hypersongs

Lee Fields & The Expressions

The soul singer Lee Fields, a North Carolina native known as Little JB, with a studio band of Daptone-family musicians assembled around 2005, who made My World (2009) and the single "Honey Dove".

Lee Fields before the Expressions

Elmer Lee Fields was born in Wilson, North Carolina on April 26, 1950, and grew up and was based in Plainfield, New Jersey. He is nicknamed Little JB for his resemblance in style to James Brown. His first single, "Bewildered" backed with "Tell Her I Love Her", appeared on Bedford in 1969, followed by singles on London Records in 1973, SoundPlus in 1975 and Angle 3 in the late 1970s, and the album Let's Talk It Over in 1979. In the 1980s, as disco displaced soul, he moved into real estate in Newark. In the 1990s he worked the Southern soul-blues circuit, with Coming to Tear the Roof Down (1995) and Dreaming Big Time (1996) on Ace, and in 1996 signed with Desco, run by Gabriel Roth and Phillip Lehman. His album Problems followed in 2002, on Soul Fire or Truth and Soul according to which part of Wikipedia you read.

PopMatters says the label owners Jeff Silverman and Leon Michels of Truth and Soul assembled the Expressions about four years before July 2009 to record a single with Fields. Treble describes them as studio musicians who had played as the Dap-Kings with Sharon Jones and had contributed to Amy Winehouse's Back to Black. The band on the early records included Thomas Brenneck and Homer Steinweiss.

The albums

My World (Truth & Soul, 2009) was the first record credited to Lee Fields & The Expressions, followed by Faithful Man (March 2012), Emma Jean (2014), Special Night (2017) and It Rains Love (April 2019), all on Big Crown from 2014, and Sentimental Fool (2022), his full-length debut for Daptone. The credit on that last record includes Brenneck on guitar, Benny Trokan on bass, Brian Wolfe on drums, Victor Axelrod and Jimmy Hill on keys, Neal Sugarman and Ian Hendrickson-Smith on saxophones and Dave Guy on trumpet; that is a record credit, not a formal Expressions roster. His songs have been placed in Atlanta, Suits, Magic Mike XXL and a Super Bowl LVII ad, and a documentary, Lee Fields: Faithful Man, was set for release in February 2024. In 2025 he was a special guest on the Alabama Shakes reunion tour.

A 2017 review described the live band as a six-piece from Greenpoint, Brooklyn in matching paisley tuxedo jackets, with Fields introduced as The Soul of Soul Singers. Setlist.fm holds 323 setlists. Houston Press wrote that at 61 he could challenge Percy Sledge and Otis Redding in their prime.

Albums

  • My World 2009 · Truth & Soul

    The first record credited to the Expressions: eleven tracks, three of them instrumentals, with a cover of the Supremes' "My World Is Empty Without You".

Songs

  • Honey Dove My World · 2009

    A slow soul song that began as the B-side of the first Expressions single and became a set closer.

Sources

  1. Lee Fields, Wikipedia
  2. Lee Fields and the Expressions, My World, PopMatters (2009-07-22)
  3. Lee Fields and the Expressions, My World, Treble (2009-07-21)
  4. Lee Fields and the Expressions, Faithful Man, PopMatters (2012-03-18)