Fresno musician finds success after 'Moonlight' features song nearly 40 years later

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- If you have seen the movie 'Moonlight,' you likely saw the scene with a powerful song but chances are you did not know the man who wrote the song is a Central Valley man.

Leonard Sanders says he composed "It'll All Be Over" for a band he was in back in 1979 called The Supreme Jubilees. And it's a song he says almost did not get recorded.

"We went to a studio here in Fresno, and the engineer was a country and western engineer," he explained. "And we were trying to give him some input on the kind of mix we wanted - heavy on the bottom - and he wasn't having it."

Sanders said that engineer canceled their session, forcing them to go somewhere else.

"So, we basically had to go to Visalia to finish up," he said.

Months later, the band went on tour in the midwest, performing songs on their album. After no luck at fame, they returned home, but Sanders says one of their albums stayed behind.

It gave them the success they were looking for some 40 years later thanks to a record store owner in Texas.

"He was going through his albums and he came across our album, and he listened to it, and he made four of five trips to Fresno to get the rights to the music," he said. "That brought us to where we are now, things are just happening - movie deals."

Sanders says his song, now heard in an Academy Award winning film, is about the struggles his band went through to put out their album. He wants other musicians and artists experiencing the same thing to know sometimes the big break happens just by keeping hope alive.