Lazy Lester, harmonica player and master of Louisiana swamp blues
LAZY LESTER June 20, 1933 - Aug. 22, 2018
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, Calif. He was 85.
His death from cancer was announced by Alligator Records, which recorded him in the 1980s.
Mr. Lester’s recordings from the 1950s stand at the nexus of blues and rock-androll, 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 Mr. 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 NewOrleans, devoted to “the unsung heroes of American music,” is named for his 1965 harmonica-instrumental.
Mr. Lester was a mainstay of producer J. D. Miller’s Crowley, La., recording studio, where he often accompanied Mr. Miller’s cadre of blues singers — Lonesome Sundown, Lightnin’ Slim, and Lester’s cousin and fellow harmonica player, Slim Harpo.
Through Mr. Miller’s use of tape echo and primitive percussion — often played by Mr. Lester — the Miller studio crafted some of the era’s most atmospheric down-home blues records. Mr. 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 AmericanStatesman in 1999.
Mr. Miller, who leased the recordings to the Nashville-based Excello label, bestowed the colorful stage names on many of his performers. And though Mr. 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.
“His words flow into one another,” Peter Watrous wrote in a 1988 review for the New York Times, observing that even on uptempo songs, Lester “makes his melodies amble along as if they were enjoying a summer day.”
Leslie Carswell Johnson was born June 20, 1933, in Torras, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge. His parents were farmers. His early influences included DeFord Bailey, a black harmonica player who performed on the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s, and yodeling country singer Jimmie Rodgers.
As a teenager, he worked as a gas station attendant, woodcutter and grocery clerk and joined a local blues band, the Rhythm Rockers.
While riding the bus, he met singer-guitarist Lightnin’ Slim. Slim, frantically trying to replace a missing harmonica player for a recording date, gave him an on-the spot audition and brought him to the studio. The two recorded “Bad Luck and Trouble,” a Southern jukebox hit for Slim in 1956. Mr. Lester’s first vocal, “I’m Gonna Leave You Baby,” cameout later that year.
Mr. Lester claimed that he wrote or co-wrote most of the songs he recorded but had to give all the writing credit and publishing royalties to Mr. Miller, the studio owner.
“I had an idea that what we were doing was very special to me, but I didn’t have an idea it would be so big,” Mr. Lester told the San Antonio Express-News in 1999. “I didn’t get paid for a lot of what I did, but it was very educational. I got credit [as a performer] but no cash.”