Leslie Beacon, credited as a co-writer of the great rhythm and blues classic Two Faced Man, turned out to have no face at all. There was no real songwriter named Leslie Beacon, so hopefully there were no sailors relying on that particular lighthouse to guide them ashore. The Beacon name was a pseudonym for Joe Davis, whose half century of activity on the New York music scene included song publishing, songwriting, recording songs, running record labels and working as an A&R man for larger labels. Of all his writing pseudonyms, none carries the essence of the Davis career as well as this one, seeing as he wound up naming one of his most famous labels, Beacon, after this particular imaginary songwriter personality. And while it certainly is a grandioise sounding name, Leslie Beacon is nowhere near the funniest of the Davis songwriting and publishing nom-de-plumes. That would have to be E.V. Body, and while Davis only used that name for recordings of traditional material that was actually in public domain, the ploy was more than just an in-joke--it was a way of stuffing the royalties for the traditional material into the Davis pocket.

The songs of Leslie Beacon can be halved into prewar and postwar material, the former consisting of fairly decent craftsmanship while the latter displayed a Davis preoccupation with wartime blues themes but not any indication of cleverness. He published Nighty-Night as a Leslie Beacon creation in 1941 and the song was almost immediately cut by stylish bandleader Alvino Rey. The song holds up as a sweet bedtime song, and was later covered by British songstress Petula Clark for a nostalgia record. The sleepytime theme was quickly imitated on another Beacon song entitled Sweet Dreams. This was later thought to be the idea behind the Rudy Vallee record Pleasant Dreams, but neither has anything to do with the Sweet Dreams that was a huge hit for Patsy Cline, and covered by dozens of other artists. Beacon was credited with co-writing Mary Had a Little Jam with pianist Erskine Butterfield, but this was basically nothing more than a riff arrangement. The following year Butterfield and Davis came up with Two Faced Man, an inspired number that was cut by both a greenhorn Savannah Churchill and Jimmy Lytell. Both of these records were good sized hits, moving in the neighborhood of 200,000 copies each. That is more that can be said of the results after nowhere manBeacon began to focus on titles such as He's Commander in Chief of My Heart, Man Shortage Blues and Blackout Blues, the latter tune of no relation, and nowhere near as good, as the blues jam theme of the same name composed by jazz baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams. On some subsequent reissues of Leslie Beacon titles, songwriting credits reverted to the real name of Joe Davis. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi