Rob Leonard was an undergraduate at Columbia University in 1968 when he and his brother George transformed the school’s a-cappella group by having them dress and style their hair like 1950s punks from Brooklyn. They sang doo-wop hits from that early rock ‘n’ roll era. They added instruments and became a nationwide success as Sha Na Na. (The name is from the The Silhouettes’ hit song, “Get A Job.”) The high point for Leonard came when Jimi Hendrix asked the band to open for him at Woodstock. Rob Leonard sang the lead on “Teen Angel” prior to Hendrix electrifying the world with his “Star Spangled Banner.”
After a couple years, Leonard decided it was time to move on. “All of our good friends were dying of drug overdoses.” Sha Na Na moved on, too, becoming television stars with their syndicated show.
Robert Leonard went back to his studies at Columbia, earning a PhD, and pursued a career in linguistics. He is a 
Professor of Linguistics at Hofstra University on Long Island, and rock-star famous in the field of forensic linguistics. A relatively new field, forensic linguistics basically is figuring out what a person really said. Leonard has been an expert witness in high-profile cases such as Apple vs. Microsoft, testifying for Apple on what the term “app store” really meant. He also testified in a defamation lawsuit against the estimable Dr. Phil and CBS for an exposé broadcast about the Natalee Holloway case. Ms. Holloway was in the news for being an attractive young white blonde woman who was murdered while on a post-graduation trip to Aruba.
Read more about Robert Leonard and forensic linguistics in this piece from the New Yorker magazine.
