Forgotten celebrity Lee Wiley.
She was a dazzling beauty, had a voice of which the sound was being compared to whisky and which made men want to sleep with her. Besides, she was the first singer who began making ‘songbook albums’, already in the 1940s. The first of which was a gem of a record about the oeuvre of George Gershwin. Her vocal adage was ‘less is more’. Bandleader Max Kaminsky said she was far ahead of her time, and later she was to be copied by everyone.
Wiley led a tempestuous life. One ex husband called her the only witch that had not been burnt. She left an oeuvre that was made up of melancholy and eroticism.
And yet, she has almost been forgotten.
Today, we pay tribute to ‘The Indian Princess’ Lee Wiley (1910?-1975).
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