Forgotten Fresno Recording Finds New Life in Oscar-Winning ‘Moonlight’

When "Moonlight" won the Oscar for best picture this year, 60-year-old Leonard Sanders decided to go see it in the theater instead of waiting for it to be released online. He took his wife and they stayed until the very end.

“The people that come around to clean up after the movie’s over, they were looking at us wondering why we were still there. I was waiting for the credits, you know, to see it.”

“It” was the name of the gospel band The Supreme Jubilees. Sanders was the lead singer and songwriter. The title track of their self-released LP "It’ll All Be Over" played during one scene in "Moonlight." Sanders wrote the song almost 40 years ago. He never expected this. His reaction to the credits?

“Wow."

For years, Sanders has led a church band on his organ keyboard. He and his six siblings pretty much grew up in the Witness of Jesus Christ Church here in Southwest Fresno. After all, their dad, Marion Sanders, was the pastor for four decades.

He was a singer, too, says Sanders. “He had a gospel quartet with his brothers, the Humble Singers.”

When Sanders was a kid, he would watch other people play the piano. Then he’d go home and try to mimic the sound on his parents’ upright. He never had a piano lesson -- Sanders learned to play by ear.

“If you play for a Pentecostal church, you have to learn to play all types of songs in every key because there’s no structure. They just throw you in there. It’s either sink or swim.” Sanders swam. There were no rehearsals. No songbooks.

“It’s like anybody can get up and sing any song they want to in any key at any time and you gotta be able to catch them, you know?”

Any key as long as it was church music. Sanders wasn’t allowed to listen to secular tunes.

But curiosity got the better of him.

“I can remember going to bed with the radio to my ear, once my parents were asleep. I’m listening to Aretha Franklin, the O’Jays, everything that came on the radio," Sanders recalls. "I was just intrigued with music, you know."

As a teenager he wrote songs, and in 1978 he joined The Supreme Jubilees. It was an eight-member group made up of his brothers and cousins.

The band recorded part of its LP "It’ll All Be Over" in Fresno, but the studio engineer was partial to country-western.

“We had an idea of what kind of sound we were looking for in the mix. We wanted a little more bass,” says Sanders. But the engineer balked.

“He was like, ‘I know what I’m doing. I don’t need your input,' " Sanders says, laughing. “And so my cousin Joe was like, 'Yeah, but we want a little more bass.' "

More bass than the engineer could handle. He kicked them out before The Supreme Jubilees could record the rest of the album. They took it to another studio in Visalia and after the vinyl was pressed, the band piled into Sanders’ old van and struck out for Texas. People were comparing them to the gospel group the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and they played with them and other acts.

They sold their records at concerts but it wasn’t all glitz and glamour. The promoter lied about the money they’d get, Sanders says. The trips in the van with all of their equipment and clothes wore them down.

“Eleven to 12 of us in one motel room!” Sanders says.

“My older cousins wanted to keep going down South,” says Sanders. “But nooooo, we were going back to California.” The band members moved on to other things, day jobs, family. Sanders started another family gospel group called Sanders and Company.

But now "It’ll All Be Over" has been resurrected. The LP was re-released by Light in the Attic records in 2015 after a record collector in Texas pushed its revival.

It not only found its way to the creators of "Moonlight," but other artists are also using it, including well known Fresno rapper Fashawn, who sampled the title track on "Just Remember Now."

Sanders’ brother, Melvin, who sings backup on the LP, says it’s nice to see his brother finally get some credit.

“He’s a committed, dedicated writer. And it’s great somebody besides the local folks here recognize it.”

Meanwhile, another song from the LP plays in the recent movie "Louder Than Bombs." It’s called "Do You Believe," and Sanders sings all the vocal tracks on it.

As for all the recognition he’s getting these days, well, none of it is a really big deal to him. Leonard Sanders says he’ll just keep singing in his church.