stallholder.

A few minutes later I emerged from one of those shops which used to be common in that epoch, with black-painted walls and lighting so economical that one was continually barging into other customers, with the LP under my arm.

I loved that record. I played it and played it, doubtless driving my flatmates up the wall. There was no original material, the songs were all covers, mainly from the first half of the 20^th century. They included Fat Waller’s Ain’t Misbehavin’, Sophie Tucker’s Some of These Days, and Jimmie Rodgers’ (the yodelling cowboy) Desert Blues. All in that 1930’s New Orleans style, and never putting a foot wrong. One other point about this album: Joe Venuti played this beautiful, gypsy-style violin on several of the tracks.

In common with several other solo performers of his generation, Leon Redbone was not forthcoming about his private life or his origins. Rumours abounded. Because of a slight facial resemblance, there was a belief, quite widespread for a while, that he was actually Frank Zappa. Also, because of his name, and perhaps again his facial appearance, he was later assumed to be Jewish. In fact he was Armenian, his birth name Dickran Gobalian. He was born in 1949 in Cyprus, where his family had moved from Jerusalem, after as I understand it, the fledgling Israeli government requisitioned their home.

His tastes in music were what one might call catholic. That first album included the 19^th century American folk song, Polly Wolly Doodle, and his material included classic New Orleans, jazz, Tin Pan Alley, ragtime, showtunes, and of course, the sublime celebrations of rural America written by Hoagy Carmichael.

There are a number of personal and family memories involved here. His third album, Champagne Charlie, included Big Bad Bill is Sweet William Now, which I used to sing to our son Bill when he was a baby. Many of the numbers covered by Mister Leon were songs my dad liked to sing when he was drunk, including the mighty Fats’ Ain’t Misbehavin’, and Hoagy Carmichael’s Up a Lazy River. Experts in psychological wellbeing tell us that we shouldn’t dwell on trips we enjoyed before the pandemic and the restrictions on our movements, but I can’t help thinking of our 2018 holiday in the USA, which included a week in New Orleans. On our first morning there, we had breakfast in a café in the French Market, and a trad jazz band started up as we tucked into the bacon and pancakes. They too performed numbers beloved of my late father, Bye Bye Blackbird, Up a Lazy River, Wabash Far Away, and so on. I thought, by heaven I could get used to this place.

Leon Redbone died in 2019, the same year as the death of Doctor John, another champion of New Orleans. I always felt that the primary quality of Mister Leon’s music was authenticity, being true not necessarily to the arrangement or the style of the original, but to its mood. The man himself, however, said that what he aimed at was serenity. You can see and hear the serenity in this clip. One other thing he used to say was that he wasn’t much of a guitarist, he only played well enough to accompany his singing. From this, you can see and hear that that is bollocks. He was a terrific guitar picker. I miss him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGUW0uAwDyw