Lee Wiley

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
78s by Lee Wiley with Jess Stacy: "Woman Alone with the Blues" ( Robison )

Lee Wiley (born October 9, 1908 in Fort Gibson , Oklahoma , † December 11, 1975 in New York City ) was an American jazz singer .

Live and act

After studying briefly in Tulsa , Lee Wiley went to New York to try a career as a singer. She began this in the Leo Reisman Band in the Central Park Casino in New York, with whom she also performed in Chicago. The singing style of her early years was influenced by Mildred Bailey and Ethel Waters . Her first hit with the Reisman band was Vincent Youman's track " Time on my Hands " . In 1933 she left Reisman's band, worked with Paul Whiteman and later with the Casa Loma Orchestra , with which she recorded "A Hundred Years from Today" , as well as the Dorsey Brothers and Johnny Green . She also worked closely with the composer Victor Young (with whom she was also friends), creating various titles for which Lee Wiley wrote the lyrics, such as the song "Got The South In My Soul" or "Anytime, Anyday, Anywhere " ; the latter became a rhythm and blues hit in the 1950s. Wiley was also a star guest in Paul Whiteman's orchestra and appeared on the cover of radio magazines.

78s by Lee Wiley with the Eddie Condon Quintet

After a long absence from the music scene due to an illness - tuberculosis was suspected - Lee Wiley made a comeback in 1939. She belonged to the circle of musicians around Eddie Condon and recorded a 78 album set with eight Gershwin songs for the small record label "Liberty Music Shops". The set was a sales hit and was then continued with other album sets based on the music of Cole Porter (1940), Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart (1940 and 1954), Harold Arlen (1943) and Vincent Youmans and Irving Berlin (1951) were dedicated. The singer was accompanied by musicians such as Bunny Berigan , Bud Freeman , Max Kaminsky , Fats Waller , Billy Butterfield , Bobby Hackett , Eddie Condon and the band leader Jess Stacy , with whom Lee Wiley was married for a few years. In the 1940s she appeared with Stacy (in whose big band she sang from July 1945 to May 1946) as well as with Eddie Condon in radio shows and in concerts in New York's "Town Hall" and the Ritz Theater during the war years .

Wiley's career continued in the 1950s with the Columbia label with the release of the album Night in Manhattan (1950). In 1954, accompanied by Bobby Hackett, she opened the very first Newport Jazz Festival . In the same year she worked on an album by Ruby Braff . In the second half of the decade, two of her best albums were made, West of the Moon (1956) and A Touch of the Blues (1957).

In the 1960s, Wiley largely withdrew from the scene, still appearing in a TV movie in 1963 ( Something About Lee Wiley ) in which she told her life story. In 1971 a last album was released, "Back Home Again". Her last public appearance was a concert in New York's Carnegie Hall in 1972 as part of the New York Jazz Festival (the New York branch of the Newport Festival), where she was enthusiastically celebrated and again played with Bobby Hackett.

Lee Wiley was a very popular singer in the USA in the 1930s: she was considered by many to be one of the most important white jazz singers because of her selected repertoire and her strong personality. She was the first jazz singer to record (from 1939) albums with music by individual composers such as George Gershwin.

In his book Singing Voices, Will Friedwald pays tribute to Lee Wiley in the same breath as Mildred Bailey and Connee Boswell , who were the female pioneers in the era of band singers in the early 30s. Only with the RCA album West of the Moon (1956) would she have created a masterpiece after many years of "ups and downs".

Selection discography

  • Eddie Condon: 1944-1946 (Classics)
  • Dorsey Brothers: Harlem Lullaby (Hep, 1933)
  • Jess Stacy: Ec-Stacy (ASV, 1935-1945)
  • Lee Wiley & Ruby Braff Quartet: Duologue (Black Lion, 1954)
  • Lee Wiley & Billy Butterfield Orchestra: A Touch of the Blues (RCA, 1958)

Web links

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ The information about your year of birth varies; the years 1910 and 1915 are also mentioned.
  2. ↑ These albums were the model for the legendary "Songbook" albums of the 1950s, such as by Ella Fitzgerald .
  3. ↑ It was originally released on two 10-inch LPs
  4. ↑ cf. Jörgensen and Wiedemann, p. 374
personal data
SURNAME Wiley, Lee
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American jazz singer
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Fort Gibson Oklahoma
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1975
Place of death New York City