- Title
- Our State
-
-
- Date
- August 2011
-
-
- Place
- ["North Carolina, United States"]
-
Our State
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tar heel books & music
A Name for Himself
Cleveland County native David Lee wrote successful songs for other artists for decades.
But he never received the recognition he deserves, until now.
By Bryan Rccd and John Schacht
PHOTOGRAPHY BY EMILY CHAPLIN
The music business isn’t
д
meritocracy.
Bui on rare occasions, the mythologized
big break just conics a little later than
expected. It did for David Lee, a native of Cleveland
County who reached his 70th birthday before his
accomplishments as a songwriter and record-label
owner finally received acclaim.
Overlooked and ignored by the music industry for
decades, Lee’s songwriting voice comes through again
ihi the 14-song compilation Said I Had .1
Унта:
Songs
and Labels of David I.ee, the inaugural release from the
nascent Chapel I lill label Paradise of Bachelors. The
album compiles Lees best work from the 16 records
he released out of his Washington Sound record store
in Shelby.
Blurring the lines
From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, Lee’s diverse
industry involvement as songwTitcr, performer,
producer, and manager defined his career. The black
songwriter refused to play along with the race-based
mores of the music industry and culture. In the midst of
the Jim Crow South, Lee saw no boundaries squrating
soul and country, secular and sacred, or black and white.
Lee wrote w ith an omnivorous and malleable style,
drawing from contemporary soul and R&B, gospel,
and country with equal disregard for color lines. But
no matter who stood liehind the microphone or w hich
genre the wings tilted toward, the music stood on a
sturdy foundation of melodic finesse, warm harmony,
and understated lyrical wit. The)' were, simply, great
pop songs.
Getting hi* due
Lee began writing music in his teens. R&B legends,
such as Marvin Gayc, Otis Redding, and James Brown,
inspired him. but country sounds he heard coming
through the radio from WS.M Nashville also played
a part. Lee counts country legend Roy Acuff among
his most prominent influences, and you can hear the
lilting twang that crept into the music he wrote and
performed. But in the old .Smith, country music was the
privileged tlomain of white artists.
"I had a great love for it," Ixc says. “But during that
time, I have to admit that a person like me couldn’t
break in. Charley Pride broke into it, but you know it
was a hard thing. I wouldn't lie accepted by anyone;
even my own people wouldn't accept me."
Still, while 1-ee spent his days working at a Shell))'
country club, his music found some success in the hands
of other performers — largely because Lee’s songs were
so readily adaptable to different styles.
".Mainly when I recorded people, gave ’em new
music, I told ’em, ‘You don’t have to do it the way I do
it,’*lxe
яу*.
lares music eventually found its greatest success
through Ann Sexton, a soul singer from Greenville,
South Carolina. Her renditions of Lcc-pcnncd songs
“You’re Letting Me Down" and “You’ve Been Gone
Too I-ong* made a splash in the ’70s with some
national airplay But lax's music soon drifted into
record-collectors obscurity, although the Sexton/
Lee collaborations still circulate in Europe on various
bootlegged recordings.
Last year, Lee finally gut his due with the release of
Said I Had A Vision and a November performance at
Shclliy's new Don Gibson Theatre. “We had a large,
large turnout of a mixed crowd,” Lee says. “People that
I had worked for, they were stopping me. shaking my
hand, saying, ‘We listen to your music all the time.'
That was joy, joy, joy-, praise God for that.” '*•'
Bryan Reed and John Sebatbt air ibe tihrory ^Shuffle Magazine,
a quarterly
риЫкаеюя
dmtoi to independent mask. Their vark
mgdmly of /peats in national stud rrgnvW puHttatmti including
Paste, Blurt Imkiublent WlxAly, aiul online dta.
18 OwSMM August 201 1
