Driving Tunes · Featured

Leon Russell – Delta Lady

IT’S been quite a year for rock musicians leaving this mortal coil, but one who slipped away largely unnoticed by the media was Leon Russell.

Few musicians could match the pedigree of the Arkansas drawler – he played or collaborated with everyone from the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan to Elton John, Sinatra and the Stones.

But of the 430 or so songs penned by Russell, probably the best known was the one written about Rita Coolidge and turned into a hit by Joe Cocker.

A Song For You may have been covered by more than 40 different artists but the track we’ll all remember is Delta Lady. So let’s turn back the clock to 1969.

— Mike Torpey

Mike Torpey is freelance Motoring Editor of the Liverpool Echo, past Racing Editor and also a travel/golf writer, music reviewer and rock music nut. Tweet @michaeltorpey1