Lazy Lester (Leslie Johnson) began recording for Miller and Excello in 1956. In addition to his solo sides, Lester was the backbone of the Crowley studio band. Primarily a harmonica player, he could also be counted on to provide guitar or extremely inventive percussion. In the liner notes to his AVI compilation disc I Hear You Knockin’!: The Excello Singles , Lester recalled using drumsticks or a rolled-up newspaper on cardboard boxes: “You could pack some of ’em more than other ones [to] make a different sound. ... It would pick up from the vocal mic. You get yourself a good after-beat while listening to the singer.”

The Crowley house band also included pianist Katie Webster, the Swamp Boogie Queen from Houston, Texas, and Warren Storm, a drummer from Abbeville, Lousiana, who began playing professionally at the age of 12. Webster was in demand at both Excello and Goldband in Lake Charles, Lousiana—she appeared on Phil Phillips’ 1957 smash “Sea of Love,” produced by Goldband owner Eddie Shuler—until Otis Redding asked her to join his touring band in 1964. Storm was a veteran of Cajun and country bands when he released his solo debut, “Prisoner’s Song,” on Nasco, a subsidiary of Excello’s sister label Nashboro. Recorded in Crowley in 1958, “Prisoner’s Song” was one of only two Nasco singles to break into the national charts. (The other, “Oh Julie” by the Crescendos, peaked at No. 5 earlier that year.)

Lazy Lester: “I Hear You Knockin'”
Recorded 1960, Crowley, Louisiana
"[Producer] Jim Miller be saying... no, he's not going to be Leslie Johnson on a record. He's got to be Lazy Lester because he's too slow. He just move around like a snail. I said: anything worth doing is worth taking your time. So, he called me Lazy Lester and I left it like that. I didn't have the rejections of it. I never say anything against it, so there it is." -- Lazy Lester (Quote courtesy of Ben Manilla Productions).

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