“You’ve Got Me Crying Again”
Composed by Isham Jones (music) and Charles Newman (lyric); arranged by Victor Young.
Recorded by the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra for ARC/Brunswick on March 7, 1933 in New York.
Victor Young directing: Lee Wiley, vocal; Bunny Berigan, trumpet; Tommy Dorsey, trombone; Jimmy Dorsey, clarinet; Larry Binyon, tenor saxophone; Fulton McGrath, piano; Eddie Lang, guitar; Arthur Bernstein, bass; Stan King, drums and vibraphone; three string players.
NOTE: This is the first of three posts here at swingandbeyond.com on Lee Wiley. The remaining two will appear here and/or at the blog bunnyberiganmrtrumpet.com in the near future. Ms. Wiley was a very talented singer, and an interesting woman whose work deserves to be heard. In addition to presenting some of Lee Wiley’s music, I will be filling-in some of the historical details of her life story. I have been assisted immeasurably in this work by my friend, swing era historian and scholar Christopher Popa, who has done a good bit of research that will help me at least begin to set Ms. Wiley’s historical record straight.
The story – part 1 – emerging pop music diva:
One can find a brief summary of Lee Wiley’s life and career in the post here at swingandbeyond.com on her wonderful 1950 recording of “Manhattan,” which can be accessed at endnote 1. That summary was written by me in 2017, and I stated then that Ms. Wiley was an ideal candidate for a scholarly biography. None has been forthcoming, alas, at least to my knowledge. What we have now are bits and pieces of information about her, some of which is inaccurate. My intention with this post and the two that will follow is to present more facts about her life and career to set her work in its historical context.
“Lee Wiley was born on October 9, 1908 in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma with last name Willey. She was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and is buried in her family plot in Cherokee Nation.”(2) Before becoming the 46th state on November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was primarily what was then called “Indian Territory,” a land that had been designated by the U.S. government for the forced relocation of Native American tribes. Following the 1889 land runs by white Americans, the western half of Indian Territory was organized into the Oklahoma Territory. It later merged with the remaining Indian Territories to form the state of Oklahoma.(3) Lee Wiley was born in what had previously been Indian Territory. Her heritage as a Native American was an important part of her personality.
Ms. Wiley grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. As one might expect, she was precocious. In her mid-teens she began playing piano and singing on a radio station in Tulsa. But that did not last long. “I used to sit in school (in the back of the class, of course) and dream about being a singer. I had a boyfriend who would skip school with me, and we would go over to the local store and play records. The records we liked were called race records. They were sold in the colored part of town. These records were by Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, Clara Smith (and others). My mother didn’t like me going down there.” (I have italicized Ms. Wiley’s own words extracted from an interview she gave to radio personality Richard Lamparski on June 13, 1972 over New York station WBAI-FM. My thanks to Christopher Popa for accessing a part of the audio of this interview. See endnote 4.)
She ran away from home probably at about age nineteen, changed her name from “Willey” to “Wiley,” and then somehow managed to survive by singing in various cities, including St. Louis. “I stopped-off in St. Louis, and I got a job at KMOX. Then I went to Chicago. Some music publisher heard me sing and said, ‘You belong in New York…’ so I came to New York.” (Above right: Lee Wiley soon after her arrival in Manhattan in 1931.)
In New York, Ms. Wiley was hired by bandleader Leo Reisman. She made her first commercial recording with him on June 30, 1931: “Take It From Me …I’m Talking to You,” for Victor. More importantly however, she began appearing on a sponsored network radio show with Reisman. “…(T)hough I didn’t have much to do on his program, I was at least on one of the biggest programs (then on radio). It was the Ponds Cold Cream show . I used to sing maybe two vocal choruses in a thirty-minute program. But I worked for J. Walter Thompson (the famous advertising agency) for several years, and I just graduated. Finally, it was The Ponds Cold Cream Hour starring Lee Wiley. I started doing little playlets, Herb Polazy wrote them, and each one led into a song.”
Lee Wiley made only two other recordings with Leo Reisman: “Time on My Hands” (two takes) one on October 19, the other on October 26, 1931 (Victor); and “Got the South in My Soul,” on June 15, 1932 (Victor). She made a guest appearance on Rudy Valee’s radio show on October 13, 1932, and sang “Got The South in My Soul.” 
This performance has been preserved. It was at this time that she may have met the 24 year old jazz trumpeter Bunny Berigan, who was in the band on that radio show that evening. However there is no evidence that they had any relationship at that time.
She began her musical and personal relationship with conductor/composer Victor Young in early 1933. (“Victor Young was the great love of my life…”) They made two recordings together on January 21, 1933 for Brunswick: “You’re an Old Smoothie,” and “I’ll Leave These Reminders for You.” On March 7, 1933, she recorded two sides with a Dorsey Brothers studio band (including Bunny Berigan), with Victor Young acting as conductor: “You’ve Got Me Crying Again” (presented with this post), and “I’ve Gotta Right to Sing the Blues.” She apparently began her career as a recording artist with her name on the record in a couple of recording sessions (April 15, 1933 and May 3, 1933), where she made four attempts to get a satisfactory take on “Let’s Call It a Day.” One of those takes was issued by Columbia. Once again, Victor Young was the conductor of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra for those sessions.
June of 1934: Lee Wiley talks with composer/conductor Johnny Green while Victor Young listens. They were a part of a cadre of young musicians who were infusing vitality into what later became known as Great American Popular Song.
Ms. Wiley traveled to Hollywood with Victor Young in the summer of 1933. But she was back in Manhattan for a guest appearance on record with Glen Gray and the Casa Loma band on February 24, 1934, recording “A Hundred Years From Today.” After that, she focused on radio guest appearances through much of 1934. She guested with Rudy Valee on March 8; then with Paul Whiteman on the Kraft Music Hall on April 19, May 24 and June 28. In between, on March 17, she recorded two sides, “Easy Come, Easy Go” and “Repeal the Blues” on Brunswick as a featured artist with composer/conductor Johnny Green’s orchestra. However, she continued working toward being a solo recording artist by making four sides for Jack Kapp’s new Decca label: on August 13, “Careless Love” and “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”; and on November 26: “Hands Across the Table” and “I’ll Follow My Secret Heart.”(5) Both of these sessions were conducted by Victor Young. It is possible that Ms. Wiley’s famous artistic temperament may have surfaced at this time because she spoke a bit critically of Jack Kapp, who by then was a key man at the newly organized American (as opposed to English) Decca Records, in her interview with Richard Lamparski on June 13, 1972, almost four decades after that recording date.
Soon after this, there appears to be a gap in Ms. Wiley’s professional activities. This may have been caused by her contracting tuberculosis, or it may have been caused by her being injured in a horse-riding accident, which caused her to temporarily lose her sight.
The year 1935 would be a pivotal one for Lee Wiley. It was during that year that her relationship with Victor Young ended, and her relationship with Bunny Berigan began. It was also the year in which she was away from her developing career as a successful pop music singer on radio and on records. It took her some time to re-emerge as a jazz-inspired singer of many of the best songs in the Great American Popular Song canon.
I have advocated for someone who has an understanding of the music, musicians and milieu of the swing era to write a biography of Lee Wiley. In addition to her being a marvelously individual and memorable singer, the story of her life, which was inextricably intertwined with the mores prevalent in the world of swing, would be fascinating if for no other reason than to allow a glimpse of how a strong, young, attractive and talented woman interacted on myriad levels with her almost exclusively male musical contemporaries in a milieu of rampant and pernicious male chauvinism up to and including sexual predation.
In preparing this post, I went back and listened to many of the recordings Lee Wiley made from 1931 into the late 1930s, a period that was the first phase of her career. Almost all of those recordings presented her as a pop music diva, though one who was definitely aware of jazz. At that same time, she was featured on a couple of sponsored network radio programs, again performing as basically a very good pop singer. But after her mid-1930s career hiatus, Lee Wiley eventually emerged as a jazz singer of distinction who spent most of her time working with jazz musicians. We will explore the reasons for that in the second of three posts on Lee Wiley that will soon appear here at swingandbeyond.com.
The music:
This performance begins with a morose introduction that has Bunny Berigan playing his trumpet with a Harmon mute and a good bit of vibrato. We have to remember that this recording was made in early 1933, and that this was something of a performance convention on “sad” songs then. Jack Kapp, who knew how to ladle on the schmaltz, was also in the control room on that date. Ms. Wiley then sings the song’s verse. She is on pitch with clear enunciation, and very little of the Oklahoma accent she retained throughout her lifetime in conversation. Those guiding her career had obviously told her that she had to sing in a “mainstream” way in order to achieve widespread popularity in the American music marketplace. Notice the vibraphone chords and soft instrumental pads behind her.
As she launches into the first chorus, we are immediately in another musical mode: her voice is now sultry, and she and Berigan, now creating a velvety cup-muted sound with his trumpet, engage in a delightful pas de deux.
The second chorus presents instrumental solos: Tommy Dorsey playing melodically using a solotone mute in the bell of his trombone, while his brother Jimmy improvises around the melody on his clarinet. Berigan appears, still with a cup-mute, but also with a good bit of rhythmic vigor. Notice how he glisses up into his last eight bars – it is joyous and soulful at the same time. And it clearly affects Ms. Wiley, who follows with some wordless vocalizing. When she returns to the main melody one last time, Berigan is once again there with her. His accompaniment can rightly be described as inspired and inspiring. Oh how far Wiley and Berigan took this music in three minutes!
Notes and links:
(1) Here is a link to the post here at swingandbeyond.com on Lee Wiley’s wonderful recording of “Manhattan”: https://swingandbeyond.com/2017/04/01/manhattan-1950-lee-wiley/
(2) Wikipedia post on Lee Wiley.
(3) See History of Oklahoma Wikipedia post.
(4) The several italicized quotes contained in this post are of the words of Lee Wiley from an interview she gave to radio personality Richard Lamparski on June 13, 1972. That interview aired over WBAI-FM in New York City. Although I have, through the efforts of swing era historian and scholar Christopher Popa, been able to locate roughly half of the audio of that interview, we have not been able to locate all of it. If anyone can locate the entire interview, please contact me. I will add a link to it to this post, and give you full credit for your efforts. Below is a link to the first half of the Lamparski-Wiley interview:
(5) I was helped greatly in sorting out the discographical details of Lee Wiley’s early career by Tom Lord’s online discography.
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