Lazy Lester, harmonica player, dies at 85

Lazy Lester, a Louisiana-born singer and harmonica player whose rough and rollicking style of swamp blues influenced musicians on both sides of the Atlantic, died Aug. 22 at his home in Paradise, California. He was 85.

His death from cancer was announced by Alligator Records, which recorded him in the 1980s.

Lester’s recordings from the 1950s stand at the nexus of blues and rock-and-roll, with a tinge of Cajun and country music thrown into the mix. He sang with a bayou twang while his amped-up harmonica seemed to be charging out in front of a strident, repetitive electric guitar.

Though Lester’s singles were initially sold only in the South, they were often performed by others and, with time, became staples of barroom blues and rock bands. Freddy Fender took Lester’s “Sugar Coated Love” (1958) to the country charts in 1977, and British rockers the Kinks had covered the rockabilly-flavored “I’m a Lover, Not a Fighter” (1958) on their first 1964 album. The Ponderosa Stomp, a biennial music festival in New Orleans, devoted to “the unsung heroes of American music,” is named for his 1965 harmonica instrumental.

Lester was a mainstay of producer J.D. Miller’s Crowley, Louisiana, recording studio, where he often accompanied Miller’s cadre of blues singers – Lonesome Sundown, Lightnin’ Slim, and Lester’s cousin and fellow harmonica player, Slim Harpo.

Through Miller’s use of tape echo and primitive percussion – often played by Lester – the Miller studio crafted some of the era’s most atmospheric down-home blues records. Lester played woodblock on Slim Harpo’s 1966 “Shake Your Hips,” and on other recordings he played harmonica or rhythm guitar. But he also drummed on cardboard boxes and beat rolled-up newspapers against the studio walls in place of snare drums.

“I’d just grab whatever was in the studio and try to get a groove going,” he told the Austin American-Statesman in 1999.

Miller, who leased the recordings to the Nashville-based Excello label, bestowed the colorful stage names on many of his performers. And though Lester, born Leslie Johnson, protested in one song, “they call me Lazy - goodness knows I’m only tired,” the appellation fit his relaxed and behind-the-beat singing style perfectly.