Superstar in a Masquerade

By William Sargent

Superstar in a Masquerade tells the story about Leon Russell, an award-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, who was born with cerebral palsy, and learned to master the piano. He became an in-demand session man in Hollywood, contributing to thousands of songs by hundreds of artists, during his seven-decade career. He was called the "Rainbow Minister & Ringleader" for the Hippie Generation, and although most people can say they never heard of him, few can say they've never heard him. After reading this book, you can play "Three Degrees of Leon," just like the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," linking him to anyone, from B.B. King to ZZ Top. As an emigre from Oklahoma to California, he invited David Gates and J. J. Cale to join him in the music mecca known as Tinseltown, where the Tulsa Trio made untold contributions to America's popular music. Read about over five hundred artists, and their songs that Leon, David, and J. J. helped create, as well as...

When seventeen-year-old Leon replaced Jerry Lee Lewis on stage in 1959.

How Frank Sinatra caused Leon to let his hair grow.

How J. J. Cale played a role in the formation of the band Bread.

How Leon saved Joe Cocker's career and created Willie Nelson's famous image.

When Elton John was Leon's opening act on tour.

Why DC Comics sued Leon's record label for $2 million.

When David Gates's band backed Chuck Berry on stage in 1961.

When Leon brazenly threw the "F-bomb" at Phil Spector.

When Leon called organized Christianity the single most harmful force in history.

What Broadway song Leon borrowed from for "This Masquerade."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646288960

Book preview

cover.jpg

Superstar in a Masquerade

William Sargent

Copyright © 2020 William Sargent

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2020

Revised edition 2024

All lyrics quoted within are solely for review, study and criticism.

ISBN 978-1-64628-895-3 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-3115-9 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-64628-896-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

Home Sweet Oklahoma (Cain's Ballroom)

Chapter 2

Joyful Noise (1942–1959)

Chapter 3

Stranger in a Strange Land (1960–1968)

Chapter 4

Delta Lady (1969–1970)

Chapter 5

Tight Rope (1971)

Chapter 6

Superstar (1972–1973)

Chapter 7

Stop All That Jazz (1974–1975)

Chapter 8

Make Love to the Music (1976–1979)

Chapter 9

California Divorce (1980–1984)

Chapter 10

Paradise Revisited (1985–1989)

Chapter 11

Anything Can Happen (1990–1999)

Chapter 12

Tryin' to Stay Alive (2000–2009)

Chapter 13

End of the Road (2010–2019)

Chapter 14

The Output of Contributions

Appendix A

Leon Russell Singles

Appendix B

LPs/CDs by Leon Russell

Appendix C

Promotional CDs

Appendix D

J. J. Cale Singles

Appendix E

J. J. Cale LPs/CDs

Appendix F

David Gates Singles

Appendix G

David Gates (solo and with Bread) LPs/CDs

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Endnotes

Leon is one of the best pure musicians I know. But the guy who gets up on the stage and performs with a top-hat and cape bears no resemblance to the guy I used to know in high school.

—David Gates

Fabulous, the best there is! It was great fun doing sessions with Leon, especially the Clairol commercials.

—Glen Campbell

The greatest musician, singer, writer, and entertainer that I have ever seen or heard is Leon Russell.

—Willie Nelson

The most important thing about Leon has nothing to do with personal relationships, but has everything to do with Leon's brilliance as a musician, writer and all that he is musically.

—Doug Snider

Such an amazing talent, the consummate pro. Like most great musicians he has an understanding of many types of music…he can play some loose knit gut bottom swamp rock tune and turn around and write a chart for a highly structured pop ditty…The thing that sets him apart from most players is the feel that he brings to everything he does.

—Bobby Vee

"He [Leon] compares to Niagara Falls, an immeasurably powerful force…An incredible keyboard player who still blows the rest away."

—Audie Ashworth

This book is dedicated to Gail Ann Jahnke from Buffalo, New York, a 1970 graduate of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. As a student teacher at Heuvelton Central School in 1969–1970 f or English teacher Jane Hendee , she taught me to listen to songs and made Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence album a personal favorite. Thank you.

In memory of

Leon Russell (1942–2016)

James Lofgren (Lofgren's Record Shop, Warwick, Rhode Island)

and these departed for contributing their time and info:

Jack Nitzsche (1937–2000)

Audie Ashworth (1936–2000)

Leo Feathers (1941–2001)

Flash Terry (1934–2004)

James Griffin (1943–2005)

Earl Palmer (1924–2008)

Jerry Cole (1939–2008)

Delaney Bramlett (1939–2008)

Larry Knechtel (1940–2009)

Shelby Singleton (1931–2009)

Cliff Crofford (1929–2009)

Bill Raffensperger (1940–2010)

Billy Strange (1930–2012)

Sweet Emily Miller Mundy Smith (1943–2013)

J. J. Cale (1938–2013)

Roger Tillison (1941-2013)

Jeanne Black Strange (1937–2014)

Kim Fowley (1939–2015)

Rocky Frisco (1937–2015)

Larry Bell (1944–2015)

Snuff Garrett (1938–2015)

Jimmie Haskell (1936–2016)

Bobby Vee (1943–2016)

Jack Dunham (1939–2016)

Chuck Blackwell (1940–2017)

Glen Campbell (1936–2017)

Jimmy Markham (1941–2018)

Terrye Newkirk (1946–2018)

Steve Ripley (1950–2019)

Hal Blaine (1919–2019)

Tommy Tripplehorn (1944–2019)

Gene Crose (1936–2020)

Johnny Crawford (1946–2021)

Jim Karstein (1943–2022)

Bob Taylor (1938-2022)

Preface

The magic of music is that just a few notes can conjure visions of past experiences in the minds of listeners. As anyone can claim, music has created the soundtrack of my life. Recalling back to 1960, when I was five years old, living on a farm as a foster child in Madrid, New York, there was a small AM radio in the barn. From it, for the next few years, hits played, like A-ME-RI-CA by Trini Lopez, Bobby Pickett's Monster Mash, Ann-Margret's Bye Bye Birdie, and Herb Alpert's The Lonely Bull. I remember my foster father, Neil Trombley, sitting on his milking stool alongside his prized Holstein Snowball, as Wayne Newton's Danke Schoen echoed off the whitewashed stone walls in the methane-filled milking parlor. I had no idea Leon was a pianist on a lot of what came out of that radio. Neil's father-in-law, Clifford Mayville, was a pianist, and the Trombleys had a piano in the living room of the house. My sister Margaret and I played Tammy and Chopsticks on it, and shared the two parts of Heart and Soul. We watched TV in that room too, and I had no idea that some of the music on shows like The Soupy Sales Show and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet was played in part by Leon.

Moving to Ogdensburg, New York, when I was reclaimed by my biological mother in 1964, I heard Jewel Akens's The Birds and the Bees, Jan & Dean's Surf City, Jimmy Durante's When Love Flies Out the Window, Gary Lewis's This Diamond Ring, and songs by the Beach Boys and the Ventures. Another move in summer of 1965 to nearby Heuvelton introduced me to Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra's Reprise albums. Radio airwaves were imbued with songs for young Americans, and the new genre of music labeled surf and drag was immortalized on celluloid in films by Elvis Presley, Gidget, Frankie and Annette, and other teen idols. The revolutionary sixties presented television shows filled with music for teens, like Shindig!, Where The Action Is, and Hullabaloo. I was unaware at the time that Leon's piano playing was imbedded in those vinyl grooves, film scores, theme songs, and even TV commercials.

Entering my teen years, I took up clarinet lessons but quickly switched to the coronet at the behest of the school musical director David Poulton. After learning the basics, I turned to playing songs by the Tijuana Brass that I heard on my stepfather's albums and the TV show The Dating Game, rather than practice my lesson sheets. Still, I was unaware that the piano complementing Herb's mariachi band was the work of Leon. While taking French class, I listened to the Herb Alpert-produced LP The French Song by Lucille Starr, again oblivious to Leon's piano work on that.

In late 1969 I became interested in a rumor concerning the death of Paul McCartney, after my sister Susan had given me copies of Sgt. Pepper and the White Album. As I read magazines filled with clues of the rumor, I began collecting Beatles records, scanning them forward and backward, and scrutinizing album artwork. The songs of love and life, especially those written by George and John, grew immensely on me. As they mentioned their favorite musicians in interviews, my musical tastes expanded, including Dave Edmunds, Norman Greenbaum, and Ravi Shankar, and learning of studio involvement by the four Beatles, I was led to other artists, among them a long-haired pianist named Leon Russell.

I was in the school ski club, using my weekly allowance to rent ski equipment, until I quit and began buying records at the Photo Stop in Ogdensburg. Living in New York's North Country limited our listening to AM radio stations like conservative WSLB in Ogdensburg, which had banned the Beatles back in August 1966, after John Lennon made the remark about Christianity. Danny Mack's clothing store on Main Street, in the heart of Heuvelton, had a small inventory of 45 rpm singles. Among them were several copies of Joe Cocker's single The Letter / Space Captain, with, for the first time I can recall, the name Leon Russell on a record label. It was from the Joe Cocker album Mad Dogs & Englishmen, that a friend of my brother Chuck, named Steve Hebert, said was incredible and brought to our house for us to hear.

In summer 1971, I was selected as one of a handful of students from Heuvelton to participate in the Upward Bound program at St. Lawrence University in Canton. The six-week program, that began in July, was designed to instill the importance of a college education in low-income students or those with little guidance. Students from about ten schools within sixty miles were enrolled, with the majority of students being from Akwesasne, the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation. One of them, Warren Cook, was an avid Leon Russell fan who always wore a stovepipe hat and sang Leon's songs. He and about a half dozen of us tried in vain to talk our counselor Steve Szymanski into taking us to New York City to see George Harrison's benefit concert for Bangladesh. Leon was one of George's guests and stole the show with his incredible medley of Youngblood / Jumpin' Jack Flash. We had to settle for reading about it in Rolling Stone until the LP came out. During the next year's sessions of Upward Bound, we went to see the film at Canton's American Theater.

I discovered the band Badfinger, on the Apple label, and among their records I bought was the 1971 album Straight Up with their hit Day After Day, which was recorded with Leon Russell playing piano. The connection with Leon in popular music carried into the 1971 fall semester of school, while I was a participant in the Talented High School Juniors Program at St. Lawrence University with a dozen Heuvelton Juniors, among nearly seventy from neighboring schools. When we gathered in the cafeteria between our computer and psychology classes, I always headed to the jukebox, and among the songs I picked was Eric Clapton's After Midnight, a song that I had no idea that Leon filled with his inimitable piano chord structures.

In 1972, a small apartment in the village, shared by my older brother Chuck and a few friends, was known as a hangout place to get high and listen to cool music. Among their albums were The History of Eric Clapton, Dave Mason's Alone Together, and Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen—all containing Leon as pianist. At that time, my other older brother Ed had a portable 8-track player, and on one of his tapes was Leon Russell's Tightrope and a few songs by Bread. I didn't know that band was formed by David Gates, who was once Leon's best friend in school.

The following summer, my friend Kevin Steele and I met a guy named Chris. He and his wife introduced us to some music we'd never heard before. I immediately became a fan of the laid-back sound of J. J. Cale, when I heard his album Really. I later found out that he wrote Clapton's hit After Midnight and that his sound was indigenous to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and like Gates, Cale had close ties to Leon.

As the years passed, digital compact discs became the new format, and their in-depth liner notes increased my awareness of Leon's presence in music. Attempts to find more about him only led me to short bios with nothing of substance about Leon's life and career as a musician, compelling me to write Superstar in a Masquerade. I'd been asked many times how I got involved in this book, but it wasn't until a phone conversation with J. J. Cale that I realized an interesting concept. Cale asked why I was writing it, and I explained how my favorite makeout music was by Bread, that his Really album and Leon's Carney and Hank Wilson's Back albums were my favorites while stoned or drunk, and that Leon had been the hit of George Harrison's Bangladesh benefit. J. J. responded by saying, So you've got the best reason for doin' it man…sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll.

I had seen Leon in concert three times prior to working on this book, with the first time being the Leon Russell Show (with his wife, Mary) in Dayton, Ohio, at the O'Hara Arena in September 1976. In 1984 I enjoyed his performance at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, as he toured to promote the Hank Wilson Vol. II album. The third occasion came in 1996, when he shared the bill with the Georgia Satellites and the Marshall Tucker Band at Buster Bonoff's Warwick Musical Theatre in Warwick, Rhode Island. I met up with Leon's son Teddy Jack Bridges there, as he walked the perimeter of the tent, enjoying some flirtatious conversation with female fans. I told him I was going to be writing a book about his famous dad and asked if it would be possible to speak with him. He graciously wrote down a phone number on my theatre program and said Leon would be glad to help. I can't recall how many times I dialed that number to only not have anyone pick up. In the meantime, I kept compiling info and making contacts with whomever I could link to the elusive Leon.

As I researched, I sought out copies of anything Leon, David, or J. J. worked on in any capacity. In 1999, while cleaning a 1959 single by Leon that I paid $300 for, the label was ruined when it got wet. I brainstormed and came up with a label-sealing device for cleaning vinyl, called the Groovmaster™ Label Saver. The Clear Choice For Cleaner Sound® is available on ebay, Amazon, and at www.groovmaster.com. It is popular with audiophiles worldwide and has financed my passionate endeavor to write this book.

When I found out that Leon was making a stop at the House of Blues in Boston on January 13, 2000, I began making plans to not only catch his performance but hopefully speak with him. I phoned his manager, Brad Davis, several times to attempt getting an okay to meet with Leon. Brad said he'd get me on a guest list but never did, but I went to the show regardless. After closing his twenty-six-song concert with a medley of Paint It Black / Kansas City, Leon departed the stage and went out a side door. I went to the first of two buses parked along the street and spoke with his driver Grant Whitman. I told him who I was and asked if Leon would see me. After a few minutes, he came back to say Leon had been sleeping but awoke to say he was looking forward to my book. That was when I heard a Southern drawl come from within the bus snarl, I don't want anything to do with that book! Grant quickly told me Teddy was in the Green Room back at the blues club, where I proceeded to go and spent about an hour with Teddy, Jack Wessel, and John Giles. They were very pleasant and unabashedly answered my questions and offered other bits of information about Leon's incredible career. I left Teddy with a list of questions that he said his father would answer via email. I also gave him a copy of the list of more than 550 vinyl LPs, singles, and compact discs I had discovered thus far that Leon took part in the recording of. Little did I know that I would never stop adding to that list. I didn't get to talk with Leon that night but figured there would be other opportunities. I later found out that one of Leon's favorite uncles had passed recently from an illness, and Leon was quite upset over the loss.

As time wore on, I continued making contacts with musicians that led me to Leon's Tulsa circle of friends via phone and emails. Word got around between them of my search for info about the early years in Tulsa's music scene. I was surprised to find that many of them had gone on to achieve a high level of success in their endeavors, whether it was music, law school, or other entrepreneurial ventures. Chuck Blackwell, one of Tulsa's legendary drummers, had drummed up a successful business (Blackwell's Bevel Glass Doors) in Broken Arrow. Still involved with music, Chuck worked on Tulsa musician Scott Ellison's JSE Records 2000 CD One Step from the Blues. Chuck cowrote five of the thirteen tracks with Scott and played drums on Darker Shade of Blue, along with organist Larry Bell and Jimmy Karstein on percussion. Fellow Tulsan David Teegarden (of Teegarden & Van Winkle fame) lent a hand mixing some of Scott's CD. Tulsa's blues harmonicist Junior Markham performed quite often with Scott at local spots. Guitarist Leo Feathers called Bixby home, and played at local clubs. Tulsa's original rocker Gene Crose still performed at the time, as did guitarist Tommy Crook and saxophonist Johnny Williams.

A reunion was in the works for many of them to meet with me to rehash the old days. I got word via email that David Gates was working June 22–24 and couldn't make it, and J. J. Cale was also busy. Johnny Williams, who had revealed more about Russell Bridges to me than I dare print, spoke with Leon, and Leon's standoffish attitude and reluctance to contribute to my project convinced his ever loyal pal Johnny to apologetically refuse any further involvement. It seemed my trip to Tulsa, as planned, was canceled, but thanks to Jack Dunham's persuasiveness, it wasn't.

On June 28, 2000, I touched down in Tulsa, where I was met by Jack and Ginger Dunham, a great couple that showed me Oklahoma hospitality at its best. That night, the others met us in a convention room of the hotel, and I spent hours listening to stories recalled by Jumpin' Jack Dunham, Chuck Blackwell, Leo Feathers, and Jimmy Junior Markham. They had respect for each other and Leon, with essentially no bad things to say, except for three of them agreeing that whenever Leon got involved with something, his bottom line was What's in it for me? They all said that Johnny Williams would regret not wanting to be a part of the get-together if he knew how much fun it was recalling how they met one another, formed bands, and relived hilarious moments on stage and on the road.

In my short visit to Tulsa, I got to meet many of the city's musicians I'd only seen on LP covers, listened to intently to pick out Leon's contribution, and/or spoken with on the phone or emailed. What I found were regular folk. No Gods or egotistical maniacs, just real people with real lives, just like you and me. One thing I did learn right quick from Tulsan Johnny Jackson was that if you don't want to look out of place in Oklahoma, the first thing you do in a restaurant is order some biscuits and gravy, or as he called them Oklahoma appetizers.

I was fortunate to get a tour of the area, that included a visit with Steve Ripley of the Tractors, at the old Shelter Church studio, thanks to pianist Rocky Frisco, one of J. J. Cale's dearest friends, and spent time with Sweet Emily Smith. I got into a deep exchange with Emily about strange connections and occurrences and how she felt that a greater force had compelled me to write this book.

I spent quite some time trying to reach other important figures in Leon's career. In June 2000, after months of trying, I finally made a one-on-one contact with Jack Nitzsche, the legendary arranger who'd worked on most of the hits produced by Phil Spector. I had listed several records Jack had been involved with in the early sixties and sent them on a fax to his office assistant, Michelle. Jack was in the midst of writing his book of memoirs when he called me, thinking I had plans of doing something with the master tapes of those songs. Of the recordings I listed, which included a Tammy Grimes cover of The Big Hurt, his own albums Chopin '66 and Dance to the Beatle Hits, he said, Oh god, they're awful, I hate 'em. The thing I remember most was his initial response when I told him I was writing a book about Leon. In a voice sounding full of astonishment and bitterness, he exclaimed, Who cares? He candidly revealed his feelings about Leon's talents back in the lean days, saying he found Leon to be a reliable piano player for background music, but he was nothing special, adding, He is not one of my favorite musicians. We didn't get to speak much more than thirty minutes, as Jack was heading off to Australia to speak before a group but said he would talk more about his session work with Leon when he got back. He also offered to autograph an LP (asking Which one?). Busy fact-finding, I finally got around to packaging Lonely Surfer for shipment in late August and found out I needn't send it and that I would never get to hear what Mr. Nitzsche may have had to add to our conversation, as Jack died of a cardiac arrest on August 25, 2000.

J. J. Cale's producer and manager Audie Ashworth had succumbed to heart failure the day before, but I was fortunate to speak with him for about an hour on the phone days before his unfortunate passing. Both men were sixty-three years of age. Snuff Garrett also did a phone interview with me but wasn't willing to say much other than Leon, or Leone as he called him, was incredibly talented and that Leon and David had a hard-on for each other! Each did what they could to better the other's projects. When asked about certain songs and albums he was involved with, Snuff said, Gary Lewis never wrote a song in his life! Snuff asked if I would send him a CDR of the Sunset Strings Play Roy Orbison album he produced with Leon. Insiders say Snuff was not a songwriter either but liked to affix his name as one when copyrights were filed to ensure a share of songwriting royalties.

On September 9, 2000, my twenty-two-year-old son Ed and I went to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut, where David Gates was performing at the Wolf's Den. While waiting for the 8:00 p.m. show to start, I was amazed to hear that employees at the casino had no idea who Gates was. The mention of Bread brought a look to their faces indicating maybe they had some idea of the group. David's band, which consisted of Peter Fryberger on a rarely seen five-string bass, Chas Williams on guitar and an eight-piece string section, took their places on stage. Noticing the lack of a drummer, my son quipped, This is low-key, Dad. Out came a mustachioed figure wearing jeans, a paillete shirt, and a black Stetson hat. Unmistakably David Gates. The performance started off a bit shaky (David's mic having been set too low), but he corrected the minor glitch and gave his all, pleasing the crowd with fifteen songs. A personable showman, David joked with the crowd between songs and told humorous stories concerning some of them. One was about the opening number (Make It with You) and how the Tulsa Tribune had misunderstood his mother's pronunciation of its title when she suggested the Tribune let Tulsa know one of its native sons had a hit song. David laughed as he told the audience an article in the paper said Bread's hit was Naked with You. If David only knew the countless times teenage boys played that song to their girlfriends in hopes of being just that! David played guitar on all but three tunes (Goodbye Girl, Clouds: Suite, and Lost without Your Love), for which he sat at an acoustic Yamaha piano. The numbers were performed so flawlessly you could have closed your eyes and thought you were listening to the original recordings. Chas Williams's guitar playing was smooth, and his Dobro work was inspiring. Fryberger's bass (with that exceptionally low fifth string) was effectively cohesive as it wove patterns around David's acoustic strumming. Most impressive though was the string section. Just seeing them at the ready to add their lushly arranged parts let you know this was a first-class performance. A standing ovation was given to the band as they left the stage after Everything I Own, enticing them back to perform If with David as an encore, which generated applause when David began the vocals. When I went backstage to see David, I was taken by surprise as his first words to me in his Oklahoma drawl were I got your emails, but I just hadn't found the time to answer them. So he was aware of my labor of love and, even better, willing to help me to the best of his recollection. After that night, through emails, as much as he could recall, David helped me fit several pieces of the puzzle together.

It was a quite a challenge to reach J. J. Cale, but I had talked with him previously in 1991 after a show at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence. Years later Cale graciously spent time on the phone with me, talking about his early days playing clubs in Tulsa and recording with Al Sweatt. When J. J. toured to support his To Tulsa and Back CD in 2004, I went to see him perform at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston on June 20. Thanks to his keyboard player Rocky Frisco, whom I'd met and become friends with, I got to talk with Cale and his band members, Jim Karstein, Bill Raffensperger, and Christine Lakeland. I asked J. J. and Christine to autograph a picture sleeve for me, and when he saw it, he said, Now there, you've got yourself a real find, a Holy Grail of J. J. Cale! It was his 1979 record Katy Kool Lady backed with the rarity Juarez Blues, credited to Juan & Maria, who were actually J. J. and Christine. Cale adamantly stated, None of my songs sound like others, man when a similarity was mentioned between his Changes (on Really) and The Raiders hit song Indian Reservation.

But what of Leon Russell, the most elusive superstar in a masquerade? I never got the opportunity to speak directly with him about his incredible career. I did spend time at a few of Leon's shows with his son Teddy and daughter Tina and communicated through texts with his daughter Blue after his passing.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the following people (in no particular order) for their cooperation:

My appreciation goes out to the executives and staff members at all the record labels, management firms, and businesses, for their patience and willingness to take my phone calls and respond to my emails or letters. Some graciously helped edit parts of the text to ensure its accuracy to their recollection. Thanks to Tim Livingston (Sun-Dazed Records), Larry Schaeffer (Cain's Ballroom), Charles Levan (Right Stuff Records), Tom Cartwright (EMI), Eli Okun (EMI), Cheryl Pawelski, John Ray, Tonya Sanders, Rob Christie, Lance Tan, Marshall Blonstein (president of DCC Compact Classics), Marsha McGovern and Dave Henson (DCC Compact Classics), Bryan Thomas (director of publicity of Del-Fi Records), Rhino Records, Heather at Collector's Choice Music, David Diggs and Pat Boone's assistant Charlie Shaw at Cooga Music, Crystal Bahmaie at RCA Records Archives, Bobby Roberts (ex-president of Paradise Records), Michael B. Smith at Gritz Magazine (www.gritz.net), David Greenberg (senior product manager at Rykodisc), Serena Kay Williams (historian) and Allen Weisman (archivist) at Musician's Union Local 47, Andrew Morris at Local 47, Roy Hamm at Dreamworks, Charlie Davis (Paradise Artists), Bob Greenlee (owner of King Snake Records), Phil Metz (Sagestone Records), Sheila Averista at WSBE Public TV Channel 36 in Providence, Margaret the musicologist at Providence Public Library, Lauren and Martha Gregory at the Tulsa City County Library System, Lawton Library, and Aulena Gibson at the South Oklahoma Genealogical Society, and Harvey Kubernick. Steve Kolanjian and the rest of the staff at EMI were a great source of information contained within. Much appreciation to Videofair in EG, RI for the video transfer work. Thanks to fellow authors Kris Engelhardt ( Beatles Undercover ) and Domenic Priore ( Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood ) for their insight, inspiration, and guidance. Thanks also to authors S. E. Hinton, Steve Roesner, Stephen McParland, Terry Gordon, and Steve Todoroff. Gratitudes also to Anthony Reichardt, an online music aficionado.

Special thanks to the many local (Rhode Island) record shops or online buyer's outlets for helping me find the obscure recordings Leon, David, and J. J. helped create—ebay, Amazon, Gemm, Obiland, Memory Lane Records, Craig Moerer, Record Finders, World-Wide Wax, Luke's Records, Ladd's Music, Two Guys Music, Vinyl Vendors, Times Square Records, Sam's Records and Tapes, Allen Radwill, CD Now, Amazon.com, One Way Records, CD Quest, and many other vinyl and CD dealers.

My persistence led me to many musicians and industry personalities who unselfishly spent time reminiscing with me about their long-ago days working with Leon or as part of the inner circle. Many that I attempted reaching by various methods never responded, perhaps due to their schedules, lack of interest, or fear of revealing their own past. Others, sometimes kindly and in a most down-to-earth way, allowed me to purge their memories. A grand tip of the hat to the departed, and to: David Gates, Mike Kappus (The Rosebud Agency), Tom Sullivan, Jimmy Karstein, Jimmy Turley, Bob Taylor, Gerald Goodwin, Wes Reynolds, Gary Gilmore, Bill Boatman, Gordon Payne, Riley Francis, Teddy Jack Bridges, Tina Bridges, Blue Bridges Fox, Jack Wessel, John Giles, Edgar Winter, Johnny Williams, Roger Tillison, Kris Jensen, John Barbata, Don White, Pat Boone, Dwight Twilley, Edgar Winter, Don Preston, Don Nix, Larry Hosford, Carol Kaye, Buzz Cason, Mike Deasy, Gary Lewis, Brian Hyland, Tommy Roe, Donna Loren, Jimmy Bond, Jim Horn, Kenny Loggins, Charlie (Cyril) Hargrove, Douglas A. Snider, Duane Eddy, Jim Horn, Don Randi, Johnny Crawford, Buck (Ronny Dayton) Wilkin, Ernie Bringas, Peter Nicholls, Marc Benno, Larry Bright, Jerry McGee, Wink Martindale, and Daniel Bougoise. Lastly, thanks to my better half Sheila Downing Kelley, and her mother Maureen, for inspiring me to finalize this book after a lengthy interim.

During this arduous undertaking, I was in contact with legions of Leon Russell, J. J. Cale, and David Gates (and Bread) fans, as well as many music lovers, who supported and encouraged my endeavors through this amazing journey back in time. Thanks to René Aagaard, Pat St. John, Gloria Shiraef, Celeste White, Jannelle McClendon, Marie Curran, Bruce Towell, Will Huffman, Cindy Rouse, Walt Frank, Angie, Mike Lasota and Kim Poindexter. Special thanks to Steve Liddycoat and Sandi Weinfield for their editing assistance. Without saying, I totally thank Leon Russell for being such an inspiration as to compel me to write this book.

As a note of interest, the single most asked question of me while working on this was Why are you writing about Leon Russell? The answer lies within.

Introduction

This book, dubbed a bio-pedia, is about Grammy-winning Tulsa musician Claude Russell Bridges, better known as Tulsa's Mayor of Rock and Roll, Leon Russell. Originally a biography, it became an encyclopedia of who's who touched by the interwoven career paths Leon and fellow Tulsans David Gates and J. J. Cale paved during their careers. The title Superstar in a Masquerade fits not only the man behind the legend but also the uncredited studio musicians, whose identities were mostly concealed by record companies, until 1973, when the musicians union demanded credit be given. Similar to songwriting factories, like the Brill Building, record companies had their own studios, where legions of session men created music for the hungry masses. The business was a masquerade that fed the public music, credited more times than not, to artists that didn't even play it themselves. As one of the studio players that did, Leon Russell played a huge role in the creation of American music, and that got him inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As an arranger, producer, songwriter, and performer during his six decades in the business, he attained a position that arguably remains unequaled, and his endless list of credits is an overwhelming testament to his versatility as a musician. Most people can say they never heard of him, but few can say they've never heard him. His years of work in over a dozen Los Angeles studios, on various genres of music, was pressed in the grooves of thousands of vinyl records, released on over one hundred different labels. Leon was a ubiquitous figure in the business, and although the name Leon Russell hadn't been widely recognized by the public until his Mad Dogs collaboration with Joe Cocker in 1970, it was certainly one of the first to be mentioned by arrangers and producers around the Los Angeles music scene throughout most of the 1960s.

After beginning his own solo career, Leon Russell became an enigmatic larger-than-life persona, considered by many to be an icon of the revolutionary sixties and the hippy movement. The Master of Space and Time, as he was known, said of himself, I'm basically what is known as a talented illusionist. His sound was described as gospel-infused Southern boogie piano rock, blended with blues and country music, fused with his nasal and gravelly voice. Once compared with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Leon burst back, Lord have mercy! I always thought I sounded like a cross between Tom Waits and Moms Mabley. As a solo performer, Leon was named the top concert draw of the year (1973) in the United States by Billboard magazine.

Read on and discover a voluminous body of work Leon and his two Tulsa pals contributed to. Like Leon, Gates worked the full spectrum of music, including early recordings by David Crosby, Captain Beefheart, Lorne Greene, and even a surf record by the O'Jays. Cale's contributions were on unsuspecting recordings by Billy Vaughn's orchestra, vaudevillian crooner Rudy Vallee, and pop star Jimmy Boyd, and he was integral in the formation of David Gates's band Bread. As a songwriter and guitarist, Cale has been a major influence, especially on three-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Eric Clapton, and the legendary Grammy-winning guitarist Albert Lee. Listen to Come Up and See Me Sometime on Lee's 1979 LP Hiding. Neil Young, a two-time inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, named J. J. one of the two best electric guitar players, alongside Jimi Hendrix.

Entries about performers in this book will hopefully reveal their significance in the business or their relationship with the three Tulsans. Dates given for events and sessions came from assorted sources ranging from Union contract sheets, session notations, and liner notes on releases, to personal recollections of participants. Author Domenic Priore, and Russ Wapensky, an authority on the musicians' union session information, explained some of the confusing aspects of dates and credits, in the liner notes of a Sundazed Records CD The Yellow Balloon. They reported, A common practice of the period would be for a label to tell members of the group that session fees would be deducted from their royalties. Whether or not they got their due was another matter entirely. Another key thing to remember is that session worksheets are very often inaccurate; there was plenty of chicanery in the billing, such as players trading instruments so that they could get paid twice and other little tricks. Some of the studio dates were paid in cash and done outside standard union procedures, without contract sheets, such as overdub, or sweetening sessions. Some contract sheet dates were also said to have been altered for payment period deadline purposes. Information about the cash dates could only be gathered from the memories of people directly involved. As Wapensky and Priore pointed out, Session information should be used as a guide to understanding who played and when, but should never be taken as absolute gospel. Session guitarist Carol Kaye further revealed, Most studio ‘dates' in record company's records are listing the ‘final' vocal overdub date as ‘the date' that the recording was done, not the tracking date by studio musicians. The union for singers and soundtracks is SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), and those contracts were not researched, so the info contained within does not focus on vocals or film soundtracks. To further complicate authenticating recordings, session contracts for those done in New York City were lost over the years or destroyed in a fire. Date estimates for some recordings were derived from relating the matrix number on the record label, which shows the master tape recordings used to cut the lacquer disc in the studio, with known dates of those with traceable matrix numbers. Appendixes include as near as complete lists of US releases and some rare imported discoveries over the last seven decades by Russell, Gates, and Cale.

Chapter 1

Home Sweet Oklahoma (Cain's Ballroom)

Tulsa, Oklahoma, was once a grand mecca of opportunities for thriving entrepreneurs, such as the oil-wealthy Mayo family, Frank Phillips of Phillips 66 Oil, J. Paul Getty, and Howard Hughes. Another was Tate Brady, owner of the Brady Hotel, who had a sandstone-and-brick parking garage built in 1924. The garage idea didn't pan out, so Brady turned it into a dance for a dime joint and named it the Louvre Ballroom. Local dance instructor Madison W. Cain purchased it in 1927 as a new location for his business, making it the largest dance hall around. Professor Cain, or Daddy Cain, as he was referred to, changed its name to Cain's Dancing Academy and enjoyed a successful enterprise. A large part of its prosperity was due to the fact that there were no other local places considered worthy of attracting local debutants.

Texan Bob Wills had formed the Wills Fiddle Band and played for radio stations around Fort Worth, Texas, in 1930. The group was renamed the Light Crust Doughboys after getting their own show sponsored by the Burris Mill and Elevator company, the manufacturer of Light Crust Flour. Their show gained them statewide popularity, leading to radio broadcasts. Burris's top man W. Lee Pappy O'Daniel refused to give in to Wills's desire to branch out and threatened he'd see that Wills never played Texas again if he left. Wills gathered the band and walked out and soon found Pappy's threat was a promise. Wills and the Texas Playboys edged their way toward Oklahoma, playing radio stations until O'Daniels put pressure on to get them off the air, landing them in Tulsa in 1934 and broadcasting on KVOO. They managed to get booked to perform at Cain's on February 9, 1934, and were soon drawing crowds of up to six thousand on the weekends. Wills decided to stay in the city and made the dance academy his home. Each week from Cain's, KVOO broadcast six to eight live shows of the King of Western Swing, as Wills became known. Becoming the most popular band in Texas and Oklahoma, they landed a deal with ARC Records before switching to Otto Heinemann's OKeh label, with their producer, Art Satherly.

In 1937, Madison Cain sold the building where Wills wrote and rehearsed most of his great songs, like Steel Guitar Rag, Right or Wrong, and New San Antonio Rose. As popular as Bob Wills was in his heyday, another western swing performer from Oklahoma beat him in a battle of the bands in 1943. Fiddle player Donnell Clyde Spade Cooley became a huge star after moving to California in 1931. Cooley's lead singer was Tex Williams, who, with most of Cooley's band backing him, later became popular on his own, notably with the hit Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette.

Other swing greats, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller, also played Cain's around this time. Wills remained there until 1941, when he decided to hit the bright lights of Hollywood. His banjo-playing brother Johnny Lee filled the vacancy left at Cain's and spent seventeen years based there. Cain's booked other acts during the forties, fifties, and sixties, like Hank Thompson, Hank Williams, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Johnny Cash stepped onto the stage there in 1968, a year before getting himself his own television show that preceded his rise to superstardom, making him a country music icon. 1968 was also the year Bob Wills was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Merle Haggard not only performed at Wills's establishment, he recorded a tribute LP to him after Bob suffered a stroke in 1969.

Cain's business slowed and in 1972 and was purchased by eighty-two-year-old Marie L. Myers. Out of boredom when her husband, Charles Elmo, died, she unsuccessfully tried to get the Tulsa zoning board to approve her idea of a boat becoming a floating dance club. She struck an agreement with Tulsa musician Gene Moody to help her rejuvenate the dancehall's popularity. The Saturday crowds dwindled to around ninety, and Myers lost about $19,000 her first year. Local promoter Robert Bradley offered to buy the place a few years later, but Myers ending up selling it in November 1976 to Larry Shaeffer, who was part of Little Wing Inc. Shaeffer's approach was to add punk and new wave artists like Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, and Elvis Costello, as well as jazz performers Al Di Meola, Stanley Clarke, and famed violinist Jean Luc Ponty. Aware of Tulsa's love for country music, Larry continued to bring in country rockers like New Riders of the Purple Sage and Asleep at the Wheel. Pilgrim Productions in Tulsa had an idea to spotlight local talents to increase business, with the aid of two of its promoters, Peter Nicholls and Simon Miller Mundy, an English nobleman who married Sweet Emily Smith. Peter and Simon booked Marcy Levy, Essence, Jim Byfield, Don White, Turkey Mountain Troubadors, Old Dog Band, Totty, and Bliss. Shaeffer managed to get Van Halen, a fairly new heavy metal group, to appear in 1978 for $300 and brought in the Police, Doug Kershaw, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. In 1979, Jerry Lee Lewis returned to Cain's, and after downing two bottles of Johnnie Walker, managed to knock 'em dead with his showmanship.

Larry and one of his crew, Bill Certain, found a treasure trove of dust-covered items while cleaning the attic in 1979, including pictures, postcards, and other Bob Wills memorabilia. One of them was a lighted Bob Wills sign that measured nearly three-by-five, and another was a wheel of fortune. Some of the Wills Brothers pictures (Bob, Johnny Lee, and Luther) were added to a nine-by-six wall-mounted glass case that hung by the entrance door. During an April 20, 1980, show, someone stole the entire case. A month later, it was returned by a woman who said she found it in a trailer.

In an effort to bring more patrons to Cain's, Shaeffer added attractions, including a mechanical bull, like the one seen in the movie Urban Cowboy, for bull riding contests. Roller skating, ladies mud wrestling, and boxing events were also featured. Because of the seemingly endless maintenance, Shaeffer considered selling Cain's in 1982 but hung on instead and throughout the 1990s continued to bring in fresh acts like Beck, the Foo Fighters, Jonny Lang, Chris Duarte, and Rancid. With a new promoter at his side (Davit Souders), Larry Shaeffer kept Cain's Ballroom alive and remained committed to presenting Tulsa with a wide array of entertainment. That included Tulsa's favorite son, superstar, and legend Leon Russell. Beginning in 1986, Cain's became the locale for Russell's annual Birthday Bash.

Oklahoma, and Tulsa in particular, has contributed an even richer resource to American culture in the form of music. Noted singers, musicians, and personalities from Oklahoma include Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Vince Gill, Reba McEntire, Anita Bryant (David Gates's classmate), Elvin Bishop, brother act Hanson, Kay Starr, Chet Baker, Lee Hazlewood, Barry McGuire, Nokie Edwards and Bob Bogle of the Ventures, Becky Hobbs, Brad Pitt, Bill Hader of SNL and Ron Howard.

The sprawling city's urban improvements and attractions it boasted with oil mansions, beautiful churches, museums, and rose gardens led to Tulsa being dubbed America's Most Beautiful City in the 1950s. Bubbling crude may have made the city and many residents wealthy, but something else was brewing in the city. A huge cauldron of diversified musical tastes and talents, combining Western swing and gospel music, mixed with black rhythm and blues, injected with rockabilly and rock and roll, spilled into the streets. What culminated during the late fifties was a sound unique to Tulsa, and among the local musicians that stirred that cauldron was a gifted young piano player who bridged the gap between Oklahoma's tumbleweeds and California's Tinseltown.

Chapter 2

Joyful Noise (1942–1959)

In the late afternoon of April Fool's Day 1942, John Griffith Bridges and his pregnant wife, Evel Hester Whaley Bridges, left their small Main Street home in Apache, Oklahoma, and traveled more than twenty miles to a hospital. There was no hospital in the small Caddo County town, and the nearest was Southwestern Clinic Hospital in Lawton, a city in Commanche County, located eight miles northeast of Fort Sill, in the foothills of Wichita Mountain. At 3:10 a.m. Thursday, April 2, Hester gave birth to Claude Russell Bridges. His name came from Hester's thirty-eight-year-old brother Russell Claude Whaley. The newborn Russell had a seven-year-old brother named Jerry Glen. Twenty-nine-year-old John Bridges Jr. was a bookkeeper for the Texas Company (a division of Texaco), and thirty-year-old Hester was a devout Methodist, deeply involved with the church, who always attended Sunday sermons, and was a member of the local Sew and So club.

Russell's great-great-grandfather, William Irvin Bridges, was born in Virginia in 1765. He served in the War of 1812 in Company 1 Ohio, alongside his future wife's father, Robert Frakes. William was discharged on September 27, 1812, married Mary Polly Frakes in 1827, and died June 20, 1850. Russell's paternal great-grandfather was John Griffith Bridges, who was born December 7, 1831, in Ohio, and died November 1911 in Alton, Missouri. From 1862 to 1864, he served in the Civil War in Company F from Illinois. Russell's paternal grandfather John Branson Bridges was born March 30, 1872, and had been a farmer in Alton, Missouri, before moving to Apache in 1912 with his wife, Lanora, where he continued farming and worked at the Farmer's Union elevator. He died December 19, 1947, at age seventy-five, from complications of a heart attack he'd suffered two months earlier. Russell's maternal grandparents were William Lawrence Whaley Sr. and Louisa Florence Whaley of Apache, who died in 1943 and 1958, respectively.

Russell seemed like a normal infant until Hester noticed something about his mobility and physical features of his right hand when he was eighteen months old. There had been complications during her ten hours of labor during birth, and Russell entered life a victim of cerebral palsy (a.k.a. spastic paralysis), with damage to his second and third vertebrae, afflicting his nerve endings. The right side of his body developed smaller than his left side and was partially paralyzed, leading to his walking with a limp and becoming left-handed. Born under the sign of Aries, the sign of self-positivity and confidence, Russell nurtured the Arian characteristics of optimism and creativity. When Russell was three, John's job had the family living in nearby Healdton during summer, until August 1945, when they returned to Apache. On December 23, a letter to Santa was printed in the Anadarko Daily News from three-year-old Russell, saying he was a good boy, and asking for a drum.

John and Hester both played piano and having one in the house, she taught Russell to sing hymns. A meeting of The Women's Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church was held in the afternoon of March 12 at Hester's house and little Russell sang Trust and Obey and Everybody Ought to Love after their business meeting. In September 1946, Hester was surprised to hear piano music coming from the parlor and stood in amazement at her four-year-old son. He just sat down one day and started playing [the traditional hymn] ‘Trust and Obey' by ear, his mother reminisced. That's the way he started out.¹ Hester didn't mention Russell's having learned the song and sang it at her Women's Society meeting six months earlier. Realizing her son's blessed gift, Hester called the Popejoy School of Music in nearby Anadarko, Oklahoma, but Mrs. Dora Streight Popejoy, a well-known instructor in the state, had reservations concerning a four-year-old student. After hearing the young child play, Mrs. Popejoy became adamant about teaching him, and by October 7, 1946, Russell was signed up as a member of the Popejoy Junior Music Club. During the November meeting of the club, Russell was among the eight children performing The Kindergarten Class and also one of the vocalists performing a solo or duet in the evening program. Dora also heard a great singing voice in the young boy and included him among the Kindergarten choir singing Jolly Old Saint Nicholas in the school's Yuletide program on December 21, as his mother, Hester, was one of the tea pourers for the guests.

In early March 1947, John Bridges received a promotion and was transferred to Madill, located about one hundred and forty miles east of Apache. He sold the house to Mary Weiss, with the agreement that his family got to remain in it until he found a place to live in Maysville. On March 8, 1947, Russell was one of the pianists performing in a program at Anadarko's First Christian Church in preparation for a Chickasha competitive festival. An article in the May 6, 1947, edition of The Daily News named five-year-old Russell among students that played piano solos at the school's last meeting, held at Mrs. Popejoy's house. His mother had proudly attended every program to watch her little prodigy. Hester had been president of the Women's Society of Christian Service of the Methodist Church in Apache for two years and of the United Council of Church Women. With a move coming, Hester was honored by Mrs. Claude Malone with a farewell tea and musical program on May 12, 1947, at Malone's home, attended by over fifty guests. During the program, Mrs. Malone played piano selections, a voice duet of Girl in Calico was sung by Nancy and Rebecca Goodman, and five-year-old Russell performed Bold Adventure solo on piano. On June 1, 1947, Hester and her children joined John in Maysville in Garvin County, Oklahoma.

Although playing the piano was foremost in his life, Russell stretched his musical abilities with the cornet and baritone horn after the family moved to Maysville. There, Russell's first-grade class at Maysville Elementary presented the operetta The Wedding of the Flowers, and ironically, he had the part of the preacher. Russell was one of twenty-two students in his third-grade class with Mrs. Bratcher. In fifth grade at Maysville, he was so good with the baritone, the high school musical director Joe Reed had him playing with the marching band. Russell recalled, I needed a strap to keep it on, and I'd be limping down the road trying to carry it…but I got to go to the big football games. Russell had sold his cornet in the fall of 1952 through a newspaper ad and a few months later was the only grade school student to win a band award, his being for Outstanding Achievement on baritone. That same fall, Russell won a 17-jewel watch valued at forty-five dollars in a Smarty Pants Patch contest, with his blue jeans patch design entry, Sagalong Catastrophe Ranch.

John Bridges was relocated to Tulsa for his job and bought a two-bedroom house at 1598 N. Marion Street in August 1953, and not long after moving the family there, he deserted Hester and her two sons. Hester remarried years later to Eugene Lafayette Fullbright. Russell had several piano instructors, who included Miriam Lynch from Pauls Valley and Beatrice Reneau from Lindsay. The most influential teacher he had was Margaret Frese, who taught him after the family moved to Tulsa. She labored over the classics, like Beethoven and Chopin, on her Chickering piano, trying to get eleven-year-old Russell to read notes. She said of him, He had such a marvelous ear and was able to play songs after just listening to them rather than read sheets. Russell remembered Mrs. Frese well, recalling, I had a great piano teacher in Tulsa. She was a great player, and I got to watch her play, which was very important. His slightly weakened right hand gave him difficulty playing the Chopin and Tchaikovsky he was being taught. He explained, It got kinda depressing trying to play all those things that were physically impossible for me, adding, I'm used to it now. He also credited his abilities as a pianist to his birth defect, saying, It gave me a very strong sense of duality. It gave me an outlook into this plane that we live on and if I hadn't had that, I'd probably be selling cars in Paris, Texas.

Russell attended Cleveland Junior High, and at age thirteen, he quit piano lessons, still unable to read music, and began using what he had been taught and developed his own style of playing. He was also proficient with the coronet and played baritone trombone in the junior and senior high school band at Will Rogers High in Tulsa. He was a Roper Marching Band member his junior year but missed the photo session for the yearbook because he was off on one of his searches for work as a musician. He also played on the school's 1937 Baldwin model F Grand Piano, treating students to impromptu concerts, and he was featured in his junior yearbook sitting at the school's Shaw Memorial organ with two girls. (The Will Rogers High School Community Foundation invested five years and $25,000 restoring the piano, which was completed in 2018 and dedicated to Russell on February 9, 2019.)

Elvis Presley was launched to meteoric stardom in 1956 with his hit Heartbreak Hotel, as youngsters everywhere listened to him on the radio, including Russell, who heard him on Tulsa's KAKC 970 AM. Elvis was, without a doubt, the most important artist to influence rock and roll. Russell was among the countless young Americans affected by Elvis's sound and his infectious rhythm that came from the very roots of black American blues. Blues music played a significant part in the formation of Russell's style and propagated his desire to play. He also listened to Tulsa's KTUL disc jockey Frank Berry's midnight-to-dawn rhythm and blues program, and hearing songs by B. B. King, Muddy Waters, and Little Willie John enthralled him, especially Little Willie John's 1956 hit Fever. Jimmy Reed's Honest I Do, Champion Jack Dupree's Shake Baby Shake, and Brownie McGhee's The Blues Had a Baby created a stir, but it was the piano-pumping rock 'n' roll screamer Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis that compelled Russell to seek a future in music. His local inspiration was pianist Sonny Gray, who had a recording studio in his basement and in 1959 opened his own jazz club on Peoria Street called the Rubiet.

Russell pointed out the importance of the music he had been raised on to Circus magazine reporter Bud Scoppa in 1971. There are only two natural American musical forms—country blues and white gospel—and both originated in the South. If you grow up in the South, you can't help but hear a lot of blues and gospel music, and rock 'n' roll grew out of that. I got started by singin' gospel music in the Baptist church, and between the Baptist church and the old black country blues musicians, you find all the basic ingredients of rock 'n' roll.

Russell Bridges, called Russ by many, was an enigma at Rogers High School, not well-known by the general student body, and those who did know him thought he was a little strange. He was above average height, at five feet, ten inches, wore black horn-rimmed glasses (preferring not to wear them in public), and had a crew cut that eventually became a slickly combed ducktail. He also smoked, which added to his being labeled a rebellious outcast. Schoolmate Ed Spraker said that in spite of his eccentricities, Russell was very smart and regarded a musical marvel at Rogers and was head and shoulders above everyone else. Russell excelled in mathematics, and his history teacher, Ernest Darling, said, I don't know what others thought of him, but in my class Russell was brilliant. He added, He didn't need to bring a book or listen in class to do well on the tests. He was quiet, but the only thing really unusual about him was that he would sometimes disappear for a week at a time. Some of those absentee periods between his sophomore and senior years were trips made with money from local gigs to go west to look for work in California. Russell, with his witty use of words, wanted to be like Stan Freburg and be in advertising but changed his mind when he saw what a bloody business it was and set his sights on session work in Hollywood. According to Johnny Williams, some of that wittiness showed during a period of time when Russell believed he was an atheist and came up with some revamped rock 'n' roll songs, such as Be Bop a Jesus and Rock and Roll with the Cross.

While keeping busy with consistent club dates in Tulsa at night, Russell kept up his schooling, though lacking ambition to make serious attempts to excel. I think it was containing my neurosis about school not being the proper way to educate, which I found increasingly difficult as I went on. When I first started in school I was a straight-A student, and as I progressed—my last year in school I failed three courses and just could barely make it to school at all.² He worked as many gigs as he could, even though they interfered with his schooling. He'd play dinner shows with dancing, from 6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., then hit the harder joints from 1:00 a.m. until 5:00 a.m., drinking heavily, and, somehow, still find his way to school, but with not much energy to learn. Russell's classmate and close friend Johnny Williams recalled how Russ was a bit different from other guys but said, Smart for sure—you know he had a 140 IQ. Some classmates remember Russell as a philosophizer with unique views, but mostly as being strange.

Russell and Johnny Williams became best of friends and, besides spending a lot of time playing music together, sometimes went riding go karts on the streets of Tulsa or boating together. Johnny recalled the time Russ decided to jump out of the boat into the lake. After submerging in the water and popping above the surface, Russ told Johnny he didn't know how to swim, which prompted Johnny to jump in and save his buddy. Gerald Goodwin had a similar experience with Russell while they were on a lake in Arkansas and even has home footage from earlier that day. Gerald said everyone looked out for Russell, as a precaution, because of his physical shortcomings.

Along with Johnny Williams, who played the saxophone, Russell made friends with other students interested in music, namely David Gates. An eight-year friendship between Russell and Gates began through their involvement in school music activities. Both were known to possess perfect pitch and could identify notes by ear. They formed a band with fellow students Gerald Goodwin and Don Kimmel called the Accents, wrote songs, made records, and performed together at parties and dances. David graduated in 1958 and went off to college as Leon attended his senior year at Will Rogers High School. He signed Russell's yearbook, "To Russie Old Buddy, to the most tremendous piano player I have ever known, and first