n the tradition of Nat King Cole and his daughter Natalie, Bermuda?s LeYoni Junos has put together a CD featuring duets with her late father Leon Jones.

?Amor? features 16 tracks of love ballads, six of which are father and daughter duets. It is a keepsake album, which also includes a 12-page booklet with lots of photos, a silk-screened image of Leon on disc and protective jewel box sleeve.

It has been specially designed for Christmas and it comes with a lovely red organza gift pouch.

Ms Junos began singing in hotels in 1986 with the Tommy Ray Trio. Her father was still alive then, but she never ever worked with him.

?He was entertaining in Bermuda since the early 70s and I am actually in the process of transcribing an interview that he did five weeks before he died. It was done on December 31, 1987, and he died on February 8, 1988. It was with Stuart Hayward and earlier this year, when I was getting ready to release this D, Stuart called me and said he would like for me to have it.

?He talks extensively about how he started out in music and he was talking about an album that he was about to release, his second album. People knew him so well, not only because he was an entertainer, but because he was also a music teacher. He taught guitar, bass guitar to lots of students.

?People still stop me on the bus and they say, ?I was one of your father?s students?.

?His principal love was classical guitar and he prepared students for examinations for the Royal School of Music. My grandmother, his mother, is still living and she still has photo albums which have pictures of the kids with their certificates.?

Playing piano is Ms Junos? forte.

?I had piano lessons from the age of five and I quit when I was about 15, I think,? she said.

?You know you get to that age when you think to yourself ?I don?t want to do this anymore?. I was learning music by modern composers at that point and I didn?t like it, I actually liked classical music. My brother, Christopher, and I enrolled to do duet exams and we actually passed them with merit, but both of us failed our individual exams.?

The 12-page booklet is a tribute to the three leading ladies in her late father?s life.

?There are three generations, my mother, his mother and me,? said the singer.

?It is like a two-page spread on everyone and it highlights their relationship with Leon.?

Leon Jones grew up in the Salvation Army and when Ms Junos was young she did not realise why her father dropped out.

?Evidently, a Salvation Army member told me that the reason my father left the church was because he needed to go out and use his talents to bring home the bacon for the family,? she said.

?He started playing in the Salvation Army band when he was eight. It was in his blood and the church was an intricate part of his life. But the Salvation Army at the time announced that he could not play secular music and continue to play in the band and it was a real conflict for him.

?I think it really tore him apart and in the end he left and he played in the hotels to pay the rent. I think it is unfair. I don?t know if they still have that stance, but it?s like if you do construction and they say, ?well you can?t do it unless you are building a church?.

?But people looked at music differently.?

She said music often blesses a lot of people.

?After my father had died I went on a Father?s Day cruise with a man I call my godfather and I was getting a little depressed.

?The band was playing and they asked me to sing something. I wanted to sing something that was meaningful to me and I asked them to sing a song from ?Fame?. ?Out Here On My Own?.

?It was in the wrong key, it was too high for me and my voice was cracking, but I struggled through it. I think it was Lloyd Williams and he asked me to get up and sing something else that I knew to help me redeem myself so, we did ?Killing Me Softly?.

?At the end of the cruise I was approached by a young lady and I didn?t know who she was, but she said: ?I just want to thank you for that first song because what I am going through because it really touched me?. I am saying all this to say that you don?t know who you are going to touch or who you are going to bless. So, it doesn?t necessarily have to be a religious song. You can save someone?s life, who is contemplating something and someone is able to express what they are feeling and it gives them that second chance.?

Before she started singing, she would play her father?s albums.

?He had Nat King Cole, Mahalia Jackson and when I was at home alone and I could sing at the top of my voice I would turn the music up and sing these songs,? she said. ?They were songs that had meaning to me. I loved them.

?I didn?t really know that much about the project that Natalie did with her father, because every time I mentioned what I was doing, they would say like Nat King Cole. It was a personal thing with my father.

?I actually went online and began reading about the project and I realised that there were some uncanny similarities between my father and him.

?They both died at the age of 45 and both of them just shy of their 46th birthday. My father died on February 8 and his birthday was on February 28 and Nat King Cole died on February 15 and his birthday was on March 17. They were both Pisces and they both died of problems due to their lifestyle. Nat King Cole had lung cancer, he smoke heavily and my father died of obesity. Just months before he died his doctor had told him that he was a walking time bomb and that it was too much for his heart.

?Both of them had bands which were called King. Nat King Cole had the King Cole Swingers and King Cole Trio. My father had the King Louis Quartet. They both had daughters who were named after them. And both have daughters who have recorded with them posthumously.

?And on their deaths they were both listed as self-employed entertainers. Another parallel was that we were both in our 40s when we had the gumption to do this.?

Ms Junos explained how the project began.

?I was looking through a box of tapes one day and it happened to be Valentine?s Day and I found this tape, which he called ?Amor? and it was recorded live in November 1985.

?I took it home and when I put it in the tape recorder I was just amazed at the quality of it for a home-recording. There was a classical piece on it and we had no recordings of my father playing classical, even though it was his first love. There were also songs on it like ?Yesterday?, ?Amor?, ?Three Times A Lady? and one of my favourites ?Always On My Mind?.

?The first one he did with Eddie DeMello?s production company and the second one he did with friends overseas, but these songs were not on those two albums. So, I thought to myself, this needs to be preserved.

?There was a piece called ?Perhaps Love? on there and it was one that I always wanted to sing with him because I loved the lyrics so much. ?Perhaps Love? was on another album, but this one was slower and it made it easier for me to utilise it. I thought maybe I could go into the studio and do that.

?It was a very exciting project and a very consuming one. It wasn?t until I was in the studio with the earphones on and his voice in my ears and singing along with it that I had an uncanny felling about what I was doing.?

During the recording process, she realised how similar the texture of their voices were.

?I didn?t find it too much trouble to sing along with him,? she said. ?It was really quite an experience.? Ms Junos is also working on another project, the Sally Bassett Foundation for Research and Education, which will publish historical material. The website is sallysfire.com. She has another CD with only her father?s music, ?A Leon Jones Christmas?. Proceeds from this will help to publish the Slaves Register. ?It is a recording from ZBM and it is a recording taken from a VHS tape and no one else seems to have a copy of this programme, not even ZBM,? she said.

?What is interesting about this is (the late) Sydney Bean is on this and he was cited as being the father of all Bermudian entertainers. He was held in high esteem. He is singing two songs that he wrote himself and there were three original songs that had never been recorded before.

?One is a Christmas song the other is a love song.?

Both CDs are available at the Bermuda National Gallery, All Wrapped Up, True Reflections and the Craft Market in Dockyard for $25 each.