I couldn’t resist putting this video of Leon Russell from 1971 on top of a piece that actually is about a recent show Leon played at the Infinity Music Hall in Norfolk, Connecticut.
This show was taped in Los Angeles with his Shelter People band and a bunch of hippies in attendance dancing, listening and even preparing food, a very relaxed atmosphere. The song is one of the great rock ballads of all time, A Song For You.
His performance is masterful, the song is melodically beautiful and the lyrics poignant and penetrating. One of the great lyric ballads. There is another performance at the end of this piece of more recent vintage, same song. You’ll see Leon hasn’t lost much. To testify to that, he put on a brilliant show at the Infinity of good old Rock ‘n Roll with an excellent band, which included guitar virtuoso Chris Simmons.
This is the third time I’ve seen Leon, the first two in 1971 and 1972. The 1971 show was at the Fillmore East with Elton John opening, a show I’ve touched on a few times and that I need to write about in more detail. The ’72 show was at the Long Beach Arena (Calif.), when Leon was probably at the height of his popularity capable of filling large auditoriums. Later I would learn it was the show used for his classic live album, Leon Live. More on that one later, too.
At the Infinity, which has a relatively small stage, the right-hand side was taken up by Russell’s elaborate, almost montrous keyboard setup. No more grand piano as in the early ’70s. He gets acoustic sound from an electronic grand and it works out just fine. The audience can really only see the back of the keyboard setup, which is built in a large anvil case for traveling. The back is open and has hundreds of wires and connections so completely entwined with one another, you wonder how that actually works without a hitch and if anything went wrong how would a keyboard tech track down the problem.
No problems last week. Leon, still sporting below-the-shoulders hair and a full beard, now snow white, was in fine form and good voice as he opened with one of his live staples, Jumpin’ Jack Flash — remember that from the Bangla Desh concert — which morphed into I’ll Take You There, Paint It Black and finally Kansas City.
Leon’s playing is singular and intact, a rollicking, rock ‘n rollin’ style that is immediately recognizable. There really isn’t anyone who sounds like him on keyboards. You know it’s him instantly. His voice doesn’t have quite the expression or nuance it once did in a live situation, but it’s still outstanding. In a recorded environment, as on his recent collaboration with Elton John, The Union, he sounds nearly the same today as he did in 1970.
His band consists of Simmons, whose creative playing becomes more and more evident throughout the show culminating in a showstopping solo version of Walkin’ Blues that he sings, accompanying himself on slide guitar, bassist Jackie Wessel, Beau Charron, on an array of string instruments, including mandolin, second guitar and lap steel, and rock solid drummer Brandon Holder.
The rest of the set included some of Leon’s most familar material along with great old Rock ‘n Roll standards and covers of contemporary groups such as The Beatles and Stones.
Leon’s classics included Lady Blue, Back To The Island, Hummingbird, Prince Of Peace combined with Out In The Woods, A Song For You, Delta Lady, Stranger In A Strange Land, Dixie Lullaby and Tight Rope.
Sweet Little Angel, Any Way You Want Me, Rolling In My Sweet Baby’s Arms, Kansas City Mama, Let The Good Times Roll and an encore medley of Great Balls Of Fire and Rollover Beethoven comprised the standards, and The Stones’ Wild Horses, The Beatles I’ve Just Seen A Face and Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall made up the middle section of the show devoted to covers. He closed this portion of the concert with a commendable rendition of Georgia On My Mind.
He was genial and engaging with the audience, relating two very funny Willie Nelson stories, Nelson having just been in the news arrested for possession of marijuana, something that Russell could simply not understand. At the end of the regular set, he said this is where he was supposed to leave the stage, then unexpectedly come back to play a bit more but that if he left he couldn’t be trusted to find the stage again.
Leon has been on the road for quite a while, but his visits to the state and my schedule have never hooked up over the years. I’m glad I got to catch him one more time. He’s one of the greats and a true original.
Here’s a video from a recent show.
And a few more from the Homewood Sessions in Memphis from 1971.