Post Description

Lee Wiley (1908 – 1975) was an American jazz singer popular in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.

Wiley was born in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. While still in her early teens, she left home to pursue a singing career with the Leo Reisman band. Her career was temporarily interrupted by a fall while horseback riding. Wiley suffered temporary blindness, but recovered, and at the age of 19 was back with Reisman again, with whom she recorded three songs: "Take It From Me," "Time On My Hands," and her own composition, "Got The South In My Soul." She sang with Paul Whiteman and later, the Casa Loma Orchestra. A collaboration with composer Victor Young resulted in several songs for which Wiley wrote the lyrics, including "Got The South in My Soul" and "Anytime, Anyday, Anywhere," the latter an R&B hit in the 1950s.

During the early 1930s, Wiley recorded very little, and many songs were rejected.

In 1939, Wiley recorded eight Gershwin songs on 78s with a small group for Liberty Music Shops. The set sold well and was followed by 78s dedicated to the music of Cole Porter (1940) and Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart (1940 and 1954), Harold Arlen (1943), and 10" LPs dedicated to the music of Vincent Youmans and Irving Berlin (1951). The players on these recordings included Bunny Berigan, Bud Freeman, Max Kaminsky, Fats Waller, Billy Butterfield, Bobby Hackett, Eddie Condon, Stan Freeman, Cy Walter, and the bandleader Jess Stacy, to whom Wiley was married for a number of years. These influential albums launched the concept of a "songbook" (often featuring lesser-known songs), which was later widely imitated by other singers.[citation needed]

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).

Wiley retired from singing in the early 1960s, acting in a 1963 television film, Something About Lee Wiley, which told her life story. The film stimulated interest in her and she resumed her career, making her last public appearance at a 1972 concert in Carnegie Hall as part of the New York Jazz Festival, where she was enthusiastically received.


Lee Wiley & Ellis Larkins - Duologue - 1954
Lee Wiley - As Time Goes By - 1991
Lee Wiley - Back Home Again - 1994
Lee Wiley - Live On Stage (Town Hall, 1944-1945) - 2008
Lee Wiley - Night in Manhattan--Sings Vincent Youmans--Sings Irving Berlin 3LP-CD - 2001
Lee Wiley - Sings The Songs Of Rodgers & Hart And Harold Arlen - 1980
Lee Wiley - The One And Only Lee Wiley - 2009
Lee Wiley - West Of The Moon - 2007
Barbara Lea - Remembering Lee Wiley - 1995