LEON RUSSELL POLL 1970 - 1975

really?

i'll let you know when i replace my needle and can listen to s/t & Carney that I found for pocket change a couple of weeks ago.

...and The Shelter People is awesome. Leon's kind of forgotten now. The local Classic Rock station is playing their library A-Z style right now. I printed out the playlist from last year and "Lady Blue" is his only entry (aside from the Joe Cocker stuff, and other assorted session work).

he wrote Superstar?!?

i aint never guna forget leon

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Yup, altough the original title was "Groupie" I think Delaney & Bonnie did it first. (Talk about forgotten names...)

he wrote Superstar?!?
co-wrote

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I like the Rita Coolidge version on Mad Dogs And Englishman. Which I would vote for if it was eligible.

Joe introduces her as "The Young Delta Lady."

At another point Joe starts rambling: "Ah yes, it's Easter Time, living by the days" and Leon, exercising his responsibility as bandleader to move things along, cuts him off with "I was just gonna say, don't get all hung up on Easter now."

great songwriter, but i don't have any of his albums

loooooooove "A Song for You"

Bump for the weekend.

"Stop All That Jazz", for "The Ballad of Hollis Brown" alone.

Carney is one of my top 25 favorite albums of all time.

So, Carney.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Carney in a walk...

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wod393o4iNs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1w09x8Jmp0&feature=related

cool!

The fact that only eight of us contributed to this poll is depressing.

I just bought Leon Russell for a dollar today because dude looked real intense on the cover. Never heard of him. This is fuckin incredible, hitting all my buttons: poppy strings, hard drinking, awful women. It's like Nelson Riddle backing up Hank Jr. I love it.

Will o the Wisp is really good too, it's got some cool synths on it.
Hometown pride, love you Leon.

he did the arrangement on gene clark's echoes <3 <3

it's weird... some of russell's big songs are just astoundingly rich, subtle, nuanced, delicate, complex. not that his solo stuff is the opposite of these things -- it's just -- there was this crazy gifted Great American Songbook-type songwriter in there, but he chose to play up a completely different thing on his own.

are the asylum choir records good?

http://www.lesblank.com/more/poem.htm

Les Blank made A Poem Is A Naked Person during 1972-74, while living at the Russell/Shelter records recording studio compound on Grand Lake Of The Cherokees in NE Oklahoma. While the film has had few public showings as, apparantly, Mr. Russell is not keen on sharing it with his public. According to Les's contract, He is legally able to show his own copy if personally presenting it and a non-profit organization is sponsoring the showing. There are presently no such screenings in the works.
It is feature-length, with appearances by Willy Nelson, George Jones and some amazing characters in Oklahoma, where much of it was shot. At least two major critics have declared it the best film ever made on Rock and Roll.

Sorry, but video sales are not possible.

Has anyone seen this?

It is showing in W. DC Fri. March 2nd as part of the DC Independent Film fest

Christgau liked it but suggested it was a bit different

part of Christgau's take:

A Poem Is a Naked Person is an arty horror movie of a documentary. Confronted by what happens to regional music a few generations later, Blank abandons subtlety for an overstated visual gadgetry that screams repulsion out of control. The film opens at Russell's country studio with the obligatory water shot--only this time, a snake slithers beneath the surface, and he or she pretty much sets the tone. In this film inebriated blather is ominously stupid and insular, a wedding is an appalling union of synthetic hip and suburban square, and music-making is the occasion of a studio pro's brutally misogynist doggerel. Another snake--this one a pet constrictor who devours a baby chick before our very eyes--also plays a crucial role, mediating in the montage between people gawking at a Russell concert and people gawking at a building demolition, which latter obviously strikes Blank as the paradigmatic modern entertainment.

Not that I think a kind film would have been more accurate. Even at his commercial peak Russell was a grotesque, an Oklahoma homeboy who did his greatest work in the studios of El Lay, a star by accident driven to fuse exaggerated rootsy eccentricities with masscult shtick and flash. By the time of the film he'd spent years inciting people to boogie in hockey rinks, which did nothing for his idealism. But the contradictions of Russell's art are a lot more interesting than the editing suggests when it lingers on Russell's bemused, noncommital repetition of Blank's Big Question: "If I didn't get paid for singing would I sing?" That's like asking him whether he's stopped cheating his backup singers, and I'm pretty sure I can answer for him: "In the shower, sure, but in a hockey rink, no sir."

I mean, all Russell wants to do is resynthesize blues, gospel and country--third-generation genres that themselves meld the usages of individual (first-generation) and regional (second-generation) styles, genres whose potential jumps out at you when George Jones tosses off the most memorable music of the film--into a language comprehensible to the media-saturated post-regional world.

http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/misc/blank-79.php

Has anyone here seen this movie?

It was a glorious mess. I am glad I saw it.

hoping this movie gets distributed now! http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2015/07/08/leon-russell-in-a-poem-is-a-naked-person

played in nyc this month. it's really fun.

it's got some great studio footage of recording Hank Wilson's Back

It just showed in DC again.

Seriously considered seeing at Film Forum a few weeks ago, but stuck to my guns and watched The Third Man for the umpteenth time.

I saw it this week, it was great!
I am not a HARDCORE LEON fan, but i am an appreciator. i pull those records out from time to time. i would say i'm a bigger fan of les blank than I am of leon russell.
lots of great appearances in the film -- a shockingly handsome eric anderson, tut taylor, willis alan ramsey, of yeah and george jones and willie nelson..

I'm really into the two Leon & Mary albums today. "Say You Will" is an amazing song.

I gather that their split was acrimonious, though. Apparently Leon wasn't allowed to see their son until he was 18.

"Shootout at the Plantation" is a movie in song form.

Colonel played by John Huston
Junior played by Jason Robards
Drummer played by Bruce Dern
Leon as himself

love "A Poem is a Naked Person." hall of fame music documentary.

Leon & The Gap Band in 1974.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19z9JSaTm8c

fuck yes

So apparently Leon also hosted the next episode, which was filmed at the 2nd Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHJ-h2AezjA

Features: Waylon Jennings; Michael (Martin) Murphy; Doug Kershaw; Bobby Bare; Rick Nelson; David Carradine (!); and Willie Nelson amongst others.