Masters of Time and Space

People get notable, even famous, occasionally household words, for all sorts of reasons. More or less everybody knew who Glenn Campbell was when he was alive. People still mostly do. For instance, in order to portray a young, violent, drunken, crooked policeman as anachronistically interesting in the movie War on Everyone, the writer made him a Glenn Campbell fan. Glenn was in the movies, and had TV shows, and big hit records, and had a genial public persona that lended itself to fitting in most everywhere.

Leon Russell isn’t obscure, exactly. He’s hardly a household word, though. He had some hits with his name on them. Plenty more without his name on them. He wasn’t just a musician. He was a bandleader and composer and arranger and riotmaster. He morphed into a wonderful grampa-style white-bearded griot-cowboy, an image that suited him right to the end. His nickname was the Master of Time and Space, and for good reason.

People who could barely sing or play their instruments used to think they could become pop stars if they wished hard enough. The industry rewarded plenty of these no-talent people possessed of nothing more than the correct haircuts with recording contracts, and hired anonymous people to play their instruments for them while they posed for the album covers. Two of those anonymous people were Glenn Campbell and Leon Russell. They were part of a loose coterie of session musicians in Los Angeles dubbed the Wrecking Crew. There’s an interesting documentary of them made by Tommy Tedesco’s son, I believe, that is worth your time.

Telling you to watch it is much easier than trying to list the hit records they played on. In practical terms, it can’t be done, anyway, because those people played on so many records they couldn’t even remember themselves how many they’d done.

Leon is listed on the Wikiup as having 251 total artist credits on records. These include 77 playing the piano, 23 as the arranger, 20 playing some other kind of keyboard, 17 playing the guitar, 14 playing the organ, 11 playing the electric piano, 11 singing, 10 playing the bass, and 58 other miscellaneous instruments ranging from trumpet to bells. He wrote 282 pieces of music that made it onto vinyl one way or the other. He played on records for Frank Sinatra and The Flying Burrito Brothers , and everyone in between who was worth a damn. He didn’t just write Grammy-winning songs; he wrote songs that made it into the Grammy Hall of Fame.  In between all that, he found time to have 6 children.

So maybe you’ll have a pop star career if you’re dissolute and greedy and grabby and shameless enough to shinny up the greasy pole of fame that the music business represents. But you’ll never be a Master of Time and Space, because those people are drawing on a reservoir of iron talent, effort, and experience. They’re just noodling around in that video, and clowning a bit, and hotdamn look at them go.