Lee Allen was a huge part of the New Orleans sound during the R&B era and backed up an absurd amount of new Orleans big names on his saxophone, and this is a sample of his instrumental outing. You can read about it all down there on the back cover or anywhere really, I just said that in case blog links wanted a blurb of this post.
I was looking for this for a while, mainly because I loved my 45 of Cat Walk/Creole Alley and had to find the LP it was put out on. Not to mention the outrageous cover, with a tasseled stripper clearly pasted on to make this look CRAZIER. As I expected, this isn't a proper full-length and was made well after the fact, what I didn't really realize after when I bought it was that almost all of these songs were on his main LP "Walkin' With Mr. Lee". So what's the point? Cat Walk/Creole Alley are in my opinion his best two songs, it has a CRAZY cover, and a much fatter (and in this case scratchier) recording than my CD copy of Walkin' With Mr. Lee, which seems to have all the fun sucked out of it. And I suppose if I post it up here, the rest of y'all won't drop $40 on this just to hear the difference. Purchasing music is good, go buy the actually available Walking With Mr Lee. In fact, do it tomorrow on Record Store Day.
If you've never heard any of this instrumental stuff, I'll give you a warning. Some of this can get very laid-back. If you want some jumpers, just follow the track titles. If it sounds jumpin' it probably is. When he's good though, I think he's one of the great examples of how the saxophone was once king in Rock & Roll, a fact now forgotten.
1 comment:
I will definitly look into listening to Lee Allen. I think this is a really cool idea for a blog by the way, I'll have to look back often.
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