Julia Lee was born in
Boonville, Missouri into a family of musicians: her father George E. Lee, Sr. was a violinist and a leader of a string band, and her older brother, George, Jr., was a saxophone player and a singer. Lee was raised in
Kansas City (her death certificate also lists it as a place of birth). There is also a confusion with the year of birth: most sources state that Julia was born in 1902, while her gravestone indicates 1903, so does also the death certificate. Julia's first known recording is with the
Meritt Records label in 1927, where she played piano in George's orchestra. (It is possible that two records of Julia were made in 1923 in Chicago by
OKeh, but never released.) This recording did nothing to advance Julia's career. Her first success came with a November 1929 recording at
Brunswick Records with
Jesse Stone as pianist and arranger for the Novelty Singing Orchestra. Julia sang "He's Tall Dark and Handsome" and "Won't You Come Over to My House" in her sexy, coquettish voice and played piano with flamboyancy. Even in these early recordings, her delivery of risqué lyrics was considered "jaunty" and "frisky," often featuring double entendres. George briefly merged his band with Moten's in 1932 (Julia at this time shared the piano duties with
Count Basie), but re-formed it on its own in 1933, with Julia and George parting ways soon thereafter. In 1934, during the
Great Depression, Lee started performing at Milton's Tap Room, a then-new white nightclub, and stayed there until 1950. She had become averse to touring after a major car crash in 1930. Following a gig in
Topeka, the band was returning to Kansas City in a convertible driven by Lee's second husband. The car was speeding, flipped over, and landed in a ditch; Lee was thrown to the back seat and pinned underneath the vehicle while the engine continued to run. A bandmate, "Tweedy," was killed in the accident. Consequently, she remained largely in Kansas City, securing a steady residency at Milton's. She built a strong rapport with patrons, who would often approach her piano to share their worries, to which she responded with magnetic warmth and blues numbers. Despite her popularity, Lee faced censorship challenges. In the 1940s, agents from the liquor control department raided Milton's Tap Room and banned Lee from singing in Kansas City clubs, citing the "type of song she sang and the way she sang it." The specific offending songs listed were "The Fuller Brush Man" and "Two Old Maids in a Bathtub." Lee sang folksy but bawdy tunes from a songbook titled
Songs My Father Taught Me Not to Sing. The ban did not stick, largely due to the intervention of her influential fans, including local bankers, lawyers, and editors.
Dave Dexter Jr., who became familiar with Lee's talent while living in Kansas City, joined
Capitol Records soon after its inception in 1942, and on November 1, 1944, supervised the first Lee's record with this label at Vic Damon's studio in Kansas City (Lee sang the remakes of "Come On Over to My House" and "
Trouble in Mind"). The Capitol recordings did not catch on initially, and Lee moved on to H. S. (Bert) Somson's short-lived Premier label with a few songs, the most notable being the "Lotus Blossom" (also known as "Marijuana"). In mid 1946, Lee's Capitol recordings of 1944 became popular among the DJs, so in August Dexter signed her for Capitol and brought her to Hollywood (on the way she and her drummer Samuel "Baby" Lovett wrote "Gotta Gimme Whatcha Got") for the first Capital recording credited to 'Julia Lee and Her Boy Friends'. The session musicians included, at different times, the "top-flight" talent:
Jay McShann,
Vic Dickenson,
Benny Carter,
Red Norvo,
Nappy Lamare,
Red Nichols, and
Jack Marshall. "How much more effective might she have been had she recorded as a young woman." Lee's last recording session with Capitol yielded "Goin' to Chicago Blues" (1952). Later records were with smaller labels:
Damon Records (two singles, with more material possibly lost after Vic Damon's death), and Foremost in 1957. Lee continued to sing (in Cuban Room in Kansas City), and, in 1955, made an appearance in
The Delinquents, a film by then little-known
Robert Altman.
Personal life Lee married
Frank Duncan, a star catcher and manager of the
Negro National League's
Kansas City Monarchs, also a native of Kansas City, in 1919. Lee frequently performed in all-white nightclubs, and Duncan had to sit with the orchestra, pretending to be a musician, in order to see her performing there. The marriage lasted for nine years; their only son, pitcher
Frank Duncan III, played alongside his father in 1941, and they are believed to have been the first father-son
battery in professional baseball history. After a divorce from Duncan, Lee married Johnny Thomas around 1927. This marriage lasted two years. It was her second husband who was driving the car during the serious accident in 1930 that killed a band member and left Lee pinned under the vehicle. Lee reportedly married and divorced two more times; she had a string of boyfriends who were "purportedly too eager to take her money," informing the lyrics of her song "Baby I Love You." According to
Dave Dexter Jr., he coined the name for Lee's band, 'Her Boy Friends', after a succession of men in her life that won her affections and took her money.
Death Julia Lee died in her home in Kansas City during an afternoon nap, on December 8, 1958, at the age of 56, from a heart attack. She died in her apartment on East Twenty-Eighth Street after playing her standing gig at the Hi Lounge. Her death did not attract much attention, being somewhat eclipsed by the deaths of
Tommy Dorsey and
Art Tatum. == Records ==