Leon Jacobs Jr. brings love of music to the fair
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on October 5, 2017 5:50 AM
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Leon Jacobs Jr. sings and plays the piano for a crowd at the pavilion during the Wayne Regional Agricultural Fair.
Leon Jacobs Jr. has always been gripped by music.
But he remembers exactly when he decided the piano was the only instrument for him.
Jacobs walked by a radio when he was 14 years old and heard Jerry Lee Lewis crank out a trill on the ivory keys that leapt out of the speakers and straight into his soul.
"It was almost like flipping a light switch," Jacobs said. "I never will forget that moment."
As his fascination with the piano and the greats who played it grew, so did his need to get his fingers onto the keys of one himself.
"I couldn't stand it any longer. I woke my mother up at 2 a.m. -- went to her bedside saying, 'Mom! Mom!' -- she thought I was sick or hurt, but I said, 'Mom, I need a piano," Jacobs said. "She actually sat up and let me present my case. She said there was a big difference between want and need, but I said, 'Mom, I need one.'"
So Jacobs' mother saw to it that he got a piano.
And off he went.
Jacobs never had any formal training -- he learned the ways of the hammers and strings by listening and watching others play.
He immersed himself in the sounds of people he calls "The Pathfinders" -- those great musicians who were the first, and sometimes only, of their kind, launching new styles of music into the collective American conscience.
"I've never had lessons or formal training," Jacobs said. "The way I learned was watching other people or mainly listening to records, and just trying to figure out by ear what I was hearing and how to duplicate that sound."
Jacobs would hear licks and riffs he thought impossible to play -- that is, until he reminded himself that if someone else could do it with 10 fingers, then he could, too.
So he would sit down and try to work out the mechanics of what was going on by watching someone play it, then duplicate it himself until he got the same sound.
"I don't remember ever doing what we would call practice," Jacobs said. "It was just like you were in search of the next sound, the next lick, the next unknown. You could feel it."
Jacobs said as he played piano, he learned how to express his emotions through music.
Often he would have a dream, jump out of bed and hammer out on the keyboard what he was experiencing in his dreams.
He would go back to bed, get up in the morning and play it again.
"I learned to not force it and just to let it happen," Jacobs said.
Jacobs said he lets his emotions and experiences cut loose through the music he plays on the piano.
Now, he tries to convey that to the crowd -- and through Wednesday, Wayne County fairgoers could hear Jacobs playing at 7:30 p.m. under the pavilion at the fairgrounds of the Wayne Regional Agricultural Fair.
And in many regards, since he grew up in North Carolina in Columbus County, coming to Wayne County was much like a return to his roots -- a homecoming, if you will.
"The music is something just all over the universe -- it's up in the heavens, it's in the sky above us -- and you become a vessel that it just flows through," Jacobs said. "It's not about you, it's not about look at me, it's about sharing the music with people. A particular song, a particular lick, a particular passage of notes at a given moment was meant for someone sitting out in the audience. You're just delivering the message that was their message to receive on that moment on that day."