Shirley & Lee

Contains tracks recorded for the Aladdin label from 1952 to 1959.
Personnel includes: Shirley & Lee; Justin Adams (guitar); Alvin "Red" Tyler, Lee Allen (saxophone); Earl Palmer (drums).
Includes liner notes by Jeff Hannusch.
The track listing of this 30-song disc is based on the 1973 double-LP Shirley & Lee compilation in United Artists' Legendary Masters series, with "I Feel Good" substituted for "Do You Mean to Hurt Me So." Spanning their 1952-59 work for Aladdin, it's comprehensive enough to serve as a best-of, particularly as it included the four songs that are by far their most famous cuts: "Let the Good Times Roll," "I'm Gone," "I Feel Good," and "Feel So Good." As the American best-of CD compilation Legendary Masters (issued first on EMI America, then on Collectables) has only 20 numbers, one might presume that this 30-track anthology has the edge. It doesn't make the Legendary Masters CD redundant, though, as Legendary Masters has seven songs that don't appear here. At any rate, Let the Good Times Roll will almost certainly be a sufficient overview of the duo's prime output for those who haven't picked up a Shirley & Lee greatest hits anthology yet. Truth to tell, for most listeners 30 Shirley & Lee songs is more than enough, as the accomplished, good-timey New Orleans R&B/rock groove gets pretty similar-sounding over the course of an hour-plus. One thing you could note is how the contrasting male-female duet style of Shirley & Lee was influential on early ska and reggae productions from Jamaica; listen to "Marry Me" for one instance in which Shirley & Lee themselves played calypso/Caribbean rhythms. It's also interesting to note that almost all of the material on this disc was self-penned, an impressive feat for teenage R&B singers of the '50s. ~ Richie Unterberger