A & E

It happens almost every time The Lee Boys perform at a festival. People who have never heard the band play will end up not only entertained, but out of their seats and dancing.

Alvin Lee says he's not surprised so many people are moved to, well, move.

"I think it's just because of where we come from, which is the church, the gospel and the whole spiritual element of it," says guitarist Lee, who performs Friday with the band at the South Park Amphitheatre as part of the Allegheny County Summer Music Festival. "It's uplifting, it's feel-good music, and I think the meaning behind the music has a lot to do with the way people feel when they hear it. That's our goal; we're not verbally preaching, but we're musically preaching."

Lee is quick to add that most people aren't even aware of the source of the music's power. Most audiences respond to the intensity and energy that emanates from Lee Boys' performances, as on their forthcoming album, "Live at Telluride."

And few people realize the steel guitar that is at the center of the band's music comes from a tradition that dates back 70 years. In the 1930s, brothers Willie and Troman Eason introduced the Hawaiian steel guitar into House of God worship services in Jacksonville, Fla. The congregation embraced the sound, and from there other men -- notably Calvin Cooke, Aubrey Ghent and Chuck Campbell -- became the Les Pauls and Chuck Berrys of the sacred steel sound.

Outside the church, however, few had any idea such a joyful noise was being made.

"It's a style of music that's been kept a secret for so long," says Lee, who performs with two of his brothers and three nephews in the group. "Even today, the church that we came from, a lot of the older people think it should be kept within four walls. But this music can't be denied."

The Lee Boys mix rock, gospel, soul, R&B and jazz; a template, perhaps, would be the way Earth, Wind & Fire fuses similar genres. What sets the Lee Boys apart is the sacred steel. With Roosevelt Collier, Lee's 22-year-old nephew playing the instrument, the music takes on a remarkable, keening quality, alternatively plaintive and enthralling.

"We call it the closest voice to heaven, once it starts wailing up high," Lee says. "I think that's what the element was when it was more (concentrated) in the churches. In the church, when someone sings a praise song to the congregation, the steel just kind of takes over and takes it to a higher element of worship and praise."

In the first part of this decade, Robert Randolph emerged as a successor to Cooke, Ghent and Campbell. The Lee Boys, who have been performing since the mid-1990s, are now slowly getting noticed. The band was started by the late Glenn Lee, Alvin's brother. The Lee Boys currently features Alvin Lee's siblings, vocalists Keith and Derrick Lee; Alvin Cordy Jr. on bass; drummer Earl Walker and Collier.

Lee recalls when he and Glenn were considered the young rebels in the family, persuading their father to allow them to play secular songs by Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley at church services in Perrine, Fla.

Now Cordy, Walker and Roosevelt are the ones who are encouraging their uncles. Especially in the wake of the deaths of his father and Glenn Lee, both in 2000, the young trio has had a galvanizing effect on the music.

"It's funny, they're doing what we used to do," he says. "That's kind of what inspired me take the music out (on the road). I knew that Roosevelt was a gifted player, both him and little Alvin. They can take what we did to another level, and they've made things a little easier for me."

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