Lee Dorsey


Lee Dorsey

One of the problems with an exercise like this one, where you're looking for material for the page that sits on top of the discography, is finding the material without going to the ubiquitous on-line sources. You do that, of course, and what follows here reflects the contents of the Wikipedia entry and the All Music Guide . The latter suggests Irving Lee Dorsey (24 December 1924 – 2 December 1986) was "Second only to Fats Domino as an exemplar of New Orleans R&B."

That's a big call, and would undoubtedly have been disputed by the likes of Ernie K-Doe, who wasn't exactly backward in coming forward to promote his claims to fame. The K-Doe biography (Ben Sandmel's Ernie K-Doe: The R&B Emperor of New Orleans) suggests a vast surge of creativity and commercial success energised the Crescent City from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, an era dubbed the golden age of New Orleans rhythm and blues. Sandmel reels off an impressive list of names from Fats Domino and Professor Longhair through to the Neville Brothers. The latter mightn't have been part of the golden age under that name but were there on the ground when the actual musical history was being made. Out of the listing, on the basis of Ya Ya, Ride Your Pony, Working in the Coal Mine, Get Out Of My Life, Woman and Holy Cow you'd probably concede (K-Doe notwithstanding) the comment is close to the money.

On the other hand, a fairly detailed swing through the relevant titles on my bookshelves produced references to the man who recorded those five titles (usually mentioning one or two) and not much more. Charlie Gillett's magisterial The Sound of the City suggests  there were probably better singers in the city than Lee Dorsey, but his rough and ready but always friendly tone seemed best suited to [producer, Allen] Toussaint's songs.  Again, a fairly accurate statement, IMHO, but as is so often the case with New Orleans artists of the era, you're left wanting more.

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© Ian Hughes 2012