Biography

 Dee C Lee is a highly successful recording artist who has been at the heart of the British Soul and R & B music scene for more than thirty years. With her distinctive and entrancing vocal tone, she has performed with chart-topping acts, including Wham! Animal Nightlife, The Style Council, Guru and Mother Earth, as well as writing her own hits such as the acclaimed ballad See the Day (revived in a cover by Girls Aloud).

 

Dee started her career as a backing singer and first came to public attention when she performed with Wham! on their hits including Club Tropicana and Bad Boys. Keen to establish herself as a solo artist, she left Wham! and secured her own recording contract with CBS Records. She released her first solo single, Selina Wow Wow, which received significant airplay.

 

In May 1983 while still pursuing her solo career, she teamed up with The Style Council and appeared on their 2nd single Money Go Round and their debut album Cafe Bleu. Dee's distinctive and soulful voice can be heard on many tracks including Headstart for Happiness, It Didn't Matter, The Lodgers, Walls Come Tumbling Down, and Shout to the Top.

 

Lee continued to record solo material during this time, with popular singles such as Yippee Yi Yay! and Don't Do It Baby. In 1985, after the release of the second Style Council album Our Favourite Shop, Lee released another solo single. The self-penned ballad See the Day became an instant classic. The single was a huge UK hit and peaked at No.3 in December 1985, selling a quarter of a million copies in the UK alone and earning Lee a record industrySilver Disc. Lee followed up the success with two further solo singles: a cover of Judie Tzuke's Come Hell or Waters High, and the self-penned Hold On. Both tracks were featured on her 1986 album, Shrine. Twenty years later, See the Day was covered by Girls Aloud, their version peaking at no 9 on the UK Singles Chart in December 2005.

 

Throughout the rest of the 1980's, Lee (by then married to Style Council front man Paul Weller) continued to work with the band on their albums Home and Abroad (1986), The Cost of Loving (1987), Confessions of a Pop Group (1988) and Modernism: A New Decade (1989).

 

After a career break to have children, Lee teamed up with Robert Howard of The Blow Monkeys and Paul to form the recording act Slam Slam. They achieved a number of UK club hits, including Move (Dance All Night) and Free Your Feelings, the latter produced by The Young Disciples. These tracks were club hits in the US and UK. In 1993, Lee collaborated with Gang Starr frontman Guru on a single from his solo project Jazzmatazz called No Time to Play, which also featured Ronny Jordan. She met Guru after he heard Slam Slam and more of her “honey” voice. He did a re-mix of Free Your Feelings and in 1993 asked her to perform on the Jazzmatazz Vol.1 album. No Time to Play featuring Dee C Lee was the first single from the album and reached no 25 in the UK. The subsequent tourof the UK, Europe and Japan saw her working with legends Roy Ayres, Courtney Pine, Lonnie Liston Smith and Donald Byrd.

 

Lee released two further solo albums: Things Will Be Sweeter (1994) and Smiles (1998) recorded for and released in Japan. 12-inch New Reality Vibe, was released on the Mo Wax label also 1994 and while Dee was recording the Things Will Be Sweeter album she also sang on Jamiroquai's Return of the Space Cowboy and Jazzmatazz album Volume 2 The New Reality hosted by Guru. She also travelled to Japan to promote the Things Will Be Sweeter

album.

 

1998 saw Lee writing with Adamski, Tiki Tok and Kamus in New York after which she put her career on hold to be Mum until her children left home in 2009. In 2011 she played some London dates to delighted audiences all the while continuing to write with Mike McEvoy (co-writer of New Reality Vibe and tracks on Sweeter and Smiles); and Arden Hart (co- writer of tracks on Sweeter & Smiles).

 

2019 saw Lee doing interviews and live recording of It's A Very Deep Sea for the Long Hot Summers -The story of The Style Council film for Sky released in 2020 along with the album. This renewed her friendship with Eddie Piller and in the summer of 2021 she signed a deal with Acid Jazz for a new album (no title at the moment). Produced by Tristan Longworth, it is a musical and lyrical reflection of Lee's life and sees her collaborating again with McEvoy, Hart and Ernie McKone, as well as very old friend Mick Talbot and hit song writer Paul Barry (James Bay, James Morrison).

 

The interim years have seen Lee performing for Refuge's Glamour Ball, appearing on Loose Women and doing the occasional podcast interview. Other than song writing, her main focus has been working on a book about previous generations of her family and the twists and turns of her life. Now with both her children married and being a Nana for the first time, she's more than happy and excited to be releasing a new album and working with Acid Jazz.

Dee’s first single on Acid Jazz was released on 29th Sept 2023.   

A career overview article by James Gaunt in May 2020 here