David Lee’s Oldies but Goodies Making a Comeback

Shelby songwriter and musician David Lee, the subject of a new compilation album, was featured in a recent article in The Charlotte Observer.

Lee was also a record producer in the 1960s and the owner of a record shop in one of Shelby’s African-American neighborhoods.

Known more regionally than nationally, Lee hit the big time once in 1972 with a song he wrote and produced, You’re Letting Me Down sung by soul singer Ann Sexton. The record sold 90,000 records nationwide.

Brendan Greaves, director of public art and community design with the North Carolina Arts Council and Jason Perlmutter, a researcher on the Arts Council’s African-American Music Trail have compiled an anthology of songs from the record labels Lee operated called Said I Had A Vision: Songs and Labels of David Lee: 1960-1988.

The material is rare, largely unheard Carolinas soul and gospel, Greaves said. He and Perlmutter curated a concert at the Don Gibson Theater on Sunday, Nov. 7, at 4 p.m., as an advance to the Shelby installment of the Smithsonian Museum on Main Street vernacular music exhibition New Harmonies.

To read the entire article, visit http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/11/01/1804944/back-on-stage.html.