Laura Lee

Laura Lee emerged in the 1960s as a resilient soul vocalist whose sharp wit, directed chiefly at the men around her, infused her performances with irreverent bite. She cut tracks at Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals for Chess before moving to Hot Wax, where numbers such as “Wanted: Lover, No Experience Necessary,” “A Man with Some Backbone,” and the anthemic “Women’s Love Rights” openly examined, challenged, and ultimately championed women’s lived realities. That forthright stance cleared space for later voices like Millie Jackson and Denise LaSalle to enlarge the bold, sensual, plain-spoken territory of women’s soul. Lee also displayed a tender country-soul facet, most evident in her luminous reading of the Penn-Oldham standard “Uptight Good Man.” A supple, quick-witted performer whose early catalog merits wider recognition, she shifted course in the early 1980s after embracing prayer during radiation treatment for cancer. Once recovered, she issued the 1983 gospel set Jesus Is the Light of My Life, co-produced by Al Green, then followed it with All Power (by Laura Lee with Eternal Light) in 1984. Thereafter she focused on global missionary efforts and received ordination as a minister.