Consumer Guide Album

Lee Dorsey: Yes We Can [Polydor, 1970]
On what is supposed to be a (if not the) classic New Orleans rock and roll album, Allen Toussaint's .500 songwriting is a little disappointing--two of the twelve cuts are self-proclaimed filler, another is Joe South's "Games People Play," another a reprise. It's really only Ziggy Modeliste's drumming that keeps side two going. But Dorsey's congenial, liquid soul-crooning style defines such great Toussaint inventions as "Riverboat," "Occapella," "Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley," and "O Me-O, My-O." Near-classic, say. A−