Playing A Different Tune From His Music To His Hobbies, Guitarist Leon Atkinson Chooses An Unusual Path

In guitar playing, as in other endeavors, there exists a pecking order. Or should we say, a picking order.

When it comes to classical and jazz guitar in the Inland Northwest, Leon Atkinson of Sandpoint stands at the top.

This native of Queens, N.Y., has played his guitar in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall; in Spain, under the tutelage of Andres Segovia; in the beatnik cafes of Greenwich Village; in the orchestra pits of hit Broadway shows, and in Las Vegas for Harry Belafonte.

Since moving to Sandpoint from New York in 1975, he has played for the Festival at Sandpoint and become the most sought-after classical guitar teacher in the region. He has also become the host of his own weekly show, “The Guitar Hour” on KPBX-FM, Spokane Public Radio. And today, he makes his debut with the Spokane Symphony.

“If you ask any guitarist in this area, they’ll say the same thing,” said Peter Hunrichs, a friend of Atkinson, former student, music composer and vice president of a Spokane sound recording studio. “He’s the king of guitar around here.”

Yet he’s far more than that. Atkinson is a serious car collector and restorer (he specializes in the Mercedes Benz), a sailor, an outdoorsman and a horseman. He is also an important cultural force in Sandpoint, helping to foster all of the arts, not just music.

“There are people, to date, up in Sandpoint who don’t realize I play the guitar,” said Atkinson. “They say, ‘Oh, you play the guitar? I always wondered what you did.’”

Here’s possibly the most important thing to know about Atkinson: He hates being stereotyped. In fact, his refusal to be pigeon-holed helps explain some of the decisions Atkinson has made in his life.

Take singing, for instance.

Atkinson enjoys it and is a wonderful singer with a voice that has been compared to Nat King Cole’s. Yet he has deliberately downplayed it.

“One of the things that has stopped me from singing is that people see you play the guitar, and they automatically expect you to sing,” he said. “I resented the hell out of that.”

Same thing with the style of guitar he has chosen to play.

“Someone will look at me today and say, ‘Oh, do you play the blues?”’ said Atkinson. “Yes, I do play the blues, but I have more impressive credentials as a classical guitarist than most guitarists in the country. … Or someone will say, ‘How did you get to play classical guitar?’ It’s like, how is this phenomenon a reality? (Laughs).”

Even when it comes to his beloved cars, he refuses to fit a stereotype.

“Like, black men are supposed to own Cadillacs,” he said. “I’ve never owned a Cadillac for that reason, because of that stereotype, which I resent big time. If somebody expects that you should do this, well, I’m going to throw you a little curve.”

Which is why, when pressed to describe Atkinson in one word, Hunrichs came up with this word: “Unique.”

Atkinson was brought up in a household that he said was “always the League of Nations.” His mother was Caribbean, his grandfather was a rabbi, and he was never taught any racism of any kind.

It was a musical family; both of his parents were classical violinists. They met while playing in the Dean Dixon Symphony, a New York orchestra named for the great black conductor who led it.

Atkinson’s father wanted Leon to play the cello.

“His plan was to have the Atkinson String Quartet,” said Atkinson.

But one day, when he was about 3, his dad took him to the Apollo Theater in Harlem to see the great Josh White Sr., a folk-blues guitarist and one of the great cabaret singers of the time.

“I remember it as if it was yesterday,” said Atkinson. “I was looking out on the stage. There were pink floodlights. There was this guy onstage, singing and playing, and a light went on in my head. I said, ‘I want to play guitar.”’

His father resisted the guitar idea for four more years.

“He didn’t think the guitar was a worthy instrument for one of his young prodigies,” said Atkinson. His mom taught him piano instead.

But when Atkinson was 8, his father relented and finally got him his first guitar. He connected with it immediately.

In fact, Atkinson got his first gig that same year. His older brother, a violin prodigy, was playing a “musical tea,” meaning a Sunday afternoon concert in a church. The young Leon cajoled the organizer into letting him appear on the bill, too.

“It was a folk song called, ‘Skip to My Lou,”’ said Atkinson. “I had on a little cowboy suit and hat. A little ham.”

Not long after that, he actually made it on to the “Arthur Godfrey Show,” one of the top TV shows at the time, 1955. He played guitar and sang a folk song on location at Coney Island.

Yet he was already getting serious about the guitar, taking classical lessons from the top classical guitar teachers in New York. When it came time to go to high school, he was admitted to New York’s School for the Performing Arts (famed for the movie “Fame”) based on his classical guitar virtuosity. His classmates included Liza Minnelli and Gerard Schwarz, now the musical director of the Seattle Symphony.

Classical music was always his first love, but he found out even while in high school that he could make the best money not in recital halls but in the smoky cafes of Greenwich Village. He would take the subway into the city after finishing his homework and play a combination of folk, blues and classical guitar.

“I was working three coffeehouses,” he said. “This was in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s, and that was when it was all happening down there. Dylan was down there doing it at the time. Mort Sahl was working there.

“You didn’t get paid by the ownership; you got paid by the public. They put a basket out there, and I’d be bringing in $50 or $60 a night, which was really a lot of money for a little kid to be making at that time.”

He put himself through college at the Manhattan School of Music with that money, along with the money he made playing electric bass guitar in jazz bands and big bands.

“I had never played the bass before, but it was like the lower four strings of the guitar, and I figured, what’s the big deal?” he said. “Also, in those days, there weren’t a lot of good electric bass players who could read music.”

In addition to playing bass, he played electric guitar in jazz bands, too, but his heart wasn’t in it. For one thing, the strings were steel, not nylon as on a classical guitar.

“I just never, to this day, enjoyed playing on steel strings,” said Atkinson. “There’s just a difference in the sensation, the feel and the sound.”

So, with acoustic guitar in hand, he connected with a woman cabaret singer and pianist and worked some of the more sophisticated Manhattan clubs.

“But that was a dead end as far as I was concerned,” said Atkinson . “I didn’t enjoy that cabaret environment, with all the smoke.

“To this day, I don’t enjoy playing clubs. I do it once in a blue moon, if they really pay me well.”

So he gradually worked himself up into the hierarchy of the serious guitar community in New York. He was the head of the guitar program at Jersey City State College, which he said was the largest guitar program in the country. He played for both the Alvin Ailey Dance Company and the Joffrey Ballet. At the height of the civil rights unrest, he played in a Ford Foundation tour of the South with Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba. He joined Belafonte’s band and played with him in Las Vegas in 1964.

Then he found a niche in a place coveted by most musicians - in the pit on Broadway.

“Those jobs paid extremely well,” said Atkinson. “My mind was always very business oriented. To me, it made sense that if I was going to play my guitar, I’d play it in the place where I would make the most money.”

He played in the hit musical “Promises, Promises” for years during its long run in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, with a break to go to Spain to take master classes under the greatest guitarist of his era, Andres Segovia.

Back in New York, Atkinson went on to begin rehearsals for “Grease,” but he dropped out before opening night for a characteristic Atkinson reason: “‘50s rock ‘n’ roll didn’t do much for me.”

So in the early ‘70s, he was riding high, playing in the pit for several other Broadway shows and working as one of the top studio musicians in New York.

And then he decided to shuck it all and head for the mountains.

“I got burned out on the city,” said Atkinson. “A big part of me realized that I was most happy when I was in the mountains. There was just something about being out in the wilderness that I was very attracted to.”

He said most people expect someone from Queens to be a citified product of the “asphalt jungle,” but he grew up as a Boy Scout, a hiker, an outdoorsman, a long-distance cyclist and a speed-skater.

So he bought 26 acres with a one-turret stone “castle” in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.

He ended up selling it six months later because he couldn’t afford to fix it up properly. Meanwhile, a friend had told him about a place that was even more beautiful, except the land was unbelievably cheap. The place was Sandpoint.

“So I drove out in my Volvo station wagon, fell in love with Sandpoint, and bought the 60 acres that I have now,” said Atkinson.

He went back to New York for two years and stockpiled some more capital by working on Broadway musicals, including “A Chorus Line.” He moved to his Sandpoint land for good in 1975.

He put in a road, designed a house and built it himself.

“The career kind of went on hold for a lot of years,” he said. “And that was by choice, because I really got taken in by living in Sandpoint, living up in the mountains. I was really following other passions that I had, and have.”

For one thing, he threw himself into the cultural life of the community, helping organize the Pend Oreille Arts Council and establishing the Classical Guitar Guild of Sandpoint.

“I was literally not making any money,” he said. “I was just sort of … existing.”

He also threw himself into his car hobby, which soon became more than a hobby.

“I’m a car junkie, definitely,” said Atkinson. “I am into Mercedes in particular. I have a lot of old Mercedes. I fix them up, I buy, I sell, I trade. In fact, when Sutherland Motors is looking for old parts, they’ll call me.”

Working on trannies is one of the last things a man who expresses his art through his fingers should be doing, as Atkinson readily admits.

“So is cutting down trees with a chain saw, which I also do,” said Atkinson. “I could cut my fingers off.

“I keep this very clearly in the forefront of my mind, that doing this can end my career. But I don’t do it for anybody except myself, and I don’t allow any distractions. And I’m extremely careful.”

He is divorced and has three girls at home: Jessica, 13, Aimee, 10, and Estrella, 8, plus Kimberly, 27, who is a veterinary student at Washington State University. He and the girls love to ride horses, and they recently discovered a love of sailing. He bought a sailboat last summer.

“I feel painfully blessed,” said Atkinson. “It’s like one of my friends in Seattle was saying to me, ‘You’re the only person I know who has the mansion, you have the Mercedes, and now you have the yacht, AND YOU HAVE NO MONEY!’ (laughs) And it’s true, because a lot of people look at this and assume that I’m loaded.”

He possesses one other thing, not readily apparent: courage. He has nothing but good things to say about Sandpoint, but those who know him say that North Idaho was not the easiest place for a black man to move to in the 1970s.

“He had trouble, but he has a kind of positive-energy shield that goes out in front of him,” said Hunrichs. “He has a way of dealing with trouble and defusing it. He has a lot of friends up in Sandpoint.”

Today, Atkinson divides his time between his Sandpoint home and his teaching duties at Gonzaga University. He is on the adjunct faculty there, teaching guitar a few days a week. He also comes to Spokane every week to do his radio show, “The Guitar Hour,” every Thursday from 11 a.m. to noon on KPBX-FM (91.1). It’s a combination of performance and discussion, often with a guest artist. He does it strictly on a volunteer basis.

And he has also poured renewed energy into his guitar playing in the past few years. He calls it a “renaissance.” He survived a life-threatening disease not long ago, and he said that experience made him focus on his priorities: his children and his guitar playing.

It also made him want to document his playing, so one of his goals is to put out a new CD every year.

The first, “Space,” a mixture of classical and jazz, will be on sale at The Met during the concert today and Tuesday. It is a re-release of a recording he made eight years ago, with 22 minutes of new material added.

Practicing, performing, recording - these are painstaking processes. Yet Atkinson’s life has been a testament to hard work and will.

“I think that everything in life is attainable if you’re willing to sacrifice and work for it,” he said. “And I’ve done both.” , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story:

1. CONCERT Guitarist Leon Atkinson will perform at 3 p.m. today and at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at The Met. Tickets are $9 to $19, available at the symphony ticket office (624-1200), G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or call (800) 325-SEAT. 2. MULTIFACETED LIFE Leon Atkinson has wide-ranging interests: Playing classical guitar. Collecting and restoring Mercedes cars. Raising horses. Sailing. Mountain-biking and hiking.