Though we’d already heard him several times, most notably, providing lead vocals and some stinging guitar to complement that of his much younger counterpart on a rocking “Tina Marie” on Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s 2007 Grammy-nominated, Blues Music Award-winning (Best DVD) documentary and album 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads, and then on two tracks (the shuffling “How Many More Years” and a biting “Sick and Tired”) on Shepherd’s 2010 (also Grammy-nominated) Live! in Chicago album recorded during the 10 Days Out tour on which he and others like Hubert Sumlin, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, and Buddy Flett played with Shepherd and his band, it wasn’t until Bryan Lee‘s 2013 album Play One for Me (for which you can still read our review here) that the blind New Orleans bluesman first really caught our ear. That of course led us to check out the rest of Lee’s extensive catalogue, which was all we needed to make us a fan of Lee’s for life.
And we certainly weren’t the only ones impressed by him: Muddy Waters once told Lee that, if he kept with his music, Lee would be a living legend, while Buddy Guy remarked to Lee at one point that Guy, B.B. King and Lee were the only guys playing “real” blues anymore.
Sadly, Lee–who some may have known as the “Braille Blues Daddy” of Bourbon Street–died in 2020, his last album having been the 2018 blues-gospel album Sanctuary, which we never got the chance to review here but can attest was a good one just like everything that came before it. We really thought Sanctuary and Play One for Me would be the last recordings we’d hear from Lee, until a recent post on Lee’s wife Bethany’s Facebook page (reposted on a Bryan Lee site lovingly maintained by Lee’s friends) revealed that this new CD would be available for purchase at the annual Bryan Lee Memorial Blues Festival that takes place each July in Lee’s birthplace of Two Rivers, Wisconsin (we haven’t yet been able to make it to the festival, but we will one of these years!)
Lee certainly was no stranger to the music of the Four Kings of the Blues (most of course are familiar with the Three Kings of Albert, B.B., and Freddie, with Lee also including Earl in his tribute in honor of the many years that Lee spent in Earl’s hometown of New Orleans), having recorded such tracks as B.B.’s “Rock Me Baby” and “Beautician Blues”, Albert’s “I’ll Play the Blues for You”, “Cross Cut Saw” and “Let’s Have a Natural Ball”, Freddie’s “It’s Too Bad (Things are Going So Tough)”, “Going Down” and “Palace of the King”, and Earl’s “Three Can Play the Game” throughout his career, with his always soulful, Curtis Salgado-like vocals and emotive playing on guitar. But Ted Fordney, who plays bass on Lee’s Homage to 4 Kings and is heavily involved in helping to keep Bryan’s memory alive through both the aforementioned Facebook page and memorial festival, tells us that Lee was very focused on this tribute to the masters who most inspired him, with everything except backing vocals and horns having been recorded at the time of Lee’s 2020 passing.
The album includes covers of at least three of each of the Kings’ songs (with one additional of Freddie’s) plus two closing songs from Lee from a much earlier recording session, as you’ll notice from Lee’s more youthful voice and the dance craze early rock (“Watusi Lucy”) and instrumental R&B (“Chitlins”) sounds, respectively, of the tracks. Research on these last tracks reveal that they were recorded by Lee and his band The Embers back in 1965 and previously only available as a 45 rpm recording, most likely limited to a test pressing. So, although their inclusion here might seem somewhat odd, tacked on to an otherwise dedicated tribute to the Kings, we have to say that we’d much rather have them here than not widely available at all, particularly if this could be the last recording we ever hear from the extremely talented and shamefully underrecognized Lee.
Fordney also shared that Lee wanted to be very true to the original versions of the tribute songs, which, for Fordney, “made it fun using both standup and electric bass.” And that kind of approach, of course, makes it a lot of fun for us as well, from the swinging “Let’s Have a Natural Ball” that opens the album all the way through to the slow, soulful “Hummingbird” (B.B.) that closes out the tribute portion of the collection.
Lee’s voice is a tad wearier at times than we’ve heard before, but he still sounds remarkably good generally, and particularly for a year prior to his passing. It’s great to be able to hear him and his guitar again, and his takes on these blues classics, with Lee and his band–which here includes Chicago guitarist Billy Flynn–definitely having “some k’thing goin’ on” throughout the project, some of our favorite tracks off which include the heartful “Same Old Blues” (Freddie) and organ-soaked “Buzz Me” (B.B.) that follows, on both of which Lee sounds a bit like fellow longtime New Orleans soulman Luther Kent; a gritty, grooving “Me and My Guitar” (Freddie); a tender “Night Life” (B.B.) with some particularly impassioned vocals from Lee and a terrific instrumental intro spotlighting Flynn; the steady-rolling “You Sure Drive a Hard Bargain” (Albert); and a swaying, horns-infused “Those Lonely Lonely Nights” (Earl).
Funky takes on Freddie’s “My Credit Didn’t Go Through” and “Texas Flyer” and Earl’s “Trick Bag” round out the album, along with a shuffling “Love Rent” (Earl) and greasy “Born Under a Bad Sign” (Albert).
Whether this is your first or umpteenth exposure to Lee, Homage to 4 Kings is one you’ll certainly enjoy: a terrific tribute to four true masters of the blues by another who not only greatly admired each of them, but could easily be said–by fans and fellow bluesmen including Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy alike–to have stood among them.