Dec. 12, 1970: Nancy Lee

 

Even R&B historians have no idea what became of the subject of this article. Last signs of her online were a couple singles she made for Bill Nunn’s Mo Do label in 1971. 

Dec. 12, 1970 

Nancy Lee Has Been

Singing for 20 Years

And Hopes This Time 

She’ll Hit It Big 

“December seems to be my month,” Nancy Lee declared the day before she and her new trio make their debut. “After years of tryin’, now I’m doin’ nothin’ and it looks like I’m going to get a break. All of a sudden I’m as busy as I want to be.

“My new agent calls me on Tuesday and says the contracts for Mr. Lucky’s are already signed, can you get a band? Well, one band I’ve been singin’ with had a job Friday and the other one was busy Saturday.

* * *

“SO I HOPPED ON the telephone and let me tell you the phone and me had quite a day. I started battin’ zero at first. Everybody was busy.

“Finally I talked to Jimmy Wilson and he called Roy Cobbe and by the time I got back from a trip to the Musicians Local on Broadway, I wound up with three different bands. Except two of them were working.

“But those these fellas I’m working with now were not working PERIOD. And I’ve got a feeling we’re going to stick together. Roy Cobbe, is he ever heavy! He plays everything.

* * *

“WE STARTED in rehearsing at 4:30 yesterday and went until midnight. They didn’t want to stop. They wanted to start again at 11 this morning. They even wanted to take off from their day jobs.”

Nancy Lee has tried to stay away from singing, but it doesn’t work. In 1966 she came back here from California and avoided clubs for 18 months, but one December night she dropped into Johnny’s Ellicott Grill and it began all over again.

So for two years she’s stood in with night club bands all over town. Two weeks ago she even sang a few numbers with Lionel Hampton. But having her own group is something different. This time she hopes she’ll hit it big.

* * *

SHE’S AS optimistic now as she was in 1963 when a small California company recorded her singing two songs she had written.

“They were pretty good at getting me to be the first artist on their label, but they weren’t so good at getting it promoted and played,” she says. “This time I’d like to record for a company that’s already got things going.”

Nancy brings out her daughter’s portable record player and put on the “hit” side. It’s called “Love Makes You the Boss” and it’s full of those neat producer’s tricks we all loved so well on Top 40 radio seven years ago. The flip side is “First Date.”

“You remember Floyd Cramer’s ‘Last Date?’ Well, I rearranged it enough so he can’t accuse me of stealin’ it,” she says. It has that same rising passage in the chorus. Nancy sings along with it.

“That’s about the only song I’ve done that I really like,” she remarks. “I don’t write with myself in mind as a singer. I just write ‘em.”

* * *

KICKING AROUND in the attic of her house north of Humboldt Park are about 50 or 60 songs she’s written. Some she sold to publishers for $25 and $50 advances when she was singing in New York City in the early ‘50s. The publishers never released them.

“I wrote my first one – ‘Lonesome Blues’ – when I was 13. When I write, it’s like I become two people in myself. I just hear a song in the air, in my mind evidently, and in five minutes to an hour it’s finished.

“It used to scare me. I’d go to bed with a song in my head and I just couldn’t push it out of my mind and go to sleep. I’d have to write it down.”

* * *

THERE AREN’T any of Nancy’s songs in Roy Cobbe’s big sheaf of sheet music, however, as the new trio opened last Friday in Mr. Lucky’s on East Lovejoy. Just old standards. Two nights of practice isn’t enough to work out something new.

The setting is low-key and friendly. Feels like a neighborhood night club, if that’s possible. Nancy says the new management there treated them to homemade Polish sausage after they moved their equipment in through the pouring rain.

On stage are three very happy musicians. Guitarist Joe Ortiz wears a huge grin as he strums Kenny Burrell jazz chords. Drummer James (Jim-Jim) Milton is bopping and carrying on. And solid Roy Cobbe molds organ riffs and foot-pedal bass runs that leap with pure joy.

* * *

NANCY’S OVER at a corner table. “Nervous? Well, before I leave the house I jump at every little thing that gets in the way, but once I’m at a job, everything is all right.”

At 10:30 the group plays “Satin Doll” and Nancy takes the stage.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she says, “this is our first night here, y’understand, and we want you to let us know if we’re pleasin’ you. Just use your two hands to show us. Let’s start with something everybody knows, like ‘Kansas City.’”

* * *

THE CLUB’S ceiling speakers take the bass overtones out of Nancy’s voice and sharpen the treble. Maybe she sounded like this in 1952. Her voice sure doesn’t sound 37 years old. And nothing can take away from her stage presence. She’s totally at ease.

“Cool it on the drums,” she says as Jim-Jim ends with a flourish. “I want to hear the applause. Oh, that’s wonderful.”

* * *

THREE couples at a front table, fresh from a Buffalo Braves basketball game, come out and dance to “Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away.” The set ends with a jazz “St. Louis Blues.”

“You know,” Nancy says as she returns to the table, “I think we’re going to be here for longer than the rest of the month.” 

The box/sidebar: 

The Music’s Deep Inside Her 

Pertinent and impertinent information about Nancy Lee and her trio:

Nancy Lee, 37, singer, attended Hutchinson High School but was graduated in Savannah, Ga., married, two children.

Roy Cobbe, 39, organist, raised in Detroit, works at Dresser Inc., Depew, gave up performing five years ago because “I couldn’t run into nobody who knew NOTHIN’,” married, three children.

Joe Ortiz, 31, guitarist, raised in Buffalo, a blast furnace worker at Bethlehem Steel, played with Bobby Jones, Jimmy Owens and had a group called the Swingsters, married, two children.

James (Jim-Jim) Milton, 33, drummer, raised in Buffalo, works with Roy at Dresser, played most recently with the Lucky Peterson Blues Band, married, three children.

* * *

NANCY began singing at the Club Moonglow when she was a teenager, but says she really began to develop as a performer during eight months in the early ‘50s at the Ebony Room in Niagara Falls with a band which included City Judge Wilbur Trammell on sax.

“I believe music is something in me that can’t be avoided,” Nancy explains. “Out in California, I sang in clubs, did some records, had a beautiful job – supervisor in an electronics plant. I tell you, I was a pretty tired woman. But happily tired.

“For five years, I sang in Santa Ana, Riverside, Palm Springs. But I just got bugged out there and my mother was after me to come back anyway.

* * *

“I GOT a feelin’ I might not have to go that route here. I had a job and they laid me off and I’m holding out now to put all of myself into the music.

“If you’re certain of something and if you push hard enough, you’re gonna make it. I don’t sit back and wait on anything. You may have to work a little bit harder, but you accomplish so much more.”