Leo Watson – Hip-Hop Forerunner
Saga is perhaps the appropriate noun to describe the trajectory of Leo Watson’s musical career that bounced between ups and downs before settling on a final down on the “nickel” in Los Angeles. He played several instruments, tipple, trombone, and drums; but his proficiency on all was mediocre or passing at best. Leo’s ability to “pass” on these instruments was most likely because he possessed a good sense of pitch, he had an ear that being mostly self-taught allowed him to blend in with his fellow musicians in the Spirits of Rhythm, the combo that achieved lasting fame during the Swing Era.
Leo’s vocal ability is another matter, the criterion that should be used to place him in the pantheon of jazz vocalists. The same ability to recognize where to place his fingers and strum the tipple, or position the slide on the trombone, was at work when Leo vocalized. He was one of first musicians to utter sounds that came to be known as scatting, forming utterances that mimic a musical instrument in concert with a known composition being performed by other members of a combo. Leo’s ability to take a solo in these instances was first championed by Leonard Feather who described Leo as “The James Joyce of Jazz” for his lightning flash alliterative stream of consciousness scatting. Leo passed away on May 2, 1950, at Los Angeles General Hospital. He would have been 38 in November. If Leo had lived another thirty years, reformed his bad habits, and remained in the music field – he might have been the father of “Hip-Hop.” Leo’s high was 52nd Street, his low where he ended his career was 5th Street & Main in Los Angeles, The Nickel.
Leo’s life is chronicled at many places on the internet that celebrate his time with the Spirits of Rhythm, his appearance in Hollywood films and Soundies. Evidence of Leo’s musical career was recorded during the 78 era. The arrival of the long playing record fostered numerous reissues of vintage Spirits of Rhythm 78s devoted to celebrating their ascent during the Swing Era. When Columbia Records assembled the 4 LP boxed set, Swing Street, JSN 6042, the anthology opened with the Spirits of Rhythm performing “It’s A Long, Long Way To Tipperary” and “We’ve Got The Blues”(1941, previously unissued) as well as an early numbers when the Spirits of Rhythm were known as The Nephews, “My Old Man” and “I’ll Be Ready When The Great Day Comes” (1933, Brunswick 6728).
The set included tracks by Eddie Condon and His Orchestra, Stuff Smith and His Onyx Club Boys, Red McKenzie and the Mound City Blowers, Wingy Manone and His Orchestra, Red Allen and His Orchestra, Frank Froeba and His Swing Band, Louis Prima and His New Orleans Gang, Frankie Newton and His Uptown Serenaders, The Three Peppers, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Clarence Profit Trio, Bunny Berigan and His Boys, Joe Marsala and His Chicagoans, Midge Williams and Her Jazz Jesters, Maxine Sullivan and Her Orchestra, John Kirby and His Orchestra, Charlie Barnet and His Orchestra, Mildred Bailey and Her Orchestra, Red Norvo Swing Septet, Slim Gaillard and Slam Stewart, Slim Gaillard and His Flat Foot Floogie Boys, Bud Freeman and His Famous Orchestra, Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra, Pete Johnson’s Boogie Woogie Boys, Will Bradley and His Orchestra, Count Basie and His Orchestra, Woody Herman and His Orchestra, Hot Lips Page and His Orchestra, Roy Eldridge and His Orchestra, Coleman Hawkins and His Orchestra, Noble Sissle’s Swingsters, and Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra. The set would have been enhanced by an authoritative commentary, but opted for a detailed discography instead and offered a brief synopsis on the box cover.
“Of all the streets of jazz, one had a special distinction. Among musicians it was simply called The Street. This was 52nd Street in New York. For two exciting decades, the 1930’s and 1940’s, it was the setting of virtually every type of jazz. It began in a small way, with an ordinary upright piano – played by extraordinary pianists – at the upstairs Oynx on the north, or uptown, side of the street. It went on from there to small bands, blues singers and buffoons, the breaking up of old styles and the beginning of new ones.
Jazzmen knew the sweet smell of success and the sour smell of failure in the old brownstones (that had a smell of their own). The Street took on the several characters of its own destiny, from an air of almost innocence to the cheap hustler’s painted façade. It was the street that found itself and, in the end, lost itself. But even in its dreary decline it had an appeal for jazzmen, as though it were someone close and intimate and had come upon bad times. Zutty Singleton who played the last roll of snares when the last club closed, spoke for them when he called it “the greatest that ever was.”
© Columbia Special Projects
The digital age paved the way for greater celebrations of collections devoted to the Spirits of Rhythm as well as the sessions featuring Leo Watson with other groups. The recent Arv Garrison anthology on Fresh Sound Records included Leo’s Signature Records sessions [1946] with Vic Dickenson, and Mosaic Records Black & White sessions boxed set included some of Leo’s last recordings that reunited him with Teddy Bunn [1945]. The session was supervised by Leonard Feather who played piano on the six tracks. The lavish booklet accompanying the Mosaic set was authored by Dan Morgenstern who summed up the six tracks with “the immortal Leo Watson” in the following words: “There’s too much George Vann and Teddy singing – it should have all been left to Leo. But any taste of Dr. Watson is good medicine … ”
THE JAMES JOYCE OF JAZZ
”It might be all right to call Leo Watson the Gertrude Stein of Jazz, except that James Joyce of Jazz makes for better alliteration. Or you might quote critic George Simon, who called him “the man who sings in shorthand.” Then again, you could say he is the World’s Greatest Scat Singer, or you could simply call him the Mad Genius and let it go at that.
I guess you haven’t heard about Leo Watson. I figure most people haven’t, because when Esquire’s board of experts awarded Leo a prize last year as one of the world’s two top jazz vocalists, it took a three-month search to locate the guy and present him with his award.
When they found him, he wasn’t singing. He was working in a war plant, loading and unloading trucks, completely forgotten by everyone but the few faithfuls who had voted for him. Yet this is the man who invented a word that has become world-notorious —the word “zoot.” In his biographical novel, Brainstorm, Carlton Brown describes how Watson, used to “whirl his ukulele around and whack it terrifically on the back while taking vocal riffs phrased like good trombone solos. He looked like Gargantua and sang like an inspired and articulate gorilla who had been reared in a musical atmosphere.”
There isn’t much literature on Leo Watson. Everybody who has followed his career knows him mainly from the era when he loomed into view around 52nd Street with a vocal and instrumental group called the Spirits of Rhythm. Leo played an instrument called a tipple, akin to a ukulele, but when he sang he would move his right arm up and down as though he were manipulating a trombone slide. It sounded like a surrealistic trombone, too, as this squat, dark, huge-mouthed figure let loose his riot of sound.
Singing is one word for it, but it’s not singing in any accepted, sense of the term. It’s a combination of words and meaningless syllables fitted to intensely rhythmic phrases, all completely improvised — a vocal stream-of-consciousness. For instance, on a tune called “She Ain’t No Saint,” his first ad-lib phrase went: oh when the saints go marching in give ’em a drink of gin all around and round and round she goes around table around mabel…
On a scat version of “Honeysuckle Rose” some of his inspirations ran: oh honey sock me on the nose yama yama yama yama root de voot de voot…oh honey so sock sock sock sock sock cymbal sock cymbal rymbal dymbal a nimble nimble nimble … so sock me on the nose … nose gose goose goose goose goose moose gavoose bablow your nose … hello rose how’s your toes put some papowder on your nose ah rosettah are you feeling bettah … ah rose nose nose rose me lamble damble damble roozy voot mop mop broom broom sweep sweep so honey sock my nose …
Leo was the drawing card with the old Spirits of Rhythm. He and the other members sometimes didn’t see ear to ear, and from one week to another you couldn’t tell whether it would be the Six Spirits of Rhythm, the Four or Five Spirits of Rhythm, or two separate groups working at rival clubs. At one point, Leo and his sometime partner, guitarist Teddy Bunn, merged with the original John Kirby band. Leo, who was vague about musical theory but never at a loss for ideas, took up the trombone, and got along nicely for awhile until a hock shop came between man and horn. The trombone hasn’t been seen since. Leo proceeded to concentrate on the drums.
Another drummer, Gene Krupa by name, who had recently formed his own band, came into the Onyx and drank deeply of the Watson talent. Krupa wound up hiring him, and for eight months he traveled with the band. There are several versions of how he came to lose this job, but the most plausible and most authenticated one is that it happened on a train somewhere in the South. Leo, perhaps for want of a drum to play or a horn to blow, was amusing himself slashing a windowshade. When the conductor tried to put a stop to this sabotage, Leo plunged his fist through the windowpane. He was removed from the train, and that was the end of his tour with Gene Krupa.
Leo wasn’t easy to handle, but there were fellows around Broadway who decided it was worth trying. The Andrews Sisters, who came in regularly to the Onyx to marvel at Leo, got their manager, Lou Levy, steamed up about him. Lou fixed Leo up with a Decca recording session under his own name, provided him with such tunes as “Utt Da Zay,” Yiddish folksong style. This immediately suggested to Leo such interpolations as: buy me a beer mister shane (his own variation on “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön”) and utt da zay zaz zu zay uttdazay zazzuzay uttdazayzazzuzay bah-yeep bah-yeep bah-yeedle-da-de-vope matzas prat-zas.
One of Leo’s favorite pastimes, when he had run out of words, was to holler abstractedly but emphatically the word “zoot!” This became a sort of password around 52nd Street. Nobody knows whether the French interjection “zut!” was at the back of Leo’s mind, or whether it was just one of the many words he dreamed up unaided. Anyway, its use expanded to denote almost anything connected with music, just like the vague word “jive,” and pretty soon the rhyming-slangsters of Harlem had teamed it up with the word “suit.” Hence zoot suit, drape shape, reet pleat, stuff cuff and all the rest of it.
From the Onyx, Leo and some of the Spirits moved down to Greenwich Village, where they became the intermission act between spells of Dixieland music at Nick’s. George Wettling, drummer with the other band, recalls how Leo insisted on playing George’s set of drums. “Leo didn’t know any of the orthodox drumming technique, so he’d just beat hell out of my kit. After he’d broken my foot pedal four times —that’s a tough thing to break, you know—I told him he had to lay off.”
Leo’s passion for the drums was not easily quenched. He migrated to the West Coast, and some of the locals still have memories of his insistence on appearing publicly during the zoot-suit riots. Leaving home, side drum in hand, he took a taxi to the scene of the most violent rioting, jumped out and started marching up and down beating his drum. “Ain’t no zoot suiters gonna stop me!” he proclaimed. It was as a drummer, not as a singer, that he made a brief appearance with Lena Horne in a scene in Panama Hattie.
A little-later Leo went to work in a club where the bandstand and most of the room had been adorned with large mirrors. During this engagement Leo seemed to develop a Narcissus complex. All night long he would concentrate on his multiple images, making an endless series of weird faces at himself in the mirrors. One night he started to take a drum solo and it got him in a good, steady groove; so good, in fact, that he just didn’t want to stop, not for anyone. The solo went on, loud and relentless, for fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, a full hour. By this time even the nightclub customers, normally not oversensitive people, were slightly aroused. Leo drummed away furiously and all efforts to stop him failed. Finally the police had to be summoned; but when Leo was dragged bodily out of the joint in the arms of two cops, he still had a small side drum in his grasp, and was beating it steadily as he passed out of sight.
Soon people began to talk about Leo. Some said he was hard to get along with, others declared he had blown his top. Pretty soon the F.B.I. came to concur with this view, and the Watson whimsies were confined for several weeks to a local jail. “They found me with some marijuana,” Leo explains simply.
Last January I arrived in Los Angeles to line up the Esquire concert. Anxious to locate Leo, I started asking around. Nobody knew what had become of him. The local Musician’s Union declared it had been searching for him more than a year. Finally one musician told me, “Sure, Leo is down at some place on Main Street, working as a drummer and doubling as a porter.” I finally found Leo, the same wild gleam in his eyes, the same mad beat in his drums.
Leo came to the recording studio, sang some of the most fantastic riffs in the world, then disappeared again into the obscurity of a Main Street beer parlor.
Back in New York, I played the records to some of the greatest musicians in jazz. They listened not only with amusement but with profound respect for this man’s fabulous talent.
“Fifty years from now,” one of them said, “people will begin to dig what Leo is doing.”
I hope he is wrong. If it takes that long, I’m afraid Leo may not hold up.”
— Leonard Feather, Esquire, June, 1945
The following discography information is taken from the online version of the Tom Lord’s The Jazz Discography.
Washboard Rhythm Kings, Camden, New Jersey, November 23, 1932.
Dave Page (tp,vcl) Ben Smith (cl,as) Jimmy Shine (as) or Jerome Carrington (as) Carl Wade (ts) Eddie Miles (p) Wilbur Daniels (bj,vcl) Leo Watson (b,vcl) unknown (wbd) Frank Benton (dir,vcl)
FROM PITTSBURGH COURIER NEWSPAPER DATED 3/3/34:
ON THE AIRWAYS By LILLIAN C. IRBY
The Five Spirits of Rhythm, radio’s newest novelty musical troupe, swung into New York in the spring of 1933 after a sensational season in sunny Miami and immediately became the rage of a fashionable nightclub. They were recently signed to broadcast twice weekly over the WABC-Columbia network.
The quintet is composed of young men ranging from 20 to 23 years of age. Three of them play tipples (enlarged ukeleles, two of which have ten strings each and the other four). Another strums a guitar and the fifth enlivens the rhythm by swishing two whiskbrooms over the top of a suitcase. In addition, each of them sings, three being tenors, one a baritone and the fifth a bass.
By name they are Wilbur Daniels, 23, tenor, who plays a 10-string tipple; Douglas Daniels, 20, tenor, who plays a four-string tipple; Leo Watson, 21, bass, who plays the other 10-string tipple; Theodore Bunn, 22, baritone, who strums the guitar; and Virgil Scroggins, 21, tenor, who conjures rhythm with the whiskbrooms and suitcase. Wilbur and Douglas are brothers, and Virgil is their cousin. Each hails from St. Louis, Mo., except Theodore, who comes from Hempstead, Long Island.
Wilbur Daniels is the leading spirit in the group. He first began strumming a tipple in 1925, and within two years had taught his brother, Douglas, and Leo Watson to play the instrument; and they were joined by Virgil Scroggins, whose specialty was a flash dance. This quartet made its debut in a St. Louis night club, The Tent, in 1927, for a stipend of $20 per week each, and shortly afterwards went into vaudeville for three years with the Whitman Sisters.
During the latter part of this long engagement the quartet met Theodore Bunn, who then was appearing with another novelty organization. Not long afterwards Bunn joined the two Daniels brothers, Watson and Scroggins, and at that time they began to gain some bit of fame. Ben Bernie, the Old Maestro, took them under his wing and featured them in the famous College Inn, Chicago. They trouped with Duke Ellington’s orchestra, then with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra, played throughout the South in Lou Holtz’s second edition of the Hollywood Revue, and made their first invasion of Broadway in 1931. At that time they appeared at the Paramount, Roxy, Loew’s State and Brooklyn Paramount theaters, attracting immense crowds in each case. After playing New York, they toured again and finally went to Florida.
Only within the last few months have the Five Spirits of Rhythm aspired to a radio career. In grooming themselves for it, Virgil Scroggins abandoned his dance and took to swishing the whiskbrooms over the suitcase. This, in addition to enhancing the rhythm, eliminates the monotony of the strings alone. After months of rehearsing, they were given an audition in the CBS studios in New York and immediately signed a radio contract. Simultaneously, they began making records, the first two of which are being released this month.
The Spirits of Rhythm, (The Five Cousins) New York, September 20, 1933
Leo Watson, Wilbur Daniels, Douglas Daniels (vcl,tiple) Teddy Bunn (g) Virgil Scroggins (d,whisk broom,suitcase,vcl)
“I’ve Got The World On A String”
The Five Spirits of Rhythm, New York, October 24, 1933
Leo Watson, Wilbur Daniels, Douglas Daniels (vcl,tiple) Teddy Bunn (g) Virgil Scroggins (d,whisk broom,suitcase,vcl) Wilson Myers (b)
The Spirits of Rhythm, New York, November 20, 1933
Leo Watson, Wilbur Daniels, Douglas Daniels (vcl,tiple) Teddy Bunn (g) Virgil Scroggins (d,whisk broom,suitcase,vcl)
The Nephews, New York, December 6, 1933
Leo Watson, Wilbur Daniels, Douglas Daniels (vcl,tiple) Teddy Bunn (g) Virgil Scroggins (d,whisk broom, suitcase,vcl)
“I’ll Be Ready When The Great Day Comes”
Red McKenzie With The Spirits of Rhythm, New York, September 11, 1934
Red McKenzie (vcl) acc by unknown (p) Leo Watson, Wilbur Daniels (g) and/or Douglas Daniels, Teddy Bunn (g) Ernest Wilson Myers (b) Virgil Scroggins (d)
“Way Down Yonder In New Orleans”
“I’ve Got The World On A String”
Red McKenzie With The Spirits of Rhythm, New York, September 14, 1934
Red McKenzie (vcl) acc by unknown (p) Leo Watson, Wilbur Daniels (g) and/or Douglas Daniels, Teddy Bunn (g) Ernest Wilson Myers (b) Virgil Scroggins (d)
“That’s What I Hate About Love”
Artie Shaw And His New Music, New York, September 17, 1937
Chuck Peterson, Tommy DiCarlo, Malcolm Crain (tp) George Arus (tb) Harry Rogers (tb,arr) Artie Shaw (cl,arr) Les Robinson, Hank Freeman (as) Tony Pastor (ts,vcl) Jules Rubin (ts) Les Burness (p) Al Avola (g,arr) Ben Ginsberg (b) Cliff Leeman (d) Leo Watson (vcl) Jerry Gray (arr)
“I’ve Got A strange New Rhythm in My Heart”
“Shoot The Likker To Me John Boy”
Artie Shaw And His Orchestra, New York, December 30, 1937
Chuck Peterson, Tommy DiCarlo, Max Kaminsky (tp) George Arus (tb) Harry Rogers (tb,arr) Artie Shaw (cl,arr) Les Robinson, Hank Freeman (as) Tony Pastor (ts,vcl) Jules Rubin (ts) Les Burness (p) Al Avola (g,arr) Ben Ginsberg (b) Cliff Leeman (d) Nita Bradley, Leo Watson (vcl)
Leonard Feather’s All Star Jam Band, New York, March 10,1938
Bobby Hackett (cnt) Pete Brown (tp,as) Joe Marsala (cl,ts) Joe Bushkin (celeste,p) Leonard Feather (p-1) Ray “Remo” Biondi (g,vln-2) Artie Shapiro (b) George Wettling (d) Leo Watson (vcl)
“For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow”
Gene Krupa And His Orchestra, New York, July 19, 1938
Tom Gonsoulin, Tommy Di Carlo, Dave Schultze (tp) Charles McCamish, Bruce Squires (tb) Murray Williams (cl,as) George Siravo (as,arr) Sam Donahue, Carl Biesecker (ts) Milt Raskin (p) Ray “Remo” Biondi (g,arr) Horace Rollins (b) Gene Krupa (d) Leo Watson (vcl) Fred Norman, Jimmy Mundy, Chappie Willett (arr)
Gene Krupa And His Orchestra, New York, August 10, 1938
McCamish, Bruce Squires (tb) Murray Williams (cl,as) George Siravo (as,arr) Sam Donahue, Carl Biesecker (ts) Milt Raskin (p) Ray “Remo” Biondi (g,arr) Horace Rollins (b) Gene Krupa (d) Leo Watson (vcl) Fred Norman, Jimmy Mundy, Chappie Willett (arr)
Gene Krupa And His Orchestra, New York, November 18, 1938
McCamish, Bruce Squires (tb) Murray Williams (cl,as) George Siravo (as,arr) Sam Donahue, Carl Biesecker (ts) Milt Raskin (p) Ray “Remo” Biondi (g,arr) Horace Rollins (b) Gene Krupa (d) Leo Watson (vcl) Fred Norman, Jimmy Mundy, Chappie Willett (arr)
Gene Krupa And His Orchestra, New York, December 12, 1938
McCamish, Bruce Squires (tb) Murray Williams (cl,as) George Siravo (as,arr) Sam Donahue, Carl Biesecker (ts) Milt Raskin (p) Ray “Remo” Biondi (g,arr) Horace Rollins (b) Gene Krupa (d) Leo Watson (vcl) Fred Norman, Jimmy Mundy, Chappie Willett (arr)
Leo Watson And His Orchestra, New York, August 22, 1939
Leo Watson (vcl) acc by prob. Johnny McGhee (tp) prob. Ralph Muzzillo (tp) Paul Ricci (cl,as,ts) Gene DePaul (p) Frank Victor (g) Haig Stephens (b) O’Neil Spencer (d)
Ella Logan Acc By The Spirits Of Rhythm, Hollywood, September 4, 1941
Ella Logan (vcl) acc by Douglas Daniels, Wilbur Daniels (tiple,vcl) Teddy Bunn (g) Wellman Braud (b) Leo Watson (d,vcl)
“It’s A Long, Long Way To Tipperary”
“I Woke Up With A Teardrop In My Eye”
The Spirits of Rhythm, Leonard Feather, Los Angeles, January 24, 1945
Leonard Feather (p) Teddy Bunn (g,vcl) Ulysses Livingston (g) Red Callender (b) George Vann (d,vcl) Leo Watson (vcl)
Leo Watson With Slim Gaillard’s Melloreeners, AFRS Jubilee #155, Hollywood, CA, December 1945-January 1946
Karl George (tp) Vic Dickenson (tb) Lem Davis (as) or Jack McVea (as) Fletcher Smith (p) Slim Gaillard (g,vcl) Tiny “Bam” Brown (b) Leo Watson (d,vcl)
“An Operatic Aria”
“Avocado Seed Soup Symphony – Part 1”
“Avocado Seed Soup Symphony – Part 2”
AFRS Jubilee All Stars, December 1945
Manny Klein, Bobby Hackett, Frank Wiley, Emmett Berry (tp) Vic Dickenson, Ray Conniff, Henry Coker (tb) Lem Davis, Willie Smith (as) Babe Russin, Corky Corcoran (ts) Jack Martin (bar) Slim Gaillard (g,vcl) Tiny “Bam” Brown (b,vcl) Leo Watson (d,vcl)
Slim, Bam, and Leo, AFRS Jubilee Shows, Los Angeles, April, 1946
Slim Gaillard (p,g,vcl) Tiny “Bam” Brown (b,vcl) Leo Watson (d,vcl)
Leo Watson With The Vic Dickenson Quintet, Los Angeles, September 7, 1946
Leo Watson (vcl) acc by Vic Dickenson (tb) Leonard Feather (p) Arvin Garrison (g) Vivien Garry (b) Harold “Doc” West (d)
“Sonny Boy”
Readers wishing to know more details regarding the Spirits of Rhythm should visit Marv Goldbereg’s detailed account of the group. He provides additional details about Leo Watson’s passing, quoted below:
”It didn’t take long for Leo to be completely forgotten. As I’ve already said, he died of pneumonia on May 2, 1950, but I’ve been unable to find a single obituary or other mention at the time. All that was ever written about his passing was by the highly-unreliable gossip columnist, Major Robinson, who said in the June 5, 1952 Jet that “Record collectors are offering as high as $500 for a record of the late Leo Watson singing Jeepers Creepers with Gene Krupa’s band, recorded in 1940.” (It was actually recorded and released in 1938, and that’s almost certainly an absurd valuation to place on the record in 1952; it’s the equivalent of $4600 in 2017.) Moreover, I have to ask myself why, if Leo had died in 1950, that single sentence was printed in 1952. Gossip columns printed junk handed out by press agents to keep their clients in the public eye, but what good would that have done here, since there was no client? Just another mystery. Wait. I did find something else. The June 21, 1950 Brooklyn Eagle had this:
Speaking of drummers, did you ever hear of Leo Watson? He attained a fair degree of fame about 10 years [ago] as a featured scat singer with Gene Krupa’s band, in which he also played drums and trombone. Well, Watson died here [it was a column about Hollywood] last month after a lengthy illness. No relatives could be located, and he was about to be buried in Potter’s Field. Disk jockey Gene Norman heard about it, and appealed to the musicians’ union. They turned him down flat. Their reason? Watson had no death benefit coming because, unable to work, he had dropped out of the union after years of membership. Norman finally collected enough contributions from a few friends – including Bob Crosby and Dorothy Dandridge – to give Watson a decent sendoff. He will rest in peace.”
I visited Paradise Memorial Park Cemetery recently hoping to locate Leo’s grave. A part-time custodian, Robert, provided details regarding the location of Leo Latimer Watson’s burial site: Block 2, Section 168, Lot C. It was just beyond a maintenance shed on the west side of the cemetery. There were no vertical monuments in Leo’s section, just markers level with the surrounding earth and many had been claimed by the vegetation and were not visible including Leo’s if the funds raised by Gene Norman had been sufficient to purchase a gravestone.
When I left the cemetery Leonard Feather’s ending comments came to mind:
“Fifty years from now, people will begin to dig what Leo is doing.”
I hope that is the case.
Leave a Reply