Remember jazz vocalist Lee Wiley?

LEE WILEY CD

Do you remember jazz vocalist Lee Wiley? I was not aware of Lee until I searched for a recording the other day of "Manhattan." I've included Lee Wiley's intimate version of this Rodgers and Hart classic at the end of this article. Please listen to this marvelous lady, who died much to early.  The All-Jazz Guide has this to say about this almost forgotten singer: "She was an American jazz singer popular in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Although today less well-known than such singers of the same era as Billie Holiday, Wiley is nonetheless still much appreciated by jazz aficionados and nearly all her recordings are still in print. Although she had only a small voice, she possessed an attractive, slightly husky tone and delivered lyrics with warmth and intimacy. Wiley was born in  Oklahoma in 1908. She sang with Leo, Reisman, Paul Whiteman and , the Casa Loma Orchestra.  In 1939, Wiley make an album of Gershwin songs with a small group. The record sold well and was followed by albums dedicated to Cole Porter (1940) and Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart (1940 and 1954), Harold Arlen (1943), and Vincent Youmans and Irving Berlin (1951). The players on these recordings included such musicians as Bud Freeman, Max Kaminsky, Fats Waller, Billy Butterfield, Bobby Hackett, Eddie Condon, and the bandleader Jess Stacy, the latter to whom Wiley was married for a number of years. These influential albums launched the concept of a "songbook", which was later widely imitated by other singers.  Wiley's career made a resurgence in 1950 with the much admired ten-inch album Night in Manhattan. In 1954, she opened the very first Newport Jazz Festival accompanied by Bobby Hackett. Later in the decade she recorded two of her finest albums, West of the Moon (1956) and A Touch of the Blues (1957). In the 1960s, Wiley essentially went into retirement, although a 1963 television film, Something About Lee Wiley, which told her life story, stimulated interest in the singer. Her last public appearance was a concert in Carnegie Hall in 1972 as part of the New York Jazz Festival, where she was enthusiastically received." She died in 1975. (Edited)

Here is Lee singing the Rodgers and Hart classic, "Manhattan."