A song keeps replaying in my mind – New Orleans Ladies – since hearing that bassist, producer and songwriter Leon Medica Jr. of Alexandria died. He’s the guy who co-wrote that hit song of 1978 while with the band “Louisiana LeRoux.” The song continues to be popular today.
“All the way,
From Bourbon Street to Esplanade
They sashay by
They sashay by.”
The song, which exudes the laid-back feel of the “Big Easy,” hit No. 59 on the Billboard charts that summer and was later voted Louisiana’s Song of the Century by Gambit Magazine. Medica wasn’t the lead singer – that was Jeff Pollard, who started the band that eventually became Louisiana LeRoux, but Medica is remembered around here for New Orleans Ladies the way Jefferson is remembered around America for the Declaration of Independence.
“He once told me he never felt like he worked a day in his life because he so enjoyed his work,” said Medica’s first cousin, Bobby Distefano. As children, they lived across the street from each other, played ball together, went to the same schools. “He was easy to get along with,” continued Distefano. “He loved people and he loved his music. That was his life.”
In a five-decade career, Medica landed his name on more than 90 albums and the credits for 10 movies, but one of the best moments of his career, he once said, was receiving an American Music Award for helping as a producer with the Doobie Brothers’ Tom Johnston on a particular project. Leon had done a USO tour with the Doobie Brothers in the early 1970s, and he got a call one day from Johnston saying he was doing an album for a movie and needed some songs to finish the record.
The record was the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, released in 1987.
It sold more than 65 million copies.
Medica produced the music and played the bass for the movie’s song Where are You Tonight?
“He was probably one of the best Louisiana bass players ever,” said close friend Dan Diefenderfer, who performed with Medica, a member of the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, at different events with the band “Bayou Degradable.” Dief said he sang to him last month during a visit to the nursing home in Alexandria where Medica closed his life battling Alzheimer’s. “I think by my singing to him, I was able to draw him out of that temporarily because he talked with me freely.”
To his last days, Medica retained his easy-going, life-is-good personality, said Diefenderfer.
Attorney Ellis Saybe, who handled much of Medica’s legal work late in his life, remembers being an altar boy with Medica many moons ago, when they both were assigned the 6 a.m. weekday Mass at St. Frances Cabrini Church.
“We rode our bikes several blocks to the church,” said Saybe, “and on this particular day – it must’ve been January, because it was pitch black and freezing cold – and we got to the church, which had a good heater. The priest, as was customary of the (pre-Vatican II) time, was facing the altar, so he had his back to us for a while, reciting a lengthy Latin prayer as we knelt on the altar. I looked over at Leon and he was sound asleep while kneeling! He was just kind of slumped over. I had never before seen, nor I have seen anyone since, who has been able to fall asleep while kneeling like that.
“His nickname then was ‘Noonie,’” continued Saybe, “and I’m whispering ‘Noonie! Noonie!’ trying to wake him so he doesn’t get in trouble when the priest turns around. Fortunately, he woke up.”
Medica had a son (Justin) and daughter (Caroline) during two marriages that ended in divorce, but his first wife, the former Mary Masterson, “was helpful,” Diefenderfer said, during the last decade while Medica endured Alzheimer’s back home in Alexandria. Medica lived in Nashville for several years before returning to Alexandria.
John Medica, Leon’s cousin and most recent caregiver, recalled a story songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Jerry Honigman told from a 1990 visit to see Leon and Mary, then living in Baton Rouge.
“Leon was showing off a lot of his career memorabilia – his platinum record for the Dirty Dancing soundtrack album, his songwriting accolades for New Orleans Ladies, his pictures from USO tours with other notable music stars. And Mary turned to me and summed it up beautifully.
“You know, Jerry” she said, “Leon is just like a big ole dog walking around the neighborhood, and bones just fall out of the trees.”
Funeral services were pending at deadline Monday, but Kramer Funeral Home expects to have that information available this morning. You can check the web site (kramerfunerals.com) or call at (318) 445-6311.