All Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell and Chess Records

Leonard Cohen was the dark eminence among a small pantheon of extremely influential singer-songwriters to emerge in the Sixties and early Seventies. Only Bob Dylan exerted a more profound influence upon his generation, and perhaps only Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell equaled him as a song poet. 

Cohen's haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns and Greek-chorus backing vocals shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression. He was also the rare artist of his generation to enjoy artistic success into his Eighties, releasing his final album, You Want It Darker, earlier this year.

"I never had the sense that there was an end," he said in 1992. "That there was a retirement or that there was a jackpot."

I'll also be playing some Leon Russell and some Chess Records' music from Big Maybelle, Archie Bell and the Drells, Big Bill Broonzy, Bo Diddley, Billy Stewart, Bobby Charles, Rosco Gordon, The Moonglows, Baby Washington, Johnny & Jo, Chuck Berry, Cookie and the Cupcakes, Dave Baby Cortez, Etta James, Dr Ross and the Hellhounds, The Falcons, The Four Tops, Howling Wolf, Ike Turner, Irma Thomas, Jackie Brenston, James Sugarboy Crawford, Jessie Hill, Jimmy McCracklin, John Lee Hooker, Koko Taylor, The Miracles, Muddy Waters, Rufus Thomas, Little Walter, Willie Dixon and Solomon Burke. I'll be playing these artists during my next 2 shows on LA Sounds.