Lee Wiley was a jazz and big band singer whose career began in the sophisticated orchestral era of the early ‘30s and encompassed swing and small band work through the ‘30s and early ‘40s before hooking up with Eddie Condon’s band in mid-decade, and going on to make some highly regarded albums in the '50s. She was at once both distinctive and versatile, her smoky contralto voice enabling her to range across moody small group blues and after-hours material, swinging up-tempo big band arrangements, and lush easy listening recordings alike. This great-value 70-track 3-CD collection, selects chronologically from recordings made in the core quarter-century or so of her career, beginning with work with the orchestras of Leo Reisman, Victor Young and Paul Whiteman in the early ‘30s. It includes titles from her highly-successful series of songwriter-based sessions for Liberty Music Shop and Schirmer with Max Kaminsky, Joe Bushkin, Eddie Condon, and Paul Weston at the turn of the decade, as well as ‘live’ radio recordings with Condon’s groups through the ‘40s, also selecting tracks from her excellent albums “Night In Manhattan”, “West Of The Moon” and “A Touch Of The Blues” albums during the 1950s. She was a hugely talented performer who deserves much greater recognition than she has been generally accorded, and we hope this anthology will provide a showcase which will bring her to a much wider audience.
