In 1982, Charly Records released one of the all-time best collections of New Orleans soul and R&B material aptly titled Sehorn’s Soul Farm.

The anthology included tracks by Aaron Neville, Benny Spellman, Earl King and Ernie K-Doe among others, but it was the otherwise obscure Warren Lee who stole their thunder with the storming “Star Revue,” and the breathtakingly funky “Climb the Ladder.”

Warren Lee, whose full name is Warren Lee Taylor, garnered a name check in John Broven’s Walkin’ To New Orleans, but most of his contemporaries barely remembered him. Over the years I’d assembled a small cache of his singles, which added luster to his legend, but even after spending hours of detective work—combing newspaper obits, city directories, discographies, library files and Social Security records—I couldn’t find his trail.

Finally, with the aid of producer Marshall Sehorn and BMI, I was recently able to track down a West Bank address on the man. Upon reaching him via telephone, admitting my admiration for his recordings, and desire to interview him, Taylor said that not only would he be happy to tell his story, but he wanted to come over to my house the next day to tell it! Sure enough, the next afternoon a compact, gregarious gentleman in his early 60s arrived to tell the Warren Lee Taylor story.

Warren Lee Taylor was born May 11, 1938 at Vacherie, Louisiana, and grew up on the Laura Plantation. At the age of 9, Taylor moved to New Orleans with his family and they lived in the Uptown section of the city. “I loved the strings and I begged my daddy to buy me a guitar when I was 12,” recalled Taylor. “When I was a little boy I used to watch a man called Guitar Slim. I understudied this man. Everywhere he went I followed him. He was the first man I ever saw that played the guitar with his teeth. I practiced doing that until I chipped most of mine. I wanted to be just like him. Guitar Slim stayed at the Dew Drop and I’d be running around in there every day with tennis shoes on chasing after him.”

Other guitarists Taylor befriended at the Dew Drop Inn included Walter “Papoose” Nelson, Roy Montrell, Irving Bannister, Smiley Lewis and Earl King. “Earl and I were partners in mischief,” laughed Taylor. “One night we poked a hole in the sheetrock with a pencil outside of Patsy’s [Patsy Valdalia, the transvestite emcee at the Dew Drop] dressing room so we could peak in and see what was going on in there. Oh man, it was a crime. Did we see some stuff!

“I remember when Earl came out with ‘Mother’s Love’ and it sounded just like Guitar Slim. People started saying Earl was going to take Guitar Slim’s place. Earl played the Dew Drop one night [shortly after the record came out] and the place was packed. Meantime, Slim was in Flint-Goodrich hospital down the street [he was involved in a car wreck] and he shows up that night in a hospital gown. Slim comes up to the bandstand and tells Earl, ‘You can’t do that song. It’s too close to my style.’ Earl thought Slim was gonna beat the hell out of him. But Earl has paid his dues and came up with his own style. Earl has wrote some beautiful songs and he’s a great entertainer. I really admire that guy.”

A fabulous showman (“If you missed my show you only lived half a lifetime”), Taylor and his combo played regularly at the Dew Drop, Jessie’s in Marrero, the Sugar Bowl in Thibodeaux, and he was booked into other surrounding towns by Percy Stovall along with Chris Kenner, Joe Tex and Ernie K-Doe. “One night we had a job at James’ Bar in Marrero with K-Doe in 1959,” said Taylor. “I got there and the owner, James, started wondering where K-Doe was. We called K-Doe’s house and got Shirley [K-Doe’s first wife]. She yells, ‘K-Doe, it’s James. He wants to know why you’re not there.’ Well, K-Doe didn’t have the damn bus fare. K-Doe lived on Second Street. The New Orleans bus was seven cents, catch the Jackson Avenue Ferry which was free, get on the Gretna bus—which wasn’t but a dime—and you’d be at the joint. K-Doe didn’t even have 20 cents to make the gig.”

Taylor caught his first break in 1961 when Eddie Bo—who was recording and scouting talent for Joe Ruffino’s Ric and Ron label—approached him at the Dew Drop. “Eddie said, ‘Lee, you’re good enough to go on a record.’ I told him, ‘I’ve been looking to make a record.’ He asked me if I had any original material and I said, ‘Sure.’ We went to Cosimo’s on a Monday and the following Saturday, ‘Unemployed’ was out. It was that fast. ‘Unemployed’ was comical—the lyrics went:

‘I was out in the street walking, the cops picked me up, Took me downtown and charged me with a whole lot of stuff. I called my wife to tell her I was in jail, Please she send my mother-in-law to stand my bail. I’m ashamed of what she said, The police got you now they ought to bust your head.’”

The flip of “Unemployed “ was “The Un-Huh,” the first of a series of catchy dance records Taylor recorded. The Ron single did well around New Orleans and in 1962 Lee was back in the studio. In the meantime, Ruffino had set up Soundex as a subsidiary label and transferred Taylor’s recordings to it. “That’s when Eddie Bo, Mac Rebennack and myself came up with the answer to ‘Anna,’” said Taylor. “His [Arthur Alexander] record was ‘Anna (Go With Him),’ mine was ‘Anna (Stay With Me).’ It did pretty good around here and I started working better jobs and making more money.’ After that my contract was up. [Ruffino died in 1962 not long after the Soundex release and his labels folded.] Then I went to Wardell Quezergue’s new label NOLA. They were promising big things. I did ‘A Letter To Santa’ and ‘Anna (We’re Gonna Get Married).’ They did okay around here, but they didn’t have national distribution so not much happened.”

Using his given name on his NOLA releases, Taylor also accounted for the sensational “Every Hour, Every Day” and the “Key To Your Door,” one of the toughest blues sides to come out of New Orleans in the 1960s. After NOLA, Taylor cut “Geraldine” and “London Bridge” for local disc jockeys Herb Holiday and David Nemore who leased both sides to Floyd Soileau at Jin Records.

In 1965, Taylor was approached by producer Allen Toussaint, who along with his new partner Marshall Sehorn, was beginning to release New Orleans singles fast and furiously. “I’d been knowing Allen from the Dew Drop,” said Taylor. “Some nights he’d get up and jam with my band and he’d say, ‘Lee, you’re funky man.’ One night after a show we sat down and he asked me what was happening. I wasn’t recording at the time and I told him I wanted to get something out. He said, ‘You ever thought of trying me?’ I knew he had some records out on Lee Dorsey, but I didn’t know he was searching for other artists. Allen said, ‘If you come up with something good, bring it to me and I’ll go with it.’

“Three months later I was fooling around with my tape recorder at home and I came up with ‘Star Revue.’ I took it to Allen and we rehearsed at his house on Earhart Boulevard. He said, ‘Lee, that’s what I’m looking for.’ Allen came up with a hip piano arrangement and I put all the stars’ names in the song. James Brown, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Irma Thomas and me—I was the Mighty King Lee [laughs].

“When that record came out [on DeeSu], as soon as the needle hit it—BAM—that sucker smoked. I never understood—still can’t—why that record didn’t hit. The black stations here played it but it didn’t break out of New Orleans. But every time I played ‘Star Revue’ on the bandstand the house would go wild. Even Allen said, ‘Lee, I don’t understand it. That record’s got everything. A great arrangement, great lyrics and you sang great.’”

Taylor followed with another infectious dance groove, “Climb the Ladder” (“Make like a fireman when a house is burning down”) but outside of a few plays on WBOK, WNNR and WYLD, it strangely didn’t even grab New Orleans’ attention. “It’s not always what’s on a record that makes it a hit,” reflected Taylor. “It’s what you got behind a record. You had to have money to get records played then. I didn’t have the connections and wasn’t the kind of guy to sniff a deejay’s behind to get my records played.”

Taylor kept plugging though and accounted for other great DeeSu sides like “Lady,” “Mama Said We Can’t Get Married” and “Underdog Backstreet.” “‘Underdog Backstreet’ did great here,” said Taylor. “Shelly Pope [a WNNR deejay] played it four times every hour. Finally I got so embarrassed I asked him not to play it so much.”

By the early 1970s, New Orleans labels were becoming hard pressed to keep up with the demands local radio stations wee placing on them. As a result many labels—including Deesu—began leasing material to national labels with deeper pockets. As a result, Taylor wound up on the Philadelphia-based Wand label with another great dance record produced by Toussaint. “‘Funky Belly’ came out but the radio stations wouldn’t play it,” claimed Taylor. “They thought it was too vulgar. Larry McKinley at WYLD said, ‘You’re talking about something under people’s clothes. We can’t play that.’ But two months later, Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson came out with ‘Ain’t It A Bitch’ and it was a smash. Larry sat on that sucker.”

In the early 1970s, Toussaint and Sehorn opened SeaSaint Studio. In order to make it a success, they began concentrating on attracting business from national labels and for the most part discontinued putting out singles aimed at the local market. As a result, Taylor and several other New Orleans artists were cut loose. In 1974, Taylor cut “Direct From the Ghetto” and “So Suddenly” for Choctaw, a label connected with Cosimo Matassa. It was another solid release but the advent of disco kept it off the airwaves and on the shelves. Although Taylor primarily supported his family with his earnings from repairing air conditioners, he kept his band, Past, Present and Future, busy until 1977 when he was felled by a stroke. “I came home from a job in Vacherie, went to bed, woke up the next morning and nearly dropped dead,” said Taylor. “I didn’t remember a thing from April 20 to August 26 because I was in a coma. I stayed in wheelchair over a year. An old man came to see me, I called him my ‘Gospel Pa.’ He said, ‘Lee, why can’t you move your hand?’ I told him, ‘I had a stroke.’ Then he asked me, ‘Did you ask Jesus to move it?’ I had to say, ‘No.’ Then he said, ‘Think it and say it.’ I did and it worked. Eventually I got out of the wheelchair and taught myself to walk again. I tried playing again but they wouldn’t hire me at the World’s Fair [1984] because I had a limp. I put music down after that but I’ve no regrets. My wife and I have been married 41 years and we raised six great kids. I think that’s more important than having a hit record.”