ONCE IN A LIFE TIME
Mamie Lee
produced by Don Costa

SIDE ONE
 1. Come Back To Me
 2. Once Upon A Time
 3. Everybody Has The Right
 4. Charade
 5. Why Was I Born?
 6. Show Me

SIDE TWO
 1. Once In A Lifetime
 2. My Funny Valentine
 3. Bewitched
 4. A Foggy Day
 5. Poor Everybody Else
 6. Try To Remember

Miss Lee is accompanied by: THE SWINGMEN
Carlton Schroeder, piano; Phil Morrison, bass; Peter Donald, drums
and special guest, Sam Rivers, flute
Recorded at Bell Sound Studios, NYC
Engineer: Eddie Smith
Director of Engineering: Val Valentin
Cover Design: Acy Lehman
Cover Photo: Murray Laden

This album marks the beginning of what I believe to be a spectacular recording career. Mamie Lee is one of the most talented, musical and versatile singers I have heard in my many years in the record business.

She comes to you in this LP a finished and polished professional. An artist with an enormus feeling for lyric and melody. Her Musical attack is sound; her interpretation of a tune full of meaning; she reads a lyric with insight and understanding; and what's more... she has style.

Mamie Lee is a singer with a style and a sound all her own. The way she holds a note or turns a phrase marks her as "one-of-a-kind." She has mentioned the influence Dinah Washington has had on her early vocal style, but Miss Lee never uses the great Washington technique to excess, the solid, impassioned but never sentimental quality of "The Queen" underlies Miss Lee's approach to a song, but she is very much her own artist.

The turning point in Mamie Lee's career came in 1960 when she auditioned for Duke Ellington. He gave her great encouragement and a new lease on a career in the music business. Mamie had quit music a few years before when she found work with variety or rhythm and blues groups unrewarding.

Miss Lee has worked in and around Boston, Mass. for the better part of her career and has acquired a substantial following in the greater Boston area, on Cape Cod and in other New England show places.

Early in 1965 Mamie Lee organized her own trio, The Swingmen, built around a young pianist arranger from the Berklee Music School in Boston, Carlton Schroeder. The basist is Phil Morrison, who has accompanied such illustrious performers as June Christy, Al Hibbler, Hadda Brooks and Gloria Lynne. The drummer with this trio is Peter Donald, a most talented and tasteful percussionist.

After you have heard the first few tracks of this album I think you will be as excited as I am about this great young singing talent. I think you will agree with me that this "Once In A Lifetime" album by Mamie Lee is the chance of a lifetime for a very great young artist; and the chance of a lifetime for you to hear one of tomorrow's stars.

DON COSTA
1966

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