Archive Review: Bryan Lee's Play One For Me (2013)

For better than two decades, veteran New Orleans bluesman Bryan Lee has recorded for Canada's Justin Time Records, forging a quiet reputation a soulful vocalist, skilled songwriter, and vastly underrated guitarist. Beloved by fellow string-benders (just ask Kenny Wayne Shepherd, among others), that fact that Lee hasn't broken through to a larger blues audience is one of the great oversights of our time. With Play One For Me, the guitarist's Severn Records debut, Lee has a puncher's chance with the larger label at reaching the audience his talent deserves. 

It's no surprise that, in his adopted hometown, the blind bluesman is a musical institution on par with the Neville family, Dr. John, or the great Allen Toussaint. Play One For Me backs up his reputation with a phenomenal mix of Lee-penned originals and choice cover tunes that all showcase his hearty vocals and elegant guitarplay. Fronting a band that includes Fabulous Thunderbirds frontman Kim Wilson on harp and rhythm guitarist Johnny Moeller holding down the back end, Lee bites into Freddie King's "It's Too Bad (Things Are Going So Tough)" like a hungry man at a buffet, widely choosing to jazz up the original's already classy guitar line with a muted sort of grace as Kevin Anker's keys dance in the background. Howlin' Wolf's classic Willie Dixon-penned "Evil Is Going On" is given a full-bore Bourbon Street treatment with a brassy arrangement, a big beat, raging piano-play, and Lee's downright nasty guitar licks.  

Lee's original material is equally entertaining, the guitarist's "Poison" channeling a 1920s-era Delta-bred malevolence with its studio-altered vocals, ambling rhythms, and delightfully greasy fretwork. "Let Me Love You Tonight" rides an entirely different (soul) train, sounding like a contemporary take on the classic Stax Records sound with pleading vocals, Cropperesque guitar, and a rambunctious horn section while "Sixty-Eight Years Young" definitely brings the funk, a sly groove paired with a bit of Southern-fried chicken-pickin' and jaunty, tongue-in-cheek lyrics. Some 20 years and a dozen albums into his career and Bryan Lee still manages to surprise, Play One For Me an entertaining and inspired collection with no little heart and soul. Grade: A (Severn Records, released September 17th, 2013)