Leo LeBlanc in Memphis, TN - 1970-1983

Leo Roger John Joseph LeBlanc – with some 200 albums behind him, a Carnegie Hall appearance to his credit and musical experience with a list of bands longer than his name—always plays second fiddle.

Oh, LeBlanc really doesn’t play fiddle at all. And it’s not that he isn’t good at what he does. By his own reluctant admission, he is one of the top musicians in his field. But that field is very short and, in the past, has been extremely narrow.

While his expertise has landed him on albums featuring entertainers ranging from Coon Elder and Jerry Jeff Walker to Liza Minelli and Melissa Manchester, his choice of instruments has insured that he will always be in the background.

LeBlanc plays steel guitar and his 30 years of experience, beginning when he was 13 years old, covers most of the lifetime of the instrument itself.
More specifically, he plays the pedal steel guitar, which became popular several years after LeBlanc plugged in his first steel.

And the bitter truth for a steel player is that, unless the band is playing “Hawaiian Wedding Song” or a couple of tunes from the islands, the steel isn’t likely to be the featured instrument.
Playing steel guitar is certainly not a way to hit the spotlight.

The closest LeBlanc ever came to any national recognition was in a 1977 Time Magazine music review of Jerry Jeff Walker.
“Midway through Walker’s set the pedal steel guitar player takes over with a whining rendition of ‘Dixie,’ ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and ‘America the Beautiful,’” Time wrote. “The crowd of 1,500 cheers, hoisting half-empty Lone Star beers toward the stage.”
There is no name in the review for the “pedal steel player,” and no real comment on LeBlanc’s talents – just the report of a toast with what LeBlanc labels a “pretty terrible beer.”
But he likes it that way.
“I want people to notice my music, but not to promote me,” says LeBlanc.
“I’d do that Dixie medley by myself. Jerry Jeff and all the rest would even leave the stage and I was up there by myself.
“But I wasn’t scared—didn’t get stage fright or anything. I just played and it was very easy. I wasn’t really aware of me and I don’t think I made other people aware of me.
“They were aware of my music and I wanted them to be aware of it but if someone had started noticing me as a person up there I wouldn’t have liked it. And it would have probably scared me to death.
“I don’t mind obscurity—only musically,” says LeBlanc, who adds that he considers himself one of the steel guitar pioneers.
“The steel guitar is just beginning, and there’s not a lot of musical experience to draw from. But sometimes that gives you a lot of freedom. I will always be looking for ways to expand it.
“I think I have a responsibility to the steel guitar—to take it places where it has not been before.”

Among those places is Carnegie Hall, where LeBlanc played steel with John Prine.
“That was one of my goals, and a real milestone in my life. It was all I expected it to be. The sound was just wonderful.”
LeBlanc says he didn’t enter the music world with thoughts of becoming a leader. And, he says, the front end of a stage can change musicians into something else.
“I admire people who are able to get out there and stick their necks out. But one thing that often happens is once people focus on you, they don’t listen to your music. You become a personality and not a musician.
“They don’t all change—like Chet Atkins, he always keeps the focus on the music. But people seem to always want to make them role models.

“I want people to listen to my music, but I wouldn’t want them to look at me as a role model.”
LeBlanc’s “role,” however, has included almost 25 years of marriage to his high school sweetheart, during which time he used his musical talents to send her through college and raise six children in a family that is closely tied to St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. He does charity work, doesn’t smoke, drinks only moderately, curses carefully, has never been “into drugs” and strongly feels that “God does look out for artists and musicians.”
“But being a role model would be terrible. I’m more personal than that. I want people to be their own people. I’d feel terrible if I thought people were doing things because I did them.”

Among the other things LeBlanc did was play the pedal steel guitar on albums by John Prine, Mac Davis, Carole King, the Osmond Brothers, Bill Medley, Red Simpson, Aretha Franklin, Gary Stewart, Jose Feliciano, Edwin Hubbard, Merle Haggard, T. G. Sheppard, Ace Cannon, Denise LaSalle, Tony Joe White, Danny O’Keefe, the Rhodes Family, Gary Paxton, Clarence Carter and Sid Selvidge.
He was also on singles with a number of these entertainers and other here, in Hollywood and in Muscle Shoals, Ala., including sessions with Wayne Newton.
LeBlanc spent three years traveling with Jerry Jeff Walker and two years with John Prine.
In addition, he has played with Jericho, Larry Raspberry, the Gentrys, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, Paul Craft, the Settlers, We Two, Ace Cannon and Lou Roberts and the Vapors Orchestra.
He also found time to organize his own band – the ’57 Reunion – which played engagements in Memphis and West Tennessee.

LeBlanc, the son of French Canadian parents, was born in Waltham, Mass., a Boston suburb, and graduated from high school there.
Not only was he a Frenchman in the land of the Irish, he learned to love country music in an area known for a somewhat prudish, cosmopolitan outlook.
And if anyone ever got into a field because of a “hankering,” Leo LeBlanc might be the classic example.
LeBlanc says he and some of his friends listened to the radio for songs by Hank Williams, Hank Locklin and Hank Thompson.
“I guess we just liked all the Hanks. We really loved bluegrass and country music up there. It was real big,” say LeBlanc.
So, when Hank Locklin came to town, he and his friends were there to listen, and to see.
“He had two steel guitar players with him, and one of the steel guitars had pedals. That was the first pedal steel guitar I had ever seen. That was the beginning of the pedal.”
LeBlanc and his wife, ‘Ginny’ were married after graduating from high school, and he spent a year at Berklee School of music, a jazz school in Boston.
He worked for a short time as a “mattress stuffer,” but that would be the last job he would have that did not involve his steel guitar.
From Boston, LeBlanc took his steel to Bakersfield, Calif., and found work as a studio musician and playing clubs in the area.
But 12 years ago he decided that Memphis was the place he really wanted to be.
“The reason I came here is I wanted to play soul music,” LeBlanc says. “The Memphis sound – they can’t really put labels on it.
“People play with feeling here, much more than with their heads. In New York it’s the other way around.
“And Memphis is respected everywhere I go – New York, Nashville, California, everywhere – because they know there’s something special here. I don’t think they know what, either,” says LeBlanc.
“Personally, I think Memphis music is so independent they can’t get a fixed thing to promote called the Memphis sound. Look at Charlie Rich, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis – all from here and yet not anything alike.
“This is a great artistic environment, because nobody says, ‘You must do it this way.’ And the audiences are great here. Now, they don’t come out in droves, but they do support you and they let you know they support you, so you feel like you can go from here and take on the world.”

Recently, however, that support has been too much emotional and not enough financial. So LeBlanc spent eight months in New York, working as a musician and planning to move his family north if the opportunity appeared to be there.
It didn’t.
During his New York stay, he found only a smattering of studio work and the only major production was an album with Melissa Manchester.
“I could have worked with six or seven bands – but all at the same time,” says LeBlanc, adding that jobs were plentiful Fridays and Saturdays but that a lot of musicians were walking the streets during the week.
“I was playing at the Lone Star Café, one of the showcase clubs,” says LeBlanc, “but two nights a week just isn’t enough to make it.”
He returned to Memphis late last year and has been playing with Coon Elder, but has found things haven’t improved around here. Now he’s looking at Nashville.
“But I hate to go up there, kinda, because the music will be so boring,” LeBlanc says. “They just keep pumping out that Nashville sound.
“I’ve spent my life trying to expand the steel guitar music and then I’ll have to bring it all back in. It’ll be a challenge in itself, just to be that narrow.
“But T. G. Sheppard is from here and he’s done real well in Nashville, and I think it’s stretched it out a bit. And I think Nashville may be becoming more receptive toward the Memphis attitude, because they’re trying to keep up with New York too.
“I’ve never seen it so bad for musicians as it is this time and I’ve been playing 30 years,” LeBlanc says, adding that his wife is teaching school for the first time this year – her first job since they were married other than raising a family and doing volunteer church work.
“The record business is really down. I think if you took a poll, you’d find 30 to 40 percent unemployment in the recording industry. There’s a lot of pirating. Some of the radio stations are a lot to blame for playing whole albums…and blatantly telling listeners ahead of time to tape them.
“People aren’t going to clubs and places to hear bands like they used to. The economy is bad, but it’s not just the economy. There’s cable television, with all the movies, and those home video games.
“People invest all that money in video games, so they’re going to stay in and play them. I think everybody wants to escape once in a while, but I’m not sure this is the way to do it.
“No, I don’t like video games and, well, no I’m not very good at them either. I think there should be some studies to see if they don’t pollute the mind. You know the whole idea is to eat something up or kill something.”
LeBlanc stops for a short time, then decides that the video game experience might be closely compared with those entertainers who want the attention and applause to focus on them personally rather than on the music.
“I think it builds your ego, but not your heart.”