By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World We've told the story of Leon Russell in these pages numerous times. Thus far, it's been a process of piecing together bits of well-known history and the accounts of those who knew Leon and hung around — or on — him during his beginnings here in Tulsa and his ultimate international fame. Not since Leon had a Tulsa address has he spoken with the Tulsa World or, for that matter, many press outlets at all. This week — since he's comin' back to Tulsa just one more time — the artist known almost as much for his shyness as his hit songs broke down and talked with us from his home near Nashville about his new album and his much-mystified roots and days in Tulsa. It was an eagerly awaited conversation that set a few records straight and shed new light on the shadowy mystique of the master of space and time. Home Sweet Oklahoma Russell spent his formative and most successful years in Tulsa, moving here in 1955 from Maysville, just west of Pauls Valley, when his father was transferred. He arrived at age 14, but that wasn't too young to start playing in local clubs. Things were a bit different back then. "In those days, Oklahoma was dry, and the clubs weren't supposed to have liquor. So a 14-year-old or anybody of any age had no problem working anywhere," Russell said. "I worked six or seven nights a week till I left Tulsa at 17. I'd work 6 to 11 at a beer joint, then 1 to 5 at an after-hours club. It was a hard schedule to do when going to school. I slept in English a lot. Then I got out to California, and they were more serious about their liquor laws. I about starved to death because it was so much harder to find work at my age." Russell remembers dozens of old Tulsa nightspots — the House of Blue Lights, the Paradise Club, the Sheridan Club, the Cimarron Ballroom — as well as his perennial stopover, the Cain's Ballroom. He said he also was partial to the hot goings-on along Greenwood Avenue. "There was quite a scene over there. They had classier shows than the other parts of town. There was the Dreamland, I believe, where they had big revues every night — traveling package shows with big stars. I saw Jackie Wilson over there when I was very young, I think at the Big 10. Saw Bobby Bland at the Dreamland. It was quite an experience." In California, instead of steady gigs in clubs, Russell found a lot of session work in recording studios, playing piano for other musicians and singers. The list of his contributions is nearly as impressive as his own three-decade discography, including work with the likes of Phil Spector, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan. Goin' Back to Tulsa After cutting his first, eponymous album, Russell returned home to Tulsa in 1972. First, he was just visiting, but the story goes that he and a friend were tanked up on psychedelics while in a boat on Grand Lake. A lightning storm came up, and the boat got stuck on a sand bar. Russell apparently found the experience so mystical that he took it as a sign to stay in Tulsa. "Yeah, that's not true, but it's a great story," Russell said. Russell moved his whole recording operation to the area, living in a big house in Maple Ridge and recording in a huge studio on Grand Lake. His presence here attracted numerous other big names to visit Tulsa, from Dylan to Clapton, and the excitement the scene generated in turn brought new local musicians out of the woodwork. Through his label, Shelter Records, Russell helped Tulsa-native talent like Dwight Twilley and the Gap Band reach a higher level of success. "That was the whole point, you know," Russell said. "There are so many talented people around — and Tulsa maybe has more of it than most places — but it's hard for the talented people to get a chance. The (music) business is largely run by accountants and lawyers. They hire people to tell them whether stuff is good or not. It's difficult for good, young artists to get someone standing up for them saying, `This is a great band.' I figured I could give some people a chance who deserved it. I mean, you know, the Wilson brothers (in the Gap Band) are some of the most unique talent in the world." Anything Can Happen Since that early '70s heyday of hits like "Delta Lady" and "Tight Rope," Russell his lived back and forth between Los Angeles, Tulsa and Nashville, and his career has meandered through different styles and varying levels of commercial success. 1974's "Stop All That Jazz" (which featured the Wilson brothers before they became the Gap Band) dabbled in funk and Afro-beat, and his 1992 comeback, "Anything Can Happen" — his first record in more than a decade — featured Bruce Hornsby and tinkered with traditional themes and island tempos. Russell's most noted stylistic side-step, though, is his occasional masquerade as a country persona named Hank Wilson. He first debuted Wilson in a 1973 album, "Hank Wilson's Back." It was an excuse for this rocker to purge his inherent Okie-born country leanings. "Hank Wilson came about on a road trip," Russell said. "I was bringing a car back from L.A., and I stopped at a truck stop that had about 500 country tapes for sale. I bought a bunch and listened to them on the way home (to Tulsa). I don't really listen to records very much, except for research. I liked some of that stuff, though, and thought it would be fun to do a record like that." Russell revisited Hank Wilson again in the early '80s, and a third Hank Wilson record is the reason for Leon's latest public presence. The new Ark 21 label just released "Legend in My Own Time: Hank Wilson III," a new set of country standards performed by Russell with such guests as the Oak Ridge Boys ("Daddy Sang Bass"), T. Graham Brown ("Love's Gonna Live Here") and longtime Leon pal and collaborator Willie Nelson ("He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "Okie From Muskogee"). Nelson and Russell still work together, performing occasional acoustic shows, but this album marks their first recorded duet since the 1979 "Willie and Leon" album. Ironically, the two collaborated musically before they ever met. "Somebody called me and said, `Joe Allison is working on Willie's album. Would you like to play?' " Russell said. "I went in and did some overdubs, some clean-up work, but I didn't meet him. Years later, I was sitting with Willie at his ranch in Austin. I said, `Listen to that guy playing all my stuff.' As I listened to it a little more, I realized I had played on those records. I didn't know it and he didn't know it." This Masquerade Harold Bradley, himself a legendary session musician who served as bandleader and production assistant for the new album, raves about the new Hank Wilson project. He said this album has finally captured Leon's true country spirit. "What I really like about this project is that we captured Leon totally," Bradley said. "In the other two albums, which I really liked too, I thought we had done really well. But in those albums, not really having done it before, we tried to make Leon go the Nashville way. On this album, we went Leon's way." Russell is equally excited about the results of the new Hank Wilson recordings. He recorded the vocals and piano in his home studio, then the musicians built on the framework he had established. Guest vocals were added later; Willie Nelson recorded his part in Austin while the Oak Ridge Boys made a visit to Russell's home. Twenty-four songs were recorded for this album in two days. "Nashville is full of master players," Russell said. "I mean you can go up to them and say, play this at this tempo, play it as a samba, and they can play it ... They're ready to play, and they're trained to play master quality at all times. It's great to be able to take advantage of that. I tried to do this rapidly, too. They get it right the first time about 95 percent of the time, and I tried to capture that. "The first time someone plays the tune, it's off the top of their head. It's somewhat more free and loose than if they'd practiced it 10 times. It gets confusing if you make a lot of takes and you start second-guessing yourself. You start arranging it in your mind. That first time, you play from the heart and it has a special kind of feel. Most of the songs (on this record) are first takes. Ten of my vocals are first takes, and in most cases I'd never sung the song before." Russell usually records his own albums at home, but he said he enjoys the chance to work with session players for these Hank Wilson albums because — with his own background as a session musician — he has such respect for them. "Those years I played in studios gave me invaluable experience," he said. "I worked with probably the best 200 or so producers and arrangers in the world. I learned so much from those guys. I can't imagine what it would be like not to have that." © Tulsa World
Concert: Sex Pistols Tribute Show featuring N.O.T.A., Riot Squad, the Skalars and Steve Jones When: 7 p.m. Sunday Where: Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St. Tickets: $5 at the door It sort of crept up on us. It caught Davit Souders by surprise, anyway. Souders — concert promoter for Diabolical Productions and Little Wing Productions — had been looking at his calendar for January and wondering why something in the back of his head was hinting that this month had special significance. Special significance to punks, that is — and these days, that's not as limiting a category as it once was. It dawned on Souders as the calendar began to turn. It's 1998 — the legendary Sex Pistols played here 20 years ago this week. Gotta throw a party. “It occurred to me that out of the seven dates on that historical U.S. tour, perhaps we should celebrate the history of that event,'' Souders said this week, waxing rather eloquently. So on the actual anniversary — this Sunday — Souders has thrown together a bill of rude boys and punks to celebrate the brief stopover of the world's most notorious rock band in one of the nation's more famous venues, Tulsa's own Cain's Ballroom. Yes, the Sex Pistols came ashore in the winter of 1978 and careened through the heart of virgin America at the height of their brief career. Infamous manager Malcolm McLaren purposely scheduled the British punk band's first and only U.S. tour through the South so as to generate appropriately confrontational attention. Cain's owner Larry Shaeffer fills in the details of how the band came to our humble hamlet. “I had booked a jazz-fusion group in the mid-'70s called Go. A Warner Bros. rep named Noel Monk came with them and loved the Cain's. When Malcolm McLaren was putting together the Sex Pistols' tour, the theory was not to play the Chicagos and New Yorks but play the South, where the likelihood of adversarial situations would be greater. Noel was working with them and said, `I know the perfect venue, too,' and set them up for the Cain's,'' Shaeffer said. The Cain's was already a famous musical venue, thanks to the smarts and endurance of a native Texan named Bob Wills half a century before, but this event put the ballroom on the map for a new generation. (Each interview I do with serious rock 'n' roll performers includes at least some banter about the Cain's, their eagerness to return to/see the place, and this question: “The Sex Pistols played there, right?'') The Cain's also is one of two venues from that 1978 Pistols tour still in operation. The Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas — where the Pistols played (and fought) the night before their Tulsa show — has recently reopened. At least for some, the concert proved to be a pivotal moment. Tulsa resident Mike Lykins (you may remember him as Michael Automatic from the Automatic Fathers) was right up front for the Tulsa show — he's in the photo that ran in Creem magazine — and left the ballroom that night a changed man. “It was just raw,'' Lykins said. “Every little creepy band that came out around here in the next few years probably wouldn't have if the Pistols weren't here. Until then, it was all coming from Aerosmith and Kansas and Yes, getting more and more sophisticated. These guys said, `No, let's just crank up those creepy guitars and have at it' ... I mean, that wave would have come here eventually, but to have them give it to me personally was something else.'' The Cain's survived with no lasting scars (though I'm told one of the holes in the backstage walls is the result of Sid Vicious's fist) but plenty of lasting memories. “That was the first dangerous show Cain's ever did, but it wasn't really bad,'' Shaeffer said. “People came expecting all these dangerous things to happen — there were vice cops thick in the crowd, the fire department was here, protesters outside — but I don't even recall them using any profanity on stage. They didn't do anything but play loud rock 'n' roll music.'' Which is exactly what four other acts will do this Sunday to remember the event. All the bands will be playing at least some Sex Pistols songs. Tulsa's own punk legends N.O.T.A. will be heading the bill. Leader Jeff Klein said he missed the Pistols' Tulsa performance. “I was sitting around with a girlfriend who didn't want to go, whining about wanting to go,'' he said. Surely the most intriguing performance this weekend will come from Steve Jones — not the Sex Pistols' guitarist but the bass player in Tulsa's own out-of-control rockers, Billy Joe Winghead. Jones will be performing an acoustic set of Pistols songs. Don't be tardy — that's too weird to pass up. Some memorabilia will be on display from the Tulsa show — tickets, photos, Sid's autograph, possibly the contract for the show — all wrapped up in a Union jack that once flew over the British embassy. God save us. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The story, as his old compadre Chuck Blackwell tells it, goes like this: Leon Russell and his close friend, Emily Smith, were cruising Grand Lake one afternoon looking at various pieces of property for sale. This was around 1972, and Leon's career was rolling. He'd been around the world with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Joe Cocker, and his most recent solo album had just landed the revealing single “Tight Rope'' at No. 11. He was looking for someplace to settle for a while. The pair ran into a sand bar in the lake, and suddenly a storm came up. What would have been a mere nuisance to any boater took on a bit more significance to Russell. “Was that a deal! It was storming and thundering and lightning, and I think Leon had taken some psychedelics. He saw that lightning storm and thought it was a sign from above that he should settle here,'' Blackwell said. So he did. He found a lake attraction called Pappy Reeves' Floating Motel and Fishing Dock (“You could pull your boat right up to your room and fish right there,'' Blackwell said), bought it, and converted it into a recording studio. He did the same thing to the First Church of God at 304 S. Trenton Ave., which still exists today as The Church Studio (where everyone from Dwight Twilley to the Tractors have recorded). He also bought a Maple Ridge estate, the Aaronson mansion at 1151 E. 24th Place, and did what he came to do — he settled in. Russell had been in Tulsa before. He'd practically grown up here, which is why many say he felt like returning for a while at the crest of his fame. Most musicians agree, though, that Russell's growly drawl and piano pounding had an effect on local music that was instrumental in — possibly even the foundation of — the creation of the “Tulsa Sound,'' a subdued blend of country and blues. A handful remember Russell's early years cutting his chops in Tulsa beer halls, but many more refer to his mid-'70s stay and his Tulsa-based record company, Shelter Records, as a watermark of Tulsa music. Russell was born C. Russell Bridges in Lawton in 1941, but he migrated to Tulsa when he was just 14 to explore the bustling music scene here. “I got a lot of experience playing music. Oklahoma was a dry state at the time, so there were no (under-age) laws, and I didn't have any problems,'' he explains in the liner notes to his recent greatest hits collection, “Gimmie Shelter'' on EMI Records, written by Joseph Laredo. Blackwell and Russell both went to Tulsa's Will Rogers High School, but they met each other out playing music and eventually played in some roadhouse bands together. “I met Leon, I think, playing on a flatbed truck downtown. I remember him sitting up at the piano on a couple of Coke boxes. He wanted to get with me about forming a band,'' Blackwell said. “In the early '60s or late '50s, one of the first bands we had, the Starlighters, we'd play country in supper clubs — him, David Gates and myself. Leon was good at playing Erroll Garner and stuff, and then we'd rock when they were done with their meals. “We were playing once, opening for Jerry Lee Lewis at the Cain's (Ballroom). His band was kind of loose, and Leon was, too. We got offered to go on the road with him, and we played for him through Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming. At one Kansas gig, we were in one of those hogwire places — this is back in the days when things were pretty wild. Jerry had appendicitis, and the doctor had to go out and quell the riot and tell people they could get their money back. Leon went out there and played Jerry's repertoire. He kicked the stool back and everything. Nobody wanted their money back.'' The chance to play with Jerry Lee Lewis was a pivotal offer in Russell's career. “I had a chance to go on the road with Jerry Lee Lewis,'' he said in the best-of liner notes. “I'd just spent three days, 12 hours a day, taking entrance examinations to Tulsa University, and I just thought, "Well, it's a waste of time, 'cause I have to study so many things I'm not interested in.' ROTC I had to take, and right away I knew that I didn't want to do that. I figured this was my chance to eat in a lot of restaurants and travel around, playing some rock 'n' roll music, which I decided was easier and better.'' In addition to Blackwell (who currently plays in Tulsa's Fabulous Fleshtones) and Gates (who went on to form the band Bread), Russell was playing with and absorbing the influences of other Tulsa musicians, including J.J. Cale and Ronnie Hawkins, a native Arkansan who was a big Tulsa presence at the time. But Lewis had an effect on Russell that's evident in the first singles Russell recorded in Tulsa, “Swanee River'' and “All Right,'' leased to the Chess label in 1959. The year earlier, though, Russell headed west to find work where all hungry musicians went: Los Angeles. He started selling some songs, and in no time, he was working as a session player for the likes of Phil Spector. Throughout the 1960s he racked up an impressive list of studio credits, playing on recordings for the Ronettes, Herb Alpert, the Righteous Brothers (“You've Lost That Loving Feeling''), Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Byrds (on their classic cover of Dylan's “Mr. Tambourine Man''), even Frank Sinatra. By 1969, he had hooked up with British producer Denny Cordell who took Russell to England to work on Joe Cocker's second album, from which Cocker scored a big hit with Russell's “Delta Lady.'' That year, Russell led the band for Cocker's notorious Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, a veritable circus of nearly three dozen players that included one-time Russell girlfriend Rita Coolidge and pals Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett. On a trip through Detroit with Cocker et al., Leon ran into old Tulsa pals David Teegarden and Skip Knape, who were playing the area as Teegardan & Van Winkle. (Drummer Teegarden's Grammy-winning association with Detroit's Bob Seger would begin a bit later.) “We were inspired,'' Teegarden recalled in 1994. “We thought, "Leon likes that gospel sound, so let's write our own gospel tune.'' The song they came up with was “God, Love and Rock & Roll,'' a 1970 single that became the duo's only Top 40 hit. At the same time “God, Love and Rock and Roll'' was riding up the charts, Russell's solo career was taking off. 1970's self-titled debut included some of his best songs (“Delta Lady,'' “Shoot Out at the Plantation,'' “Hummingbird'' and the now-standard “A Song for You''). The follow-up, “Leon Russell and the Shelter People,'' heralded both the foundation of Shelter, his record label, and the return to Tulsa. A few songs are backed by a group of Tulsa musicians Russell called the Tulsa Tops, though the song “Home Sweet Oklahoma'' (with the chorus, “I'm going back to Tulsa just one more time'') was recorded with “friends in England.'' At the height of his success, Russell came back to Tulsa. In July 1972, he bought the Grand Lake property, and by 1973 his land-buying spree had included 54 different pieces of property, including lots near 61st Street and Madison Avenue, in the 1600 block of South Boston Avenue and at the corner of 16th Street and Utica Avenue. The lake retreat was the crown jewel, though — 7 1/2 acres on a point so secluded that many lake residents didn't even know the five buildings (sound-proof studio, 3,500-square-foot house, swimming pool, guest apartments) were being built. It soon became affectionately known around the lake as “the hippie place.'' The house in Maple Ridge was the scene of parties of all sorts. Instead of the rock 'n' roll bashes you might expect, Russell's fetes usually were warm gatherings of friends. In June 1973, Russell's close friend (and still a Tulsa resident) Emily Smith was married at the house in a festive ceremony; Russell himself married Tulsa singer Mary McCreary a couple of years later. In July 1973, Russell hosted a benefit party to help the Maple Ridge Association raise money to pay the legal debt it tallied while blocking construction of the proposed Riverside Expressway. The church studio quickly became home of Shelter Records, the label Russell founded in Los Angeles and moved to Tulsa shortly after he returned. A lot of noted musicians came through to use Russell's studios, including Bob Dylan and J.J. Cale, but neither was built with money-making opportunities in mind; rather, they were simply retreats from the distractions of Los Angeles. An associate of Russell's at the time was quoted in the Tulsa World saying, “Leon just wants a place where he can record any time he feels like it.'' Russell chose not to utilize his fame only to lure big talent to town; he frequently used his musical muscle to push Tulsa musicians into the national limelight. Tulsa hitmaker Dwight Twilley got his first break through Shelter Records, as did the Gap Band, which Russell used as his backing band on his 1974 album, “Stop All That Jazz.'' Les Blank, a California documentary filmmaker, got to see and document the parade of talent through Russell's studios during that time. Blank got a call in 1972 from Cordell, Russell's producer, who pitched him the idea of hanging out with Russell and his teeming bunch of hangers-on, filming the whole scene all the while. Blank, whose grants on other films had run out, jumped at the project and spent the next two years in Tulsa, shooting film of the action. “It was kind of a continuous party,'' Blank said in an interview from his current California home. “There were recording sessions that would go all night long. There was a constant influx of people coming and going. I think the people were excited to have all the new play toys — things like computerized mixing panels. There was this sense of momentum that seemed to be feeding on itself as a result of the records and concerts doing really well ... People just felt like they were in the right place at the right time.'' Blank's cameras followed Russell's entourage nearly everywhere, from a weekend jaunt to see the mysterious spook light in northeastern Oklahoma to Russell's recording sessions in Nashville. However, you probably won't see the film that resulted from all that footage. Although Russell approved the project's beginning, when the film was finished he decided not to approve of its release, and Blank said he has yet to receive a concrete explanation why. Blank is allowed only to show a 16mm copy of the film for no profit. He showed it at the University of Oklahoma in 1991. “People, I guess, who have an image to protect are sensitive to how it's presented and perceived,'' Blank said. That's Russell to a tee. Rarely giving interviews (requests for this story went expectedly unanswered), Russell has guarded his privacy fiercely. In fact, though he returned to Tulsa to escape the bustle of Los Angeles, he ended up leaving Tulsa again because the pressures of fame were just as weighty here. Russell sold the Maple Ridge home in 1977 and moved back to California, but in two years he was back, telling the Tulsa Tribune, “I've decided I like Tulsa a lot ... I've got a lot more friends in Tulsa than I do in California, so I'll be spending a lot more time here.'' But he left again because of incidents like the one reported in the Tulsa World on Oct. 19, 1979. The headline read, “Top Rock Star Turns Tulsa Courthouse On,'' and the newsworthiness of the story seems quaint on reflection. All Russell had done was go to the courthouse to renew his passport. However, the story says, “No sooner had he taken off his mirror-lens sunglasses Thursday afternoon and sat down at a desk when gawkers gathered outside the glass-walled office. Bolder ones walked in quickly, asking for autographs.'' In a 1984 Tulsa World story, Russell reflected on that aspect of Tulsa living: “Tulsa wasn't used to my sort of reality. I went to the bank to borrow $50,000 and that prompted a story studying the finances of people in the music business.'' By then, Russell had moved to Nashville, a town that better suited him as a home and a musical headquarters. Russell always had drifted in and out of country, recording a straight-up country record under a pseudonym Hank Wilson in 1973 and a duet album with Willie Nelson in 1979. After a Hank Wilson sequel album, Russell laid out of the spotlight until a 1992 comeback with the Bruce Hornsby-produced record “Anything Can Happen.'' He still lives near Nashville today, but he comes back to Tulsa — just one more time — every year near the first of April for his annual birthday concert. This year's show, the fifth such event, took place April 11 at an old haunt Russell knows well, the Brady Theater (fellow Tulsa-native musician Bill Davis opened the show). Russell's son, Teddy Jack, now plays drums in his band. What Russell does next is anybody's guess. “Predictability,'' he has said, “is not one of my strong points.'' Leon Russell With Dwight Twilley, and Gary Busey as Buddy Holly When 7:30 p.m. Saturday Where River Parks Ampitheater, 2100 S. Jackson Ave. Tickets $10, available at The Ticket Office, Dillards and the Brady Theater box office |
Thomas Conner
These online "clips" reproduce a self-selection of my journalism (music etc) during the last 20+ years. It's a lotta stuff, but it only scratches the surface. I do not currently possess the time or resources to digitize the whole body of work. These posts are simply a bunch of pretty great days at the office. Archives
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