LEON Russell has played with everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Beach Boys.

He wrote A Song For You, one of the most frequently recorded songs of the past 40 years and now a staple of overwrought American Idol auditions. He was George Harrison’s right-hand man at the Concert for Bangladesh. Yet only in the past few months has Russell received tangible recognition for his many and varied achievements. The night before we speak he was inducted into the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, and just a few weeks previously he was voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

It is, he says rather modestly, all thanks to Elton John. The pair had forged a friendship in the early 1970s, based on deep mutual admiration, but hadn’t spoken for 35 years. Until one day the phone rang. “Elton just called me up and said, ‘Let’s do a record’,” says Russell. “He felt I wasn’t getting enough appreciation and he wanted to improve that.” A pause, a wry chortle. “He’s done quite a good job, actually.”

Indeed he has. The result of John’s Good Samaritan call was The Union, the pair’s fine collaborative album released late last year. Its success has done wonders for Russell’s profile, to the extent that he describes John’s interest as a “huge charitable contribution. Olivia Harrison says that Elton is spiritually correct, and I find that to be absolutely true. I was just extremely grateful that he wanted to do it.”

Did Russell agree that his talents were being neglected? “I really didn’t feel that way myself,” he drawls. “It’s show business. That’s the way it happens: sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down.”

Back on the upswing at 69, Russell knows better than most the rollercoaster nature of a career in the music industry. He was playing piano in Tulsa nightclubs at the age of 12 and by his late teens was firmly entrenched in the Los Angeles studio system, working regularly with Phil Spector and as part of the elite squad of session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew.

Out of all the artists he worked with, he cites Sam Cooke as the most memorable. “I consider him to be one of the greatest vocalists of all time, so that was special” he says. “It was all pretty interesting to me. It was a lot of fun, there was a lot of great artists and I worked with all the great producers of the time. It was highly educational.”

Having already written Joe Cocker’s hit single Delta Lady, in 1970 Russell was hired as the bandleader on Cocker’s celebrated Mad Dogs and Englishman tour. Around the same time he transformed himself from a regular looking guy with “a Pat Boone haircut” into a kind of juke joint Dumbledore. He resolved to adopt a more confrontational image after observing an act of casual racism being meted out to a black family at a truck stop.

“It occurred to me how people’s perspectives are altered by the way you look,” he says. “Our accidental exterior causes people to take sides, and I thought that was odd and interesting. I decided I’d get all that stuff right out front.”

Soon after touring with Cocker, Russell released his eponymous first album. It featured the original version of his classic ballad A Song for You, which has since been recorded by everyone from Willie Nelson to Christina Aguilera.

“I was trying to write a blues that both Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles could sing,” he says. “At a certain period of time I tried to write standards. Hundred of people record those songs and I was really interested in that. About 25 years ago A Song for You had 125 cuts. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was over 200 now, so I suppose I succeeded.”

DESPITE the royalty cheques which have dropped through the door with comforting regularity for the past four decades, Russell admits that he’s “the champion of bad business. I’ve probably made more mistakes than any other guy.” If so, he seems admirably philosophical about it all.

For a man who claims drily that “my hobby is silence”, Russell is in surprisingly expansive mood. He fondly recalls working with Bob Dylan, who shared his love of spontaneity. “Dylan called me up to play bass on a record called George Jackson. We made a take but the background singers had just arrived, so it had a few mistakes in it. He said, ‘Well, if we do it again it will just have different mistakes in it, this is fine’. I thought, that’s a good way of looking at it.”

The pair first bonded in 1971, backstage at Madison Square Garden during the Concert for Bangladesh, where Russell had been hired by George Harrison to lead the house band. “The main thing I remember about it was being in the dressing room with Dylan,” he says. “Oddly enough, he seemed to take an interest in me. We were sitting there and I’d say, ‘Bob, sing It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, and he would. He’s not noted for that.”

It seems to be the season for Russell to re-establish old connections. Having barely seen him for 20 years, later this year he will play a series of shows with Dylan, while he recently recorded a duet album with his great buddy Willie Nelson. A new solo record is planned but will emerge only when Russell has enough songs “to see the fair lights”. Even with more than half a century’s worth of experience, he still finds writing tough. “It’s always taken a long time. I’ve had studios in my houses for the last 45 years and I’ve found myself sitting in there for months and even years at a time waiting for inspiration.”

The question on everyone’s lips, of course, is whether there will be a sequel to The Union. “Oh, I don’t know,” says Russell. “Elton has talked about maybe making a record of rock and roll standards and having me play on it, but I’d never ask.”

He laughs. “I think he’s already done enough for me, don’t you?”

Leon Russell plays City Halls, Glasgow, tomorrow as part of the Glasgow Jazz Festival.