Lee Wiley, vocalistFrom: rlwiley31@hotmail.com
CommentsHow can I find out more about this vocalist, and a song she did titled, (Anytime, Anyday, Anywhere)? Lee Wiley, vocalist, lyrics to songFrom: rlwiley31@hotmail.com
CommentsWould like to find the lyrics to her song, "Anytime, Anyday, Anywhere". The words to the title may be switched around. From: A.MOONEY@CSUOHIO.EDU
CommentsNIGHT IN MANHATTAN is the album. Collectors Series is the label.
Re: Lee Wiley, vocalistFrom: CommentsLee Wiley wrote her own lyrics to Anytime, Any Day, Anywhere, and it became a hit recorded by another group in the 1950s. She was one of the giants of jazz singing, influencing both jazz singers like Peggy Lee and cabaret singers like Mabel Mercer. She has a small total recorded output, but almost all of it is back in print. Her most successful album, Night in Manhattan, was recorded in 1949 and 1950 and became eventually a gold record; the twelve inch version on Columbia actually combines the tracks from an earlier 10 inch record also called Night in Manhattan which she recorded with Joe Bushkin and Bobby Hackett and two ten inch recordings done with duo pianists Stan Freeman and Cy Walter, each consisting of single-composer eight-song tributes to Irving Berlin and Vincent Youmans. No one has sung Vincent Youmans better. Lee actually recorded Time on My Hands for the first time in 1931, with Leo Reisman's orchestra, and that recording made her a star, with her own radio show about 1934. Later, in 1939, she was the first female vocalist to devote an entire album (then 8 78rpm sides) to a single composer or composer/lyricist team. She did albums of George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and Harold Arlen a good fifteen years before Ella Fitzgerald released her famous Cole Porter songbook. Lee's second Rodger and Hart set, released in 1954 after her appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, contains her most moving singing until near the end of her life, when she produced an amazing comeback record, "Back Home Again," which contains her mature versions of "Anytime, Any Day, Anywhere" and "A Woman's Intuition," and her final studio send-off to her career, "Moon River." She has an extraordinary capacity to "phrase" jazz vocals and a complexly textured, idiosyncratic voice and diction that creates a "moody" sound that is entirely original: although her major influence is probably Ethel Waters, she has a true "white" sound that offers a fascinating alternative to Billie Holiday, in my view her only serious rival as a singer in touch with both the instrumental and the word-meaning sides of jazz singing. In a way she is the Garbo of jazz singing--her style is as odd, original, almost off-putting, and (for the aficionados) compelling as the great Swedish actress who somehow managed to work as she did in Hollywood. In private life, she was often involved with other musicians. She was maintained by the great conductor/composer of popular music Victor Young when she was a young woman, but had affairs with Bunny Berigan and George Wettling (both married) who recorded with her. She married Jess Stacy and toured with him for five years. She grew close to the circle of sophisticated dixielanders around Eddie Condon in New York and in the late 1950s made a beautiful album with Billy Butterfield called "A Touch of the Blues" which is available as an import from Japan with all its songs (some are left out of the American reissue of her RCA Victor work, "As Time Goes By." Her gift at creating a visual image in ht hearer's mind as she sings a simple word comes through beautifully in that album, especially on the side, "The Memphis Blues." You will be repaid by studying this singer.
Sincerely, John Beebe
Re: Lee Wiley, vocalistFrom: Claude Schlouch CommentsI wrote a discography of Lee Wiley. You can contact me at the following e-mail address: claude.schlouch.jazz@wanadoo.fr |
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