Leon Russell, “pop music’s most anonymous big shot,” has written a song for everybody else. And he still has “A Song For You,” Lake Tahoe.
Russell, who has played on, produced, arranged and written some of the most successful records in pop music history, returns to Harrah’s Lake Tahoe’s South Shore Room at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11.
Russell teamed up this year with another legendary keyboardist, Elton John, to record the album “The Union, ” released Oct. 19 on Decca Records.
John was inspired to collaborate with Russell while listening to his music during an African vacation. He called Russell, who he had not spoken with for 40 years, and asked if he wanted to make an ablum. “The Union” was produced by T Bone Burnett.
It is the the first collaboration by the twosome since a 1970 concert at the Fillmore East, which includes guest appearances by Booker T. Jones and Neil Young.
“It’s not fair that people have forgotten about how wonderful this man’s music was and that makes me angry,” John wrote in the liner notes.
John told the New York Times that he wanted the album to make Russell financially comfortable for the rest of his life.
Earlier this year, Russell performed with the Zac Brown Band at the Grammy Awards, which took place just two weeks after his brain surgery.
While it was other artists who perhaps made the songs famous, Russell has written a number of influential Grammy-winners and No. 1 tracks. George Benson’s cover of “This Masquerade” was the first song in music history to occupy the top of the jazz, pop and R&B charts before the 1976 Record of the Year netted a Grammy. The Carpenters struck gold with Russell’s “Superstar,” Ray Charles covered “A Song For You,” and his “Delta Lady” helped propel Joe Cocker to fame.
Born in 1942, Russell began playing the piano at age 14 at a nightclub in Oklahoma, where he backed touring artists. Jerry Lee Lewis was so impressed with the performance of Russell and his band when they backed him at Cain’s ballroom in Tulsa that he hired them for two years of road tours. Russell later moved to Los Angeles and became part of the “Wrecking Crew,” an elite group of studio musicians including Glen Campbell and Hal Blaine.
Russell rose to prominence as a studio musician, producing and playing on sessions with Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, Ike and Tina Turner, Bobby Darin, Wayne Newton, Sam Cooke, Johnny Mathis, and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. He also played on most of Phil Spector’s landmark records, helping the producer establish his trademark “Wall of Sound.”
“Leon was there for the solos and the fancy stuff,” session bandleader Jack Nietzsche said in a news release.
That’s Russell’s piano you hear on Jan and Dean’s “Surf City” and the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and “Pet Sounds.” In turn, George Harrison played guitar on Russell’s first album, which led to the studio ace’s part in the pioneering benefit Concert for Bangladesh with the likes of Beatles bandmates Harrison and Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Badfinger and Ravi Shankar.
Billboard Magazine reported Russell as the top concert attraction in the world by 1973 and certified three of his solo albums — “Leon Russell and the Shelter People” (1971), “Carney” (1972) and “Leon Live” (a three-album set from 1973) — as gold. Russell’s opening acts included Elton John, ZZ Top, Willie Nelson and Charlie Daniels.
Ever a “ChameLeon,” Russell scored a hit record in Nashville under the pseudonym of Hank Wilson, which influenced other musicians in the genre. In the mid-70s, he also founded Paradise Records, which spawned Concrete Blonde and Steve Ripley, later of the Tractors. Ripley and his band now make their home in the former First Church of God at Third and Trenton in Tulsa, which Russell converted into the “Church Studio.”
His country influence would extend even further after he teamed up with Willy Nelson for “One for the Road.”