Song of the Day 5/31: Leon Redbone, “Diddy Wah Diddy”

Leon Redbone died Thursday. As best anyone could tell, he was 69.

Most people first saw him on TV in the mid-’70s, maybe on Saturday Night Live or the Tonight Show. He usually came on with the briefest of introductions, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by, say, a single clarinet, a droll, mysterious man out of time no matter what setting he was in. He would perform a song or two, invariably from the early 20th century, singing and playing tunes like this one by Blind Blake — not as museum pieces but as a living art form, a still-current mode of expression. His raspy voice sounded like it was coming through a 1930s radio set, and audiences raised on rock and roll loved it.

Though Redbone, in one of his infrequent interviews, said he wanted the focus on the music, his reticence made that impossible. Who was this guy? He did his best never to say, but in the 1980s the Toronto Star traced his past. He was born Dickran Gobalian and “reinvented himself under the guidelines of Ontario’s Change of Name Act” after moving from Cyprus to Canada in the mid-1960s. He started out playing Toronto folk clubs in the early ’70s. He eventually settled in New Hope, Pa.

Despite his best efforts, he became famous enough to get spoofed in a Far Side cartoon, and he was in demand in Hollywood for TV sitcom theme songs and many commercials. My favorite is this dog food commercial featuring animation by Glen Keane, later of Disney fame:

Here’s Redbone singing another one of his signature tunes, “Harvest Moon,” complete with the seldom-heard introductory verse.