Looking like a cross between Groucho's Captain Spaulding and our own Tom Mathews, the elusive and gravel-throated singer Leon Redbone is that rarest of show business animals: a genuinely eccentric extrovert who is also a recluse. For 30 years he has been reworking a whole spectrum of old songs - blues, standards, country, ragtime, jazz, even ancient British music hall numbers - in his own idiosyncratic style. Often clad in pith helmet and check waistcoat, and sporting a monocle, he rarely talks to journalists or, indeed, his fans; when accosted he tends to hand out a card that reads "How Do You Do?"
When pressed, he claims to be the offspring of Paganini and Jennie Lind, born in Bombay during a monsoon. For many years it was believed that he was really Canadian, possibly because Toronto was the city where he had his first club successes in the early 1970s. But recently it has emerged that he was, in fact, born in New York City in 1929 as Leon Jehosophat Redbone. If the story can be believed, on the way to the hospital the car was struck on Wall Street by an unidentified object falling from a high ledge of the New York Stock Exchange. The cleanest of his shocked father's utterances was chosen as the baby's middle name.
Like Ry Cooder, Redbone is as much a musicologist as a musician, although he is an exceedingly good guitarist. His first album, On the Tracks, for which Warner Brothers cartoon legend Chuck Jones (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck) drew the cover, sold more than 100,000 copies in 1976, and the musicians supporting him included jazz violinist Joe Venuti. On subsequent albums he duetted with Merle Haggard and Ringo Starr. He says: "I am a performer, but only in the metaphysical sense."
For a while Redbone was popular on American TV's Saturday Night Live, but the exposure only made him guard his privacy more fiercely; the contact number he gave to the producer turned out to be a Dial-A-Joke line.
I saw him live once, in Galway some years ago. He scuttled up on to the stage, delivered a magnificently skilful performance to a packed house, and scuttled off again. There were no encores and he didn't hang about after the show. Even though I was a long-time fan, I didn't seek him out. Well, you wouldn't want to intrude . . .
More on Leon Redbone at www.digizen.net/members/ vwilding//leon.htm