Lovie Lee – Good Candy – Earwig Music Company CD 4928

It was in the mid-to-late 1980s, and I was at Mishawaka, IN’s short-lived-but-infamous Center Street Blues Café for a Saturday night show.  I was just a few minutes late to the club (which was not like me), and I found a seat with my fellow blues-loving friends.  To be honest, I don’t remember who the blues star headliner was that evening, but I recall being immediately drawn to the piano player.  Immaculately attired in a white suit and fashionably coordinated shirt, tie, and matching soft front-brimmed white hat, here was a man imparting incredible energy and blues sensibilities with each passing blues tune.  What really caught my eye was the ever-present huge smile he imparted over the proceedings, with teeth so big and a shade of white as to almost permit them to be the focal points of the stage’s activity.  Were they real, or were they fake?  It seems like such a silly thing to have focused upon, but they seemed to perfectly complement the sheer joy this mysterious blues piano player was enjoying as he presided over the occasion.

Here was to me a complete blues unknown, and there weren’t many of those to me by that point in my life and blues scholarship.  His piano playing rolled, tumbled, swayed, and swirled with authority, and his singing was declamatory and assured.  He certainly knew how to engage a crowd, as he approached each blues song with a joyous manner, constantly searching the crowd, making direct eye contact, and again, flashing that hypnotic, broad smile.  This was a bluesman who had many years of performing in the rear window, and fully understood the necessity to make each blues tune an experience.  There were many stages in this mystery bluesman’s past, but just who was he?

And then, it hit me when this mystery blues piano man referenced having played in Muddy Waters’ last band (a two- and one-half-year tenure).  I was in the great company of Lovie Lee.  While his role this evening was that of a sideman, it rapidly became apparent to me that Lee was so much more than the collective sum of his famed sideman roles.  Needless to say, I experienced the rest of the show from a much more appreciative framework when this realization hit me, somewhat to the detriment of the evening’s headlining artist, as I focused my attention on Lee, his many blues attributes, and again, that festive nature he exhibited on-stage.

This fine Earwig Music Company 1994 release traces its origins back to two separate self-produced sessions dating to 1984, and five years later in 1989, that Lee recorded at Odyssey Studios in Chicago.  The collections were celebrated at the time of their release, but as the case with the majority of self-generated efforts, no matter their fine quality, oftentimes they have a short shelf life, and recede into history, never to be heard again.

Accompanying the 1980s recordings self-produced by Lee are a number of 1992 songs, featuring many of the same sidemen featured on the earlier cuts (more on that later). 

Earwig Music Company had the sense upon hearing these sessions to realize that there was blues magic present.  The story is that Lee had the session tapes in his possession, and upon acquisition by Earwig Music Company, re-editing and re-mastering was required (as would be expected of any self-produced endeavor. 

Without going into too much detail about Lee’s relationship with Carey Bell here (that demands a longer profile at some point), Lee was considered by Bell as his adopted step-father and mentor into the tough Chicago blues world.  Theirs’s was a close relationship built upon years of personal and professional nurturing. 

Due to the close relationship with Bell, Lee was able to utilize Bell for harmonica duties, and his highly-talented and brilliant, mercurial son, Lurrie, to handle guitar responsibilities.  Carey’s harmonica swoops, fills, and solos present stunning sureness, while Lurrie’s guitar prowess is on full display with his always-imaginative inventiveness.  This is blues born of instinctive familiarity with one another, and its seamless splendor is magnificent.  It is the epitome Chicago blues.

One cut features Lurrie switching to rhythm responsibility while famed Chicago bluesman, Eddie Taylor, handles the lead guitar assignment.  Douglas Watson provides the bulk of the unobtrusive low-end bass lines, and both Chicago blues drumming masters, Odie Payne and Earl Howell, elicit from their drum kits the perfect timing requirements for each blues on display.

A Chicago bluesman who I have long crowed about, Vance Kelly, is also featured on a couple of cuts.  Plus, Carey Bell’s son, Steve Bell, exercises his considerable blues harmonica services on six selections.  Various other sidemen appear, as well, including saxophone and trumpet players.

Lee’s voice is the cementing conduit over these gatherings, as again, it is an instrument of considerable strength.  But, It is not overwrought and histrionic.  It is a full and imposing presence, assertively informing of the blues story-at-hand in each tune.  Lee’s piano meanders in its journeys, coming to the fore when compelled, whirling in the immediate foreground while he sings, and blending in flawlessly when the harmonica or guitar seize solos.  Lee’s vast musical background, principally his ensemble work with Waters, most definitely contributed to his great command of blues band dynamics.

You want Chicago blues of the utmost distinction?  This relatively obscure outing by Lovie Lee will surely satisfy your desire.  It may take a bit of effort to find it, but when you do, sit back and enjoy a splendid blues collaboration led by Lovie Lee, a Chicago bluesman who deserved so much more awareness than he received.  Thank goodness for this grand collection!  It comes with the topmost regard and recommendation!