James Winfield has spent his life around New Orleans R&B. He’s hung out the Dew Drop Inn. He worked alongside Lee Dorsey at Dorsey’s body shop. He had one single in the late 1960s for the obscure New Orleans Trend label. When that failed to make noise, he gave up music until he learned bass guitar after his 50th birthday. Winfield’s new record, Lonely, Lonely Nights, shows a confidence and ease with New Orleans music. He has a warm voice with the slight hint of a rasp or falsetto when he wants it. His song selection runs the gamut from Earl King’s “Lonely Lonely Nights” to Chris Kenner’s “Sick and Tired,” to the ending “Precious Lord.” However, there is little to distinguish this studio effort. The arrangements are standard. The sound of the recording is neither particularly modern nor J&M Studios vintage. The listener is left wishing that Winfield would show more emotion such as the catch in his voice in “Lonely Lonely Nights” or the soft yelp during “The Things I Used to Do.” The band also suffers from the same malady by not reaching for something a little more intense or beyond the relative, not-bad-but-not-particularly-inspiring level of playing that is exhibited here. This is a good record in a style that few people in or out of New Orleans are pursuing, but neither the band nor Winfield live up to the level of company Winfield has kept, nor the praise that OffBeat’s Jeff Hannusch’s informative liner notes suggest it merits.