Sidebar: Patsy Cline's Imagine That: The Lost Recordings (1954-1963)
Around the time I bought my first SPU, I wrote my first article for the New York Times. It was about a Baltimore man named Leon Kagarise, a TV repairman, audio engineer, and avid collector—well, hoarder—of records. Crammed into his little ranch-style house, tens of thousands of LPs not only turned his rooms into canyons but found their way into his bathtub and bed. Secreted among the vinyl were stacks of reel-to-reel tapes marked with the names of the biggest country and bluegrass stars of the last century. Leon began recording them as a teenager in the late '50s at outdoor parks like New River Ranch in Maryland and Sunset Park in Pennsylvania, where families spent days picnicking while listening to their favorite performers. Since live recordings were still uncommon in country music, no one seemed to mind that Leon set up a few microphones on stage.
His tapes captured George Jones, Loretta Lynn, the Louvin Brothers, Johnny Cash, and many others in their prime, in terrific sound. I was introduced to Leon by my friend Joe Lee, owner of Joe's Record Paradise in Rockville, Maryland, one of the greatest East Coast record stores ever, where I spent hours and hundreds of dollars enriching my musical education. A hilarious troublemaker and raconteur, Joe had discovered the tapes while buying some of Leon's vinyl. After listening through them all, he set out to publicize his discovery with the goal of getting the tapes released. That's where I, and other journalists, came in. In the early aughts, stories about Leon's recordings also appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and on NPR. Everyone was sure this music would soon be heard by the public.
Leon was also a gifted photographer. Many of the stars he recorded were captured on color slide film. His photos were published in a lovely book called Pure Country: The Leon Kagarise Archives, 1961–1971 (footnote 1). It came out in 2008, the year Leon passed. He left his life's work to Joe Lee, who died last year. Sadly, with a few exceptions, Leon's tapes remain unheard by the public.
I hadn't thought about Leon for a long time until March, when I went to hear a talk by jazz producer Zev Feldman at All Blues, a listening bar in New York City. Feldman is known for tracking down obscure recordings of live jazz performances and has produced six new records which were slated to be released on April 12, also known as Record Store Day. After introducing cuts by Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, Kenny Dorham, and others, he played what for me proved the highlight of the night: a ballad by a young Patsy Cline that leapt out of the huge JBL Hartsfield speakers and made everyone in the room go quiet.
That track and seven others on this double-LP release were recorded by Leon, who wired a reel-to-reel recorder directly to the innards of his Bendix TV set and captured Cline performing on a Washington, DC–area program called The Don Owens TV Jamboree. Like everything Leon recorded, they sound fantastic. Feldman was also a friend of Joe's and had known Leon, and after the event we spoke for a while, wondering how to get more of these amazing recordings out into the world.
By the time you read this, Patsy Cline's Imagine That: The Lost Recordings (1954–1963), from Elemental Music, will be available for purchase. Don't miss it.—Alex Halberstadt
Around the time I bought my first SPU, I wrote my first article for the New York Times. It was about a Baltimore man named Leon Kagarise, a TV repairman, audio engineer, and avid collector—well, hoarder—of records. Crammed into his little ranch-style house, tens of thousands of LPs not only turned his rooms into canyons but found their way into his bathtub and bed. Secreted among the vinyl were stacks of reel-to-reel tapes marked with the names of the biggest country and bluegrass stars of the last century. Leon began recording them as a teenager in the late '50s at outdoor parks like New River Ranch in Maryland and Sunset Park in Pennsylvania, where families spent days picnicking while listening to their favorite performers. Since live recordings were still uncommon in country music, no one seemed to mind that Leon set up a few microphones on stage.
His tapes captured George Jones, Loretta Lynn, the Louvin Brothers, Johnny Cash, and many others in their prime, in terrific sound. I was introduced to Leon by my friend Joe Lee, owner of Joe's Record Paradise in Rockville, Maryland, one of the greatest East Coast record stores ever, where I spent hours and hundreds of dollars enriching my musical education. A hilarious troublemaker and raconteur, Joe had discovered the tapes while buying some of Leon's vinyl. After listening through them all, he set out to publicize his discovery with the goal of getting the tapes released. That's where I, and other journalists, came in. In the early aughts, stories about Leon's recordings also appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and on NPR. Everyone was sure this music would soon be heard by the public.
Leon was also a gifted photographer. Many of the stars he recorded were captured on color slide film. His photos were published in a lovely book called Pure Country: The Leon Kagarise Archives, 1961–1971 (footnote 1). It came out in 2008, the year Leon passed. He left his life's work to Joe Lee, who died last year. Sadly, with a few exceptions, Leon's tapes remain unheard by the public.
