April 5, 1975 review: Leon Redbone at UB's UUAB Coffeehouse

 

An April snowstorm did not prevent from Buffalo News review crew from making its appointed rounds. Three of us reported for duty that night and came back to tell about it. 

April 5, 1975 

Personality Not Enough for Redbone 

          There’s never any doubt that Leon Redbone would make it to the biggest show of the semester for UB’s UUAB Coffeehouse Friday night. Probably blew in with the storm. He’s that kind of guy.

          Redbone has perpetrated one of the great mysteries of our time. Dressed as he is in pearl-grey trousers, old high-lace shoes, sunglasses, a black velvet coat and hat, his concealment is complete.

          Nobody knows who he is or where he came from. Rolling Stone said he grew up in Toronto, but that’s not so. All you know is what he shows you – the mannerisms of Groucho Marx and the raspy, wispy Al Jolson voice singing ‘30s jazz tunes.

          Four students near me during the second show in Norton Hall’s Fillmore Room wondered if he was wearing a false nose. He wasn’t.

          Redbone plays his secret identity for laughs, but always in character. He removes his gloves slowly, baby-powders his fingers, raises his bottle: “I’ll drink to that.”

          He beguiles for a while with his fractured chording, old-timey scat singing and impersonations of muted trumpets and clarinets.

          But eventually the music sags despite the force of personality. “Miss the Mississippi and You” becomes a sleepwalk.

          The force of music had succeeded during the opening set – an excellent UB trio called Broadway Bruce’s Band, which does local club dates. Their songs are in a cheerful, upbeat, ragtime vein and they’ve written a few themselves.

          Singer-guitarist Bruce Sinder has an affable shyness. Bassist Carl Cedar is a laid-back, head-bobbing hippie. And lead guitarist Joel Perry plays like he’s dedicated four years to staying in his room and getting good.

          Redbone, meanwhile, takes no encore. Two jug-band players from Niagara Falls, who tried to throw some washboard and jug playing on his last tunes, say he’s the same offstage as onstage.

          “We’re in the dressing room,” they report, “and he offers us a martini. ‘It’s gonna be a dry martini,’ he says, ‘no olive, no vermouth.’ Know what he gives us? A bottle of straight gin.”

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IN THE PHOTOS: Leon Redbone and the April 5, 1975, entertainment page with reviews by John Dwyer and Jeff Simon. 

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FOOTNOTE: I always got a kick out of Leon Redbone’s retro persona, especially since he lived it so completely. When he died in 2019 and his original name was revealed to be Dickran Gobalian and that he was born in Cyprus, of Armenian heritage, it didn’t diminish his luster. After he came to Toronto from England in 1965, he had his name legally changed.

          And, of course, he had a tie to Buffalo. He appeared at the UB Folk Festival in the early 1970s and the student who was running it, Beryl Handler, became his manager and his wife.