"mt" Leon by M.T. LEON

While working in the summer on the tobacco farm, cropping and barning tobacco, break times, and sometimes early evenings, were spent listening to old songs and stories by the older african-american men he worked with. Late at night “MT” would lay on his pallet in that old farm shack, trying to

catch the far off distant signal of WLAC radio in Nashville, Tennessee. Sometimes he was almost

too tired to work in those fields after a night with the Hoss Man, John R. and the endless

pitching of hypnotic Blues and Gospel of Randy's Record Mart. “MT” discovered that the rock heroes of the day were stealing songs and calling them there own.

“MT” had already begun to play the guitar by the fourth grade in school, so by the time he was 15 years old he had already started playing some of the juke joints in the area known as "combat alley". He was so excited when he was paid that first $7.00. but he developed a burning desire to discover where his first love originated. His school became the Black Churches and the "Chitlin' Circuit", studying the extensive record collection he was acquiring and playing guitar and bass thru out the South and the Eastern Seaboard developing what eventually became his nickname “MT” / “Magic Tone”. Before he was 20 he had performed as a sideman at Carnegie Hall, Bottom Line and Apollo Theatre in New York.

“MT” tried to raise a family on the road, but ended up putting the guitar down for too long a while and went into business in Florida, was the Music Director of a Baptist Church and also worked in sales and marketing for a Nashville record distributor. After a couple of failed

marriages, and much heartache and troubles, the Blues really began to mean more to “MT” than they ever did as a young man. He decided in 1999 to “come home” to where his roots are, and begin his career all over again. "MT" comes back to the well, to drink where his thirst, first started.

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