Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Dave Lee was born on August 12, 1926 in Newington, London, England and took lessons as a child. When his photographer father was transferred during the war to the North East to work on camouflaging military equipment, it was here that he started to perform in local groups. His big break came in 1942 when he won the Melody Maker poll for Best New Jazz Pianist.

A move to South Africa in 1947 had him working as a resident musician for night clubs in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. He went on to study at the Johannesburg Conservatory of Music gaining a Mus.Bac. By 1954 Lee invited Johnny Dankworth to perform in South Africa, and it was Dankworth who persuaded him to return to England as a pianist/arranger for the Johnny Dankworth band. From 1955 to 1959 he played on all of the recordings made by the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra.

David performed with Terry and McGhee, the Buddy Tate Quartet and Jack Parnell. He also arranged for Norman Wisdom, Benny Hill, Cleo Laine and Judy Garland. From 1959 he led a trio who recorded a number of successful albums, including A Big New Band from Britain, which was in The Cashbox Top Ten for six weeks. The trio also produced music for the 1960s TV series The Avengers, for which John Dankworth had written the original theme music, and the Trio features prominently in the 1962 episodes The Removal Men. They would go on to appear in several other episodes.

With his composing career beginning in the 1950s, he was writing jingles for television ads, then teamed up with lyricist Herbert Kretzmer and wrote hit songs Bangers and Mash, Goodness Gracious Me, and Kinky Boots and music for the West End stage musical Our Man Crichton in 1964.

His film music career began in 1960 with low-budget features, but gradually he progressed to fine orchestral scores for important movies. In 1983, Lee was elected BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year, and in 1990 was one of the founders of jazz-only radio station 102.2 Jazz FM. Still busy in his 90s, pianist, arranger, orchestra leader, songwriter and film composer David Lee’s novel Nothing Rhymes with Silver about a fictional jazz pianist was published in 2007.

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