Double Time (1977)
11 tracks, 34 minutes
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Born under the absolutely amazing name Dickran Gobalian in Cyprus before moving to Canada and, eventually the US…or was he born in Louisiana under the name James Hokum in 1910? Or any number of other stories he’s told in the past? Only he can be sure – although I’m fairly certain he’s not 109 years old. What is a definite is that he is Leon Redbone.
Redbone’s mix of blues, vaudeville, trad jazz and old show tunes sounds as if it could have been recorded in the 1910s, given the right recording equipment. He leads all of his tracks with his charmingly strange voice: he croons, yodels, scats and whistles and shows off as the world’s greatest player of the ‘throat tromnet’ – that’s a hybrid trumpet/trombone all from the mouth.
All the songs here are covers of artists such as Jimmie Rogers, Jelly Roll Morton and Blind Blake, but when you make an album this good, you don’t need to be a songwriter. There’s not one bad track here, and there’s many great ones. A big part of the charm of this album – and all of Redbone’s recorded work – is that it’s performed straight-faced but it’s not serious. There is so much inherent humour to it without turning it all into a joke or compromising any element of the musicality or arrangement. That allows the times when he really gets on the loose wig – such as the barmy solo voice-and-guitar version of ‘Sheik of Araby’ – to be even more hysterical.
Redbone became somewhat of a cult star in the 70s as a mystery man out of his own time. His music struck a chord with people looking for something completely out of the ordinary, leading to a number of famous fans. Double Time was only his second album, but by this point he’d already gained enough of a reputation to feature guest performers – playing parts well beneath their standings, too. Experimental post-bop flautist and saxophonist Yusef Lateef is here playing an understated soprano sax on ‘Mississippi River Blues’, and Don McLean – already famous for ‘American Pie’ – performs the entirely functional role of banjo player on ‘Mississippi Delta Blues’. Then there’s a smorgasbord of horns, clarinets, tubas, strings and two separate barbershop quartets all in the mixer too.
There’s a lot of questions that you can ask about Leon Redbone, but none of them really matter. All you need to know is that he is a unique and hilarious purveyor of the lighter side of music from the early 20th century. He’s completely bonkers and his music is wonderful – spend a little over half an hour in his company with Double Time and feel the joy.
Update: since writing this piece, Leon Redbone sadly died on 30 May, 2019. He was 127 years old.
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