Published on Mar 9, 1999
The following paragraph is not the kind of thing a publicist is
going to want to see in the start of a review. When I first heard
Lazy Lester as the blues coordinator of the campus radio station, I
was hardly impressed. Granted, I was still very much in the process
of “getting my feet wet” in the blues, but what I heard on his
then-recent release
Harp And Soul (which I rescued from the production studio)
didn’t impress me. Needless to say, Lester didn’t get a lot of play
on my show, unless I had already played too much B.B. King.
Flash forward a decade, when one of the publicists I work with
informed me that Lester had a new album,
All Over You, coming out. My first comment was, “He’s still
around?” This was followed by, “Yeah, go ahead and send it.”
Despite my previous experience, I was willing to give him another
chance.
It’s interesting to note that this is Lester’s first album since
Harp And Soul – and it was a major eye-opener for me as a
fan of the blues. While Lester is not the strongest vocalist in the
business, he delivers the blues with a down-home comfort level that
he makes this album very approachable on many levels.
Lester is best known as a harmonica player, and he shows his
skills on the harp early and often. Tracks like “I Need Money,”
“Strange Things Happen” (which sounds a little like Randy Newman at
times) and “Irene” all seem to mix in touches of old-fashioned
R&B with the blues. This creates a unique sound for Lester, and
it’s one that suits his style of the blues very well.
But what surprised me about
All Over You is that Lester also shows skills on the guitar;
he is the sole performer on two tracks, “Nothing But The Devil” and
“My Home Is A Prison”. The latter track is a modern testament to
the old-style performance of the blues, where the strict 12-bar
formula wasn’t always followed. While I would have called something
like that sloppy in 1989, since discovering the joy of the late
Robert Johnson, I can now appreciate these deviances from the
standard.
Lester keeps things interesting through songs like “I’m A Lover
Not A Fighter,” “The Sun Is Shining” and “Hello Mary Lee,” all
making people like myself wonder why he’s only released three
albums in the last 12 years. Lester could easily be one of the best
artists in the traditional blues style, though I still believe that
Harp And Soul (which I haven’t heard since leaving radio in
1991) didn’t do him justice.
All Over You is one of the finest traditional blues albums
I’ve listened to in a long time, and it should cement Lester’s
importance to the world of the blues. It’s well worth the time to
search this one out and listen to it.