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Leon Haywood Leon (*1942 in Houston, TX) was a funk and soul singer, songwriter and record producer. He listened to the blues as a child and started playing piano at the age of three. In his teens, he performed with a local group and worked as an accompanist to blues musician, Guitar Slim. In the early 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles, CA, where he worked with saxophonist Big Jay McNeely. McNeely arranged for him to record his first single, "Without a Love". After that, he joined Sam Cooke's band as keyboardist until the singer's death. Leon next recorded two singles for Fantasy Records, and subsequently moved to Imperial Records, where he recorded the single "She's with Her Other Love", which made the R&B charts in 1965. Leon was also part of two session bands the Packers, and the Romeos. He established in 1967 a production company, Evejim.   He found only sporadic success as a singer. He emerged as a star in the 1970s by modifying his style to incorporate the emerging funk and disco idioms. Leon joined 20th Century Records in 1974 and was immediately successful. In 1980, he revived the shuffle beat of 1950s rock and roll.   Leon is credited with writing the 1981 hit "She's a Bad Mama Jama" by Carl Carlton, which he produced in his own studio. In 1983, he released the album It's Me Again. His last R&B chart record was "Tenderoni" in 1984, but the accompanying album, Now and Then went unreleased. After a few more chart singles, for Casablanca Records and Modern Records, Leon's output failed to excite the public's taste. In the late 1980s, he became associated in an executive/production capacity with the Los Angeles-based Edge Records. From the 1980s, he produced blues albums by Jimmy McCracklin, Clay Hammond, Ronnie Lovejoy, Buddy Ace and others on his own Evejim Records label. He died in 2016.   from Wikipedia

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