Jeanne Lee born 29 January 1939

Jeanne Lee (January 29, 1939 – October 25, 2000) was an American jazz singer, poet and composer. Best known for a wide range of vocal styles she mastered, Lee collaborated with numerous distinguished composers and performers who included Gunter Hampel, Andrew Cyrille, Ran Blake, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Archie Shepp, Mal Waldron, and many others. 

Jeanne Lee was born in New York, United States. Her father, S. Alonzo Lee, was a concert and church singer whose work influenced her at an early age. She was educated at the Walden School (a private school), and subsequently at Bard College, where she studied child psychology, literature and dance. During her time at Bard she created choreography for pieces by various classical and jazz composers, ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach to Arnold Schoenberg. 

                Here’s “Season In The Sun” from above album.

                              

In 1961 she graduated from Bard College with a B.A. degree. That year she performed as a duo at the Apollo Theater's Amateur Night contest with pianist Ran Blake, a fellow Bard alumnus, and after winning made her first record, The Newest Sound Around. The album gained considerable popularity in Europe, where Lee and Blake toured in 1963, but went unnoticed in the US. At this point, Lee's major influence was Abbey Lincoln. 

During the mid-1960s, Lee was exploring sound poetry, happenings, Fluxus-influenced art, and other multidisciplinary approaches to art. She was briefly married to sound poet David Hazelton, and composed music for the sound poetry by poets such as Dick Higgins and Alison Knowles, becoming active in the California art scene of the time. In the late 1960s, she returned to the jazz scene and started performing and recording, quickly establishing herself as one of the most distinctively independent and creative artists in the field. 

Already a few years after her return she had a major role in Carla Bley's magnum opus, Escalator over the Hill (1971), and recorded albums with eminent musicians including Archie Shepp and Marion Brown. In 1967, while in Europe, Lee began a long association with vibraphonist and composer Gunter Hampel, whom she eventually married. They had a son, Ruomi Lee-Hampel, and a daughter, Cavana Lee-Hampel. 

In 1976, she represented the African-American spiritual musical tradition in John Cage's Apartment House 1776, which was composed for the U.S. Bicentennial. The experience inspired Lee to devote more attention to her composing, and create extended works. The immediate result was Prayer for Our Time, a jazz oratorio. 

In the 1980s and 90s, Jeanne Lee made a number of important recordings, two of which she produced: Conspiracy, Travellin’ in Soul-Time, Ambrosia Mama, You Stepped Out of a Cloud, and Natural Affinities. The 1994 Lee/Waldron Duo album After Hours, released on Owl/EMI, received the Diapason D’Or among other awards. That same year, she recorded Nuba, which was co-composed with drummer Andrew Cyrille and saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. One track from this album, titled “Nuba One,” was included in soundtrack to the 1999 Jim Jarmusch film Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai. Lee’s performance of “Don’t Worry Now, Worry Later” was included in the Smithsonian collection The Jazz Singers 1919-1994, which was nominated for a 1997 Grammy. 

She sang on a large number of albums by Gunter Hampel. In her late years, she ran the Jeanne Lee Ensemble, which performed a fusion of poetry, music and dance, and collaborated and toured with pianist Mal Waldron. Lee was also active as educator. She received a MA in Education from New York University in 1972 and taught at various institutions both in the US and in Europe. She published a number of short features on music for Amsterdam News and various educational writings, including a textbook on the history of jazz music for grades four through seven. 

Lee died of cancer on October 25, 2000, in Tijuana, Mexico, aged 61.  

(Edited from Wikipedia & New Music USA)

Here’s a clip of "I thought about you" Recorded in Marciac, France. 2000. Jeanne Lee,voice, Mal Waldron,piano, Eric Barrett (tenor sax), Jean-Jacques Avenel (bass),  John Betsh (drums).