Early life Mallory was born in
Berkeley, California on January 10, 1945. He received his first guitar at 15, and ran away from home to become a musician the following year.
1960s Mallory began performing for live audiences in San Francisco's
North Beach cafes, such as the Coffee Gallery and Coffee and Confusion. In 1963, he went to New York and played in
West Village folk clubs, including the Cafe Bizarre, the
Night Owl,
Cafe Wha? and the Four Winds. He later became a regular at the
Troubadour in Los Angeles, where he was part of the group named The Men, some of whose members later formed
The Association. As a performing musician in Los Angeles, he shared the bill with performers such as the
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Mallory's first recording session was as a background vocalist on
Tommy Roe's "
Hooray for Hazel". He became a session guitar player on several singles by
The Association, and co-wrote two songs they recorded, "Better Times" and "Just About the Same". Mallory's 1966 single on
Valiant Records, a version of "That's the Way It's Gonna Be" by
Phil Ochs and Bob Gibson, reached #1 in Amsterdam and #2 in Seattle. It was re-released on the
Rhino Records compilation
Hallucinations. In the early 1970s, Lee Mallory formed a supergroup named Hollywood with the songwriter
Bill Martin and Russ Giguere, a former member of the Association.
Later life During some lean years from 1984 to 1995, Mallory worked as a San Francisco bike messenger. As the oldest bike messenger, he was elected to serve as president of HANX. In the 1990s, Mallory developed a distinctive
12-string guitar style. In 2000, he toured Japan with Joey Stec of Sonic Past Music, a long-time friend and co-writer from The Millennium. In Japan, he was awarded a Master Musician sash. Mallory was a regular performer at
The Cannery for many years. During the last seven years of his life, he performed and recorded with friends in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Jeseppi Trade Wildfeather, with whom he organized The Picnic, a one-day musical festival at San Francisco's Crissy Field in August 2002. For 40 years, earnings from his publishing and recorded albums were debited against production and publishing advances. The original Millennium album consisting of 16-track songs created on three tape recorders pieced together by union engineers, cost $100,000 to produce, and the Columbia label did not commit the resources to promote it. Combined with the fact that The Millennium was not a touring band, this limited their exposure at the time. The back catalogue of The Millennium received renewed interest in the late 1990s. San Francisco State University's Lee Mallory Scholarship supports Music and Recording Industry (MRI) learning the business side of music. The
San Francisco Board of Supervisors proclaimed January 10, 2005 as the first Lee Mallory Day, honoring him and all singer-songwriters. The album's release is currently on hold.
Many Are the Times, a comprehensive review of Mallory's work over time, was re-released by Sonic Past Music in 2006. This includes expanded liner notes and archival photographs. Mallory became active raising awareness of
Hepatitis C. Lee Mallory died at the
University of California, San Francisco Emergency Department on March 21, 2005, from liver cancer. ==References==