The following paragraph is not the kind of thing a publicist is
\ngoing to want to see in the start of a review. When I first heard
\nLazy Lester as the blues coordinator of the campus radio station, I
\nwas hardly impressed. Granted, I was still very much in the process
\nof “getting my feet wet” in the blues, but what I heard on his
\nthen-recent release
\nHarp And Soul<\/i> (which I rescued from the production studio)
\ndidn’t impress me. Needless to say, Lester didn’t get a lot of play
\non my show, unless I had already played too much B.B. King.<\/p>\n
Flash forward a decade, when one of the publicists I work with
\ninformed me that Lester had a new album,
\nAll Over You<\/i>, coming out. My first comment was, “He’s still
\naround?” This was followed by, “Yeah, go ahead and send it.”
\nDespite my previous experience, I was willing to give him another
\nchance.<\/p>\n
It’s interesting to note that this is Lester’s first album since<\/p>\n
Harp And Soul<\/i> – and it was a major eye-opener for me as a
\nfan of the blues. While Lester is not the strongest vocalist in the
\nbusiness, he delivers the blues with a down-home comfort level that
\nhe makes this album very approachable on many levels.<\/p>\n
Lester is best known as a harmonica player, and he shows his
\nskills on the harp early and often. Tracks like “I Need Money,”
\n“Strange Things Happen” (which sounds a little like Randy Newman at
\ntimes) and “Irene” all seem to mix in touches of old-fashioned
\nR&B with the blues. This creates a unique sound for Lester, and
\nit’s one that suits his style of the blues very well.<\/p>\n
But what surprised me about
\nAll Over You<\/i> is that Lester also shows skills on the guitar;
\nhe is the sole performer on two tracks, “Nothing But The Devil” and
\n“My Home Is A Prison”. The latter track is a modern testament to
\nthe old-style performance of the blues, where the strict 12-bar
\nformula wasn’t always followed. While I would have called something
\nlike that sloppy in 1989, since discovering the joy of the late
\nRobert Johnson, I can now appreciate these deviances from the
\nstandard.<\/p>\n
Lester keeps things interesting through songs like “I’m A Lover
\nNot A Fighter,” “The Sun Is Shining” and “Hello Mary Lee,” all
\nmaking people like myself wonder why he’s only released three
\nalbums in the last 12 years. Lester could easily be one of the best
\nartists in the traditional blues style, though I still believe that<\/p>\n
Harp And Soul<\/i> (which I haven’t heard since leaving radio in
\n1991) didn’t do him justice.<\/p>\n
\nAll Over You<\/i> is one of the finest traditional blues albums
\nI’ve listened to in a long time, and it should cement Lester’s
\nimportance to the world of the blues. It’s well worth the time to
\nsearch this one out and listen to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7323],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-38820","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-lazy-lester","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38820"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38820"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}