Don’t bother asking Leon Redbone where he was born. He’ll probably say he was too young to remember. Some say Leon Redbone was born in Turkey in 1888, immigrating to the United States a couple of decades later. Others claim he hails from Canada. The usual story of his musical beginnings is that he began playing in Toronto in the early 1970s.

Regardless of his origins, Redbone’s masterful guitar playing and distinctive baritone voice crooning mostly jazz, blues, and pop from the early 20th century have established him as an odd cult figure who’s also a household name. New York Times writer Stephen Holder wrote, “Mr. Redbone doesn’t just dig up the past, he embodies it — by dressing himself in the clothes of an old-time traveling minstrel and singing in a voice that is a stylistic composite of early Southern blues and vaudeville performer.”

But it’s more than the music and clothes. It’s a genuine sentimental longing for the old days that he shared on a recent morning, including observations of Johnny Carson and surviving airplane crashes. He mumbles as he veers from topic to topic, making him at times difficult to understand.

 

Singer and guitar ace Leon Redbone plays Moonlight on the Mountain. (Photo: Nancy Depra.) (click for larger version)

 

 

 

Leon Redbone can also be difficult to follow. He’ll sort of answer a question and then go off on a tangent how the world just isn’t what it used to be. His dry wit and unique persona makes a listener wonder where the stage performer ends and the regular guy begins. As Bonnie Raitt once told Rolling Stone, “He’s just amazing. He’s probably the best combination singer/guitarist I’ve heard in years. I spent an afternoon with him in a hotel room and I was wondering when he was going to become normal. He never did.”

Black & White: What first attracted you to doing early 20th century and Tin Pan Alley-style music?
Leon Redbone: Well, I wanted to play Chopin but that didn’t sorta work. (laughs) So the next best thing was the music of the teens and ’20s.

You got your start in Toronto?
I’ve heard that. If there’s any truth to it, I don’t know. I’ve also heard that I moved to Canada. People want to know and I guess I’m supposed to somehow explain it.

How did audiences first react when you started playing such a unique style of music?
Well, I never took a survey. It would have been a good idea, I suppose. But if somebody started doing it now, it wouldn’t be unusual either because of all the reissued records which have come about. There’s so much information out there, by the time you sort it out, you’d be dead. So you just have to take whatever comes your way and deal with it. As far as (finding) the things that are in excess now, it’s certainly a lot easier than you could have 40 or 50 years ago. A lot of the 78s (rpm records) are available in antique stores, junk stores. You can buy just about anything. And now you can buy them, clean it up, and put it on a disk.

I read an article in Guitar Player magazine that referred to your music as “novelty.” Were you insulted?
Well, for every decade that you’re alive, a lot of things are lost. Sentiment is one of them . . . and the willingness to understand some kind of expression that it goes beyond the obvious words, which you’ll find in any song. Those qualities are quickly disappearing. Sentimentality is not considered really a necessary trait of a person of today. There’s the music of the 1900s and the 1930s, for instance. Aside from all the booze and everything and fun songs and everything else, there’s a lot of sentiment expressed which referred to an earlier time. Which is still valid today, except people have been bombarded with all kinds of rapid fads. You can buy this, you can buy that. Nobody can tell the difference, if it’s music from 1910 or if somebody wrote it yesterday. There’s a lot that’s missing in the general population because there’s so much desire to consume everything that’s put in front of them. It’s hard to tell who actually is generally moved by music or if they are just eating it. (laughs).

I was surprised that you played Saturday Night Live twice within four months back in 1976.
I guess they couldn’t find the person they wanted so they called me, I guess. (laughs)

I read that Mikhail Baryshnikov recommended your music for a ballet in 1996?
Yeah, he works with a choreographer I know. Assuming it was as you say—I didn’t verify it but I’m sure it was. But the fellow I know directly is Eliot Feld.

You did the “Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” quite a few times. Any particular memories from those days?
The drudgery of having to wait to do your numbers and everything. But it was a real pleasure to sit down with Johnny Carson. I found him to be a genuine individual in everything that he seemed to do. Then all that changed. Basically, after he died, everything changed. But it was a conversation, or at least a meeting, with a different time. Johnny Carson was very private in his endeavors, not only in his personal life but the recordings that he had (of his show). Everything was recorded, obviously, and he would give it to the artist stipulating that it can’t be used without permission. All that disappeared the day he died. I found [that] to be a pretty good indicator as to the sentiment of those who came after Johnny Carson. Obviously, they did not honor his request because all those things are available now. It’s just the old world going and the new world takes over.

Is it true that you survived a plane crash in 1979?
Well, yes. I had nothing to do with the plane coming down. There were a few unfortunate people who died on impact. One was, very sad to say, an elderly woman who was sitting right across from me. She had not put her seat belt on. The plane actually hit the end of the airport upside down. It was a full impact that broke the right wing and turning the thing completely over and slammed down onto the runway. It was one of those jet props. Sat about 30 plus, I’d say, something like that.

How do you travel these days?
Well, I prefer to drive. I take my time—well, sometimes I don’t take my time because I have to be there on time. Seems to suit me fine, quite frankly, I don’t have to wait for anything. Air travel now versus air travel in the ’70s. Surprisingly, few people know how the airport system worked in the ’70s—never mind 1870. Nobody seems to remember anything in the ’70s. Everybody is just completely “gaga”, I guess you’d call it, over the next and latest gizmo or whatever it is and nobody has a memory for anything else. People who should know, or should have remembered, don’t remember. One good example I give for this unique transformation is arriving at the airport, missing the flight, and then going to another counter with your ticket from Delta or whatever it was from. And having them write you a ticket through their airlines and taking care of the business for themselves afterwards. Most people don’t have any concept of that. Today if you miss your plane you’ll probably going to lose the money unless you get another in a short period of time on the same airline. You can’t do any of it any more. And it was done with a smile and courtesy.

You did jingles for Budweiser, right?
Yeah, I think that was in the ’70s. And the entire business, similar to the airline business, was restructured. The old timers in the advertising world and the agencies completely disappeared. I believe it was sometime in the late ’80s or ’90s. All the personality, just as in the music of the teens and ’20s, all the personality went out of it.”

What was your opinion of Judy Garland?
Miss Garland could be an extremely talented individual but very difficult to watch. Because of her nervous kind of appearance, and that kind if thing makes it a little difficult to listen to and watch.

What’s your cure for the blues these days?
Well, I try not to bother with it any more. (laughs) I’m indifferent to a lot of things and I think I enjoy it more in some ways, the way the music has lasted all these years. The sentiment doesn’t go away even though it seems to have. The androids may be taking over; maybe that’s what the analysis is. (laughs) People think the Martians are coming. No, the androids are here already . . . I hope you got something out of all that. (laughs) &

Leon Redbone will perform at Moonlight on the Mountain on September 30 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $50; the show is a benefit for the organization Hope Manifest. Go to www.moonlightonthemtn.com for details.