Why Lee Wiley? 

Why Lee Wiley?

Because of the tremble in her throat, the fusion of melancholy and joy. If you want the experience of a nightclub and there isn’t an El Morocco or a Copacabana to go to, listen to her deliver Cole Porter’s “Looking at You,” or the Gershwin brothers’ “My One and Only,” or Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan,” or Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s “Let’s Fall in Love.”

Because she might have been born in 1908 or 1910 or 1915, and therefore all astrological analysis should be taken with as much salt as rims the glass of a margarita.

Because Lee Wiley (October 9, 1908 [?]–December 11, 1975) was the epitome of a nightclub singer. Born in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, she ran away from home as a teen and surfaced with the Leo Reisman Orchestra. Leo was good at discovering talent. Dinah Shore first sang with him. And people heard him on the radio, on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade.

Because Wiley had a sexy voice that made up in emotion what it lacked in range. There was silk in her voice, and smoke. Pick your adjective: intimate, sensual, husky, sultry, seductive, or all of the above. She sang with a combination of caprice and melancholy and was among the first, if not the first, to record “songbook” (or “concept”) albums devoted to individual songwriters.

Because she fell, riding a horse. She fell and went blind. But she recovered her sight and rejoined the Leo Reisman Orchestra.

Because she never revealed how she recovered from her temporary blindness, though I like to think that Tiresias appeared to her in a dream and told her the advantages of blindness, then offered a way back to a more conventional life.

Because blind faith and blind hopes are two different things, and she learned to distinguish between them.

Because she was one tough broad.

Because in 1931, she introduced “Time on My Hands.”

Because her singing appealed to Bing Crosby, Marlene Dietrich, and Louis Armstrong, and jazz aficionados everywhere.

Because she was tall and alluring.

Because, it was understood, she contracted tuberculosis and overcame it.

Because she sang for the Saturday Night Swing Club on CBS Radio from 1936 to 1938.

Because she appeared at Fefe’s Monte Carlo at 40 East 54th Street, which she considered the greatest nightclub that New York ever had. She said, “It was for people that had millions, that was the only way I can describe it. … Opening night I had this long, white ermine coat, and I had orchids ranging clear to the bottom … right straight down.”

Because she recorded Gershwin in 1939, with Max Kaminsky (trumpet), Fats Waller (piano and organ), and Bud Freeman (tenor sax).

Because she and trumpeter Bunny Berigan had a session for the ages on April 10, 1940. Jazz historian Dan Morgenstern: “They had a pretty torrid affair. Bunny’s wife hated her.”

Because her voice was that of a 35-year-old woman, whether it was recorded in 1940 or 1970.

Because she was as sophisticated as a well-made martini.

Because she married the jazz pianist Jess Stacy in 1943 and they fought like cats and dogs. One friend used a different animal metaphor: They were as “compatible as two cats, tails tied together, hanging over a clothesline.” The marriage lasted five years.

Because a lot of male musicians wanted to marry her. The great clarinetist and bandleader Artie Shaw proposed.

Because if you were a soldier and this was 1943 and you heard her sing, you thought about her in your sleeping bag in the jungle.

Because she was among the first white female jazz vocalists to win widespread recognition.

Because she loved Ethel Waters. “I loved to hear her and I adapted her style and softened it to make it more ladylike.”

Because Night in Manhattan (1950), her album with Bobby Hackett on cornet, is a masterpiece.

Because, as jazz writer George Frazier put it, she “had duende,” the great Spanish poet Lorca’s term that Frazier defined, channeling Johnny Mercer, as making “icy fingers run down your spine.”

Because she sang Cole Porter songs as if he had composed them specifically for her.

Because you’ve heard her sing if you’ve seen L.A. Confidential. That’s her singing “Oh! Look at Me Now” on the film’s irresistible soundtrack.

Because a 1963 television drama based on her life, Something About Lee Wiley, was viewed by scores of major music mavens. Piper Laurie played her. In 2000, she entered the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame.

Because you knew that you were the you when she sang that she didn’t stand “a ghost of a chance with you.”

Because you need to listen to her sing “A Hundred Years from Today.”

Because she said, “I don’t sing gut bucket. I don’t sing jazz. I just sing.”

Because you’ve never heard of her.

Because if you go online and listen to her sing, you’ll be hooked, and I’ll have done my job.

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