Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Louis Landon was born on May 6, 1931 in Yonkers, New York and began studying piano at age five, playing classical compositions. Shortly afterward his parents got him piano lessons. In 1960 his family relocated to Studio City, California where his father, Leo De Lyon, is the voice actor best known as Brain and Spook in the popular television cartoon, Top Cat.

In the early 1970s, Landon transferred from Stony Brook University to Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts to pursue his studies in jazz. While playing in and around Boston, Landon met saxophonist, John Payne, and toured with the John Payne Band for three years from 1974 to1977. During that period they recorded four albums, to which he contributed his songwriting skills, and incorporate a jazz fusion style into their sound and opened for Weather Report, The Tony Williams Lifetime, John McLaughlin.

Leaving Boston for Manhattan, he formed a jazz fusion band called Nightfire, and did studio work and freelanced around New York City. During the late 1970s, Landon auditioned for and landed the position of the keyboardist in the John Hall band. Appearing on Hall’s Columbia Records LP, Power, he subsequently began touring with composer and pop singer Rupert Holmes. He toured extensively during the course of the next few years across the country with Hall and Holmes as well as Mikhail Baryshnikov and Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers.

He has also performed with The Doobie Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, and John Hall at the 1979 No Nukes concert that produced a triple live album released in 1980 that Landon is credited on as a keyboard player.

Composer, solo pianist for peace, singer-songwriter, recording artist, and touring musician from New York City, Louis Landon currently resides in Sedona, Arizona.

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