When Albert Lee takes the stage with his buddy and former bandleader Eric Clapton at the 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival, he’ll be celebrating his 50th year as a professional guitarist. Like the warp-speed solos he spins so effortlessly, Lee’s musical odyssey has an unusually long arc. In addition to being a founding member of the pioneering late ´60s countryrock band, Head Hands & Feet, Lee backed Clapton for five years in the late ’70s, and has toured and recorded with the Everly Brothers, Emmylou Harris, the Crickets, and Joe Cocker. He’s also a veteran of countless sessions in London, Nashville, and Los Angeles.
As a young man in his native England, Lee was inspired by Jimmy Bryant, Cliff Gallup, Scotty Moore, and James Burton to forge his own white-knuckle picking style from elements of hot-rod country and jump-jivin’ rockabilly. Voted „Best Country Guitarist“ five times in the GP Readers’ Choice Awards, Lee continues to thrill festival crowds in the U.K. and across Europe with his band, Hogan’s Heroes, and also plays in Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings.
Lee’s peers are among his most ardent fans. In the introduction to Country Boy: A Biography of Albert Lee, by Derek Watts, Clapton writes, „He is a great, great player, fluid, lyrical, and free – like a jazz musician, but with country scales; like Django, but with a bluegrass past.“ And Emmylou Harris once said, „When St. Peter asks me to chronicle my time down here on earth, I’ll be able to say, with pride if that’s allowed, that for a while, I played rhythm guitar in a band with Albert Lee.“
Few guitarists can boast a half-century of musical activity, much less burn as Lee does in Live at Stazione Birra: Rome, a concert DVD he taped with Hogan’s Heroes. At 67, Lee’s hair is now white, but he still plays with the adrenalin-fueled passion of a teenager. (www.guitarplayer.com, 2014)