Eighty-one-year-old Lazy Lester is a blues shaman — a legend of the genre. Marquise Knox, 23, performs the blues with a spirit and understanding well beyond his age. These two titans of vocals, guitar and harmonica have played dozens of gigs and sound like they've been partners for a generation.

 

Both men are doing what they love to do on this record, recorded during the 2013 Blues Masters at the Crossroads concert weekend at Blue Heaven Studios in Salina, Kansas. One of the tracks, "Salina Jail House Blues" resulted from a burst of wry inspiration after a long night spent by Marquise in authorities' custody for an outstanding warrant for an unpaid traffic citation on a previous Blues Masters engagement.

 

Marquise sings with a far too world-weary voice for such a young talent. Lester's long fingers work the guitar and his eyes close above a satisfied smile. The sound is mesmerizing.

 

Marquise, a native of St. Louis, was born into a family with deep roots in the tradition of the blues, learning the guitar from his grandmother, Lillie, a former sharecropper whose ancestors were slaves, as well as his Uncle Clifford. He studied with blues legend Henry James Townsend, and has performed with some of the genre's brightest stars: B.B. King, Pinetop Perkins, David "Honeyboy" Edwards and Hubert Sumlin, to name a few. To say that he and Lester, one of the key creators of the south Louisiana swamp blues in the 1950s, bridge the generations of blues performers eloquently, with a reverence for tradition, is undeniably true.