Leon Redbone

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Leon Redbone (born Dickran Gobalian, 1950 – May 30, 2019) was a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor specializing in jazz, blues, and Tin Pan Alley classics.

Redbone was born in Cyprus of Armenian originstry and first appeared in Toronto, Canada, in the early 1970s, wearing his Panama hat, dark sunglasses, and black tie.

He has appeared on film and television as a actor and voice-over actor. Redbone also demonstrated his guitar playing skills in a concert.

The influence of alcohol and boasting to have written works dating well before he was born was a frequent gag – Redbone favoured content from the Tin Pan Alley period, circa 1890 to 1910.

Mr. Belvedere's 1980s television show Theme to the 1980s was a song of melody and eighteen albums have been released.

Early life

Redbone's ancestorship was uncertain, and he never explained the source of his stage name. Dickran Gobalian, a character in the 1980s, migrated to Canada in the mid-1960s and changed his name by the Ontario Change of Name Act, according to a Toronto Star article in the 1980s. His birth name was confirmed by biographical research published in 2019 and revealed that his family was of Armenian origins. His parents were born in Jerusalem but in 1948, they migrated to Nicosia, Cyprus, where Redbone was born. The family had migrated to London, England, by 1961, and then to Toronto by 1965.

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Career

While living in Canada in the late 1960s, Redbone began performing in public at Toronto area nightclubs and folk music festivals. He met Bob Dylan at the Mariposa Folk Festival in 1972. Dylan was so impressed by Redbone's performance that he mentioned it in a Rolling Stone interview, leading that magazine to do a feature article on Redbone a year before he had a recording contract. The article described his performances as "so authentic you can hear the surface noise [of an old 78 rpm]." Dylan said that if he had ever started a label, he would have signed Redbone. His first album, On the Track, was released by Warner Bros. Records in 1975.

He was introduced to a larger public as a semi-regular musical guest on NBC's Saturday Night Live, appearing twice in the first season. During the 1980s and '90s he was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He was also a guest on A Prairie Home Companion.

A self-taught musician, he played by ear, sometimes changing the chords of established tunes, never rehearsing with a band, and not following set lists. In an interview in the Winter 2017 edition (No. 177) of BING magazine, the publication of the International Club Crosby, clarinetist Dan Levinson recounted working with Redbone:

Redbone was described as "both a musical artist and a performance artist whose very identity was part of his creative output." He usually dressed in attire reminiscent of the Vaudeville era, performing in a Panama hat with a black band and dark sunglasses, often while sitting at attention on a stool, with a white coat and trousers and a black string tie. With his reluctance to discuss his past came speculation that "Leon Redbone" was an alternative identity for another performer. Two common suggestions in years past were Andy Kaufman and Frank Zappa, both of whom Redbone outlived. Though sometimes compared to Zappa and Tom Waits for "the strength and strangeness of his persona", he exclusively played music from decades before the rock era, and disdained "blatant sound for people to dance to". In a 1991 interview, he said: "The only thing that interests me is history, reviewing the past and making something out of it."

Redbone survived a small plane crash in Clarksburg, West Virginia, on February 12, 1979. He traveled to engagements exclusively by car, saying, "I carry around many unusual items and devices. They make life difficult for airport security personnel and flying impossible for me."

On May 19, 2015 on his website, his publicist referred to concerns about his health and announced his retirement from performing and recording.

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