Leon Russell by Bill Janovitz

Author:Bill Janovitz [Janovitz, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2023-03-14T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Stop All That Jazz

MARY JONES WALKED ONTO A plane in Tulsa with precious cargo: a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar Bob Dylan had given Leon Russell. Leon had asked her to fly it down to Dallas, where he was performing a New Year’s Eve show at Market Hall with Willie Nelson and Kinky Friedman. Jones joined them, Emily Smith, and the Tulsa crew for the final night of 1973. Leon’s foray into country music and his collaboration with Willie had been accepted as relatively novel and innovative, if not a giant step, by his audience of rock ’n’ rollers. But he was about to go in an altogether different, perplexing direction.

Though he looked even older than he was, in the early 1970s, Leon’s actual age of thirty-one was considered old by rock ’n’ roll standards. Impressed by the young musicians in the Gap Band, he not only would release their debut album Magician’s Holiday on Shelter in 1974, but he would virtually adopt the group as his own for his next album, Stop All That Jazz, and they would be his backing band for all of his touring in ’74. In keeping with the Shelter philosophy of having a Shelter act gain exposure on their lodestar’s tour, the Gap Band would also open the shows.

Coproduced by Buddy Jones (who also cowrote some songs) and Gap Band leader Charlie Wilson, Magician’s Holiday glides through a constellation of funk, pop, and soul, with references to Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder, Billy Preston, and New Orleans artists like Allen Toussaint and the Meters. Though markedly different from their breakthrough in the eighties—with such synth-funk hits as “Burn Rubber on Me” and “You Dropped a Bomb on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)”—their debut album displays a command that belies their rookie status. Leon contributes a repeating guitar riff on “Fontessa Fame,” and Wayne Perkins plays solos on “Bad Girl” with fuzzy phased lead guitar inspired by Ernie Isley’s distinctive tone on “That Lady.” Leon returns on synth for the title track, which closes the album and is the song that owes the most to Stevie Wonder’s influence, specifically reminiscent of “You and I,” from Wonder’s Talking Book. The Gap Band even had help on the album from Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, the same synth pioneers who worked with Wonder.

Stop All That Jazz was recorded in Leon’s home studio, the lake studio, and the Church. There was also one track recorded earlier in Nashville with Willie Nelson at Pete’s Place (Pete Drake’s studio). J. J. Cale, drummer Karl Himmel, and steel guitar player Pete Drake joined other Nashville studio luminaries to rework the Tim Hardin song “If I Were a Carpenter.” Leon managed to make an already cloying song worse. “I think Bobby Darin had just died,” Himmel said. Darin, who died December 20, 1973, had a hit with the song in 1966. A couple of weeks later, Tex Ritter died and Leon (who had played on a session or two

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.