Biography
During the latter half of the 1920s, George E. Lee's Orchestra stood as a near-equal rival to Bennie Moten's within the Kansas City circuit. The elder brother of singer-pianist Julia Lee, George E. Lee appeared with an Army ensemble in 1917, performed in a vocal quartet, and assembled his own combo in 1920. That unit, which soon featured Julia Lee, maintained steady engagements for several years at Lyric Hall in Kansas City. In 1927 the octet—now including Jesse Stone on piano—issued two sides for the Merritt label, one of them Julia Lee's first recorded vocal on "Down Home Syncopated Blues." The following year the ten-piece group, which counted Budd Johnson on tenor, cut six numbers for Brunswick: four released under George E. Lee's name and two as accompaniment for Julia Lee on "He's Tall, Dark And Handsome" and "Won't You Come Over To My House." Those sessions marked the ensemble's high point. In 1933 Lee's outfit was absorbed by the Bennie Moten Orchestra. He subsequently fronted another shortlived big band in 1935, spent several years touring with a smaller combo, relocated to Jackson, Michigan in 1940, managed a Detroit nightclub in 1942, and settled in San Diego during the mid-1940s, retiring from music just as Julia Lee began to gain prominence.