Leon Russell (born Claude Russell Bridges, April 2, 1942) is an American musician and songwriter, who has recorded as a session musician, sideman, and maintained a solo profession in music.
Russell started his musical profession on the age of 14 within the nightclubs of Tulsa, Oklahoma. He and his group the Starlighters, which included J.J. Cale, Leo Feathers, Chuck Blackwell and Johnny Williams, have been instrumental in creating the model of music often called the Tulsa Sound. After settling in Los Angeles, he studied guitar with James Burton.
Identified largely as a session musician early in his profession, as a solo artist he has crossed genres to incorporate rock and roll, blues, and gospel music, enjoying with artists as diverse as Jan & Dean, Gary Lewis, George Harrison, Gram Parsons, Delaney Bramlett, Ringo Starr, Doris Day, Elton John, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, the Byrds, Barbra Streisand, the Seaside Boys, the Ventures, Willie Nelson, Badfinger, Tijuana Brass, Frank Sinatra, the Band, Bob Dylan, J.J. Cale, B.B. King, Dave Mason, Glen Campbell, Joe Cocker and the Rolling Stones.
In the course of the Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies, Russell owned the Church Recording Studio on third Road (renamed Leon Russell Highway in 2010 by The Pearl District Affiliation) in Tulsa. http://thislandpress.com/05/09/2012/the-making-of-leon-russell-road/?page_num=1. His former dwelling on Grand Lake, Oklahoma, contained a eating room desk and chairs constructed from church pews taken out of the church when it was become a studio.
A busy 12 months for Russell, 1971 additionally introduced the Shelter launch of Leon Russell and the Shelter Folks and Asylum Choir II (which was co-produced by Marc Benno). That very same 12 months, Russell performed on recording classes with B.B. King, Eric Clapton, and Bob Dylan.
Russell helped blues guitarist Freddie King to revive his profession by collaborating with him on three of his albums for Shelter throughout the early Nineteen Seventies. Throughout those self same years, Russell helped himself to a pleasant share of what was then referred to as the “County and Western” market, recording and performing beneath the moniker Hank Wilson, and was a daily performer at Gilley’s Membership, the Pasadena, Texas, honkytonk made well-known in City Cowboy.