#18 Stories from the Edge of Music: Leon Redbone Pt. 1

STORIES ABOUT THE MOST MYSTERIOUS SINGER OF OUR TIME

Mysterious, dry as sand, funny and old-fashioned, Leon Redbone proved that everything old can be made new again. Reclusive, enigmatic, he gave fanciful answers to questions about himself, but talked endlessly when asked about his musical heroes, all of them now lost in the distance of time.

More Stories from the Edge of Music follow… Here’s the (usually) weekly Substack, and it’s the work of Richard Flohil, a 60-year music business veteran who can’t sing, play an instrument, or even dance. But he can tell tall true tales…

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ENIGMATIC LEON REDBONE CULTIVATED HIS AURA OF MYSTERY

When Leon Redbone died of Alzheimer’s and dementia in 2019, his website obituary was as enigmatic, as witty, and as dry as his on-stage (and off-stage) personality:

“It is with heavy hearts that we announce that Leon Redbone (has) crossed the delta for that beautiful shore at the age of 127… he is interested to see what Blind Blake, Emmett and Jelly Roll have been up to in his absence… to his fans, friends and loving family who have already been missing him so in this realm, he says ‘Oh, behave yourselves. Thank you…and goodnight.’”

And so, with a twirl of his cane and a tip of his hat, the world’s most enigmatic artist left us.

What Redbone did — and had done for more than 45 years — was to revive and reinterpret early American popular music. His repertoire included Lonnie Johnson’s “Jelly Roll Baker,” nursery rhymes like “Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day” and “Camptown Races,” early blues from pioneers like Blind Blake, minstrel tunes from the equally forgotten Emmett Miller, jazz songs from the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton, and classics from the exhaustive catalogues of the Gershwins, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen and others who gave us the “great American songbook.”

From his early days in Toronto in the late ’60s, when he would make unannounced appearances at small folk clubs — I first heard him in 1970 at a midtown club called Fiddler’s Green — he rebuffed any questions about his real name, his origins, his age or any personal information whatsoever.

Asked these questions, his responses were unusually fanciful. “I was born in Bombay,” he told one interviewer. “My parents were Niccolo Paganini and Dame Nellie Melba. Lovely people; they raised me well.” (Paganini, the virtuoso violinist, died in 1840 and Melba, the preeminent opera singer of her day, passed away in 1931.)

And the bio he submitted for the 1972 Mariposa Folk Festival program read: “I was born in Shreveport, La., in 1910, and my real name is James Hokum. I wear dark glasses to remind me of the time I spent leading Blind Blake throughout the south, and I now live in Canada as a result of the incident in Philadelphia.”

Whatever you do, don’t play pool or cards with this man

Redbone had always been reclusive. When he first emerged, as the ’60s waned, it was as a duo with the now-famous Toronto blues/rock guitarist David Wilcox. They called themselves Little Sonny.

He was a reluctant part of the Toronto folk scene, and certainly differentiated himself from the earnestness that was the hallmark of the time. Only a very small handful of people knew where he lived or where he came from. And I’ll venture a guess that nobody knew his real name.

For a start, it was difficult to get hold of him, whether you wanted to meet for a drink, or hire him for a gig. What you had to do, if you knew the routine, was call the pool hall that existed then in the entrance passageway that led to the Bloor subway station.

A request to speak to Mr. Grunt would bring Redbone, irritated from having to interrupt his game, to the phone. “Yesss?” was his grumbled response.

Redbone’s prowess at pool, learned in a dozen billiard halls, was only matched by his skills with a deck of cards. Playing poker with Redbone was simply foolish; my ex-wife remembers watching him clean out Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott at a late night gathering at the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

Another victim that night was the festival’s artistic director, Rosalie Goldstein. “I should have known…” she said ruefully after losing $60.00 before bailing from the game.

Intrigued by the “mystery,” fans would follow him after he played a show; he would usually lose them on the way by suddenly changing buses or subway trains. One friend drove Redbone “home” at 2 a.m. and dropped him at an apartment building. Watching in his rear view mirror, he saw the singer, carrying his guitar and a large black leather artwork portfolio, return from the lobby, jump in a cab and speed off in the opposite direction, presumably to his real home.

(More on the mysterious Leon Redbone in Stories from the Edge of Music next week. And a surprising postscript on him this week for PAID subscribers…)

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A YOUNG REPORTER GUIDES A HIT-MAKING AMERICAN VOCAL GROUP IN A HISTORIC CITY

In the mid-’50s, the Platters were on top of the world. The American vocal group had had major hits — “Only You” and “The Great Pretender” were enough to launch the group’s first British tour, and it started in York.

Arriving a day early to recover from the flight, their manager — sensing a good story — eagerly agreed to a quick tour of the city conducted by a reporter from the city’s daily newspaper.

I picked them up at their hotel, walked them along part of the Roman wall that still stands around the inner city and then through the Shambles, a tiny street built in the 14th century. We must have made an odd procession: five tall black Americans and a 19-year-old reporter wearing a duffle coat.

Finally, I took them into York Minster, the majestic centrepiece of the city, and one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in the world. As we entered, we were faced with the massive, six-storey stained glass window at the opposite end of the building.

“Well,” said Zola Taylor, the only woman in the group, staring at the sunlight streaming through the multi-coloured panes. “I guess we ain’t got one of these in Texas.”

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I don’t want to hear any moaning about the music business. I understand you chose this profession. What the fuck do you want to do? Drive an ice cream truck?”

— Francis Rossi, leader of the long-running British band, Status Quo.

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YOUR MUSIC BOOK REVIEW SECTION

Garnet Rogers, alas, will never be as famous as his brother Stan, the iconic Canadian folksinger and songwriter who died of smoke inhalation during a fire onboard an Air Canada plane in June 1983.

Soon after he left high school, Garnet joined his brother’s backup band, playing fiddle, guitar and, occasionally, flute as well as singing backup. After Stan’s death, Garnet began a 40-year solo career that continues today — albeit at a slower pace.  

His memoir, Night Drive: Travels With My Brother, is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. Although it’s long — some 740 pages — it never slackens pace; the stories come tumbling after each other, alternately hilarious, silly and heart-stopping stupid. The on-the-road tedium is relieved by massive amounts of alcohol, bad food and black coffee, and some of the best yarns are about the people the band meets along the way.

Alas, I don’t think you will find this on Amazon or at Abe Books. Go to Garnet’s website and order the book directly from him.

And, dammit, it’s only $19.95. A seriously cheap price for this many wonderful stories.

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VIDEO LINKS TO GET YOU THROUGH THE WEEKEND

Here’s some laidback Leon for you — an entertaining 15-minute documentary filmed in Toronto with some superb playing and singing and brief comments from John Prine, John Hammond and David Wilcox. All well worth your time. Warning: the writer of this Substack also makes a couple of lightning-fast appearances. I can’t post the video inside this email — “playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner” — but click here and you can see it easily on YouTube.

And here’s Garnet Rogers, tongue in cheek, explaining how he quit drinking:

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THAT’S IT FOR THIS WEEK

There’ll be more about Mr. Redbone next week, plus another story TBA. As they used to say on Top 40 radio, the hits keep coming…