Leon Russell – "Shoot Out on the Plantation" (1970)

But the drummer is drumming

A Rolling Stones number

On Junior’s head and on his knees

“Shoot Out on the Plantation” was released in 1970 on Leon Russell’s eponymous debut solo album.

According to that album’s liner notes, the song is a thinly-veiled account of an altercation among several of Russell’s friends at a group house called “The Plantation,” which was located in a Los Angeles suburb.

The character in the song identified as “Junior” doesn’t do well in the fight.  It’s bad enough that he suffers a beating at the hands of the drummer, but the worst thing is that he’s made the mistake of bringing a knife to a gunfight: 

Yeah, the drummer’s got the drum

The Colonel’s got the gun

And Junior’s only got a knife

He’d better run!

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Leon Russell was a musician’s musician who played with everyone who was anyone in the sixties and seventies.

That probably explains why a heapin’ helpin’ of Hall of Fame-caliber musicians backed him up on the Leon Russell album.

Some of those musicians weren’t household names.  For example, there was drummer Buddy Harman, a Nashville-based studio musician who played on records by Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, and dozens of other country stars.

The young Leon Russell

And there was Jim Gordon, a session drummer who was to classic rock what Harman was to country and western.  (Gordon performed on records by the Byrds, Eric Clapton, Crosby Stills & Nash, Donovan, John Lennon, the Monkees, Tom Petty, Steely Dan, and Traffic, just to name a few.)

But a number of those who backed up Leon on his debut album were very much household names.  

Eric Clapton contributed to the album, as did Steve Winwood.  George Harrison and Ringo Starr played on three tracks.  And Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, the bass player and drummer of the Rolling Stones, served as the rhythm section on one of the album’s best songs, “Roll Away the Stone.”

I’m presuming that Charlie Watts was not the drummer who played a Rolling Stones number on poor Junior’s head during the “Shoot Out on the Plantation.”  (Ringo Starr – not Watts – played drums on that track.) 

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Leon Russell was born Claude Russell Bridges in 1942.  He started playing the piano when he was three, and was performing in Tulsa nightclubs when he was 14.

He was touring with Jerry Lee Lewis before he was old enough to drive, and moved to Los Angeles to become a studio musician when he was 17.  That’s when he started calling himself Leon Russell.  (He never changed his name legally.)

Leon Russell with Elton John
and Elvis Costello in 2010

Russell became one of my favorites when I was still in college, although I didn’t see him perform live until 2010 – when he was physically just a shadow of his former self.  (Earlier that year, Russell had undergone surgery for a brain fluid leak and also been treated for pneumonia and a heart problem.)

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Click here to listen to “Shoot Out on the Plantation.”

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