Mary Lee (suffragette)

Mary Lee (née Walsh) (14 February 1821 – 18 September 1909) was an Irish-Australian suffragist and social reformer in South Australia.

Early life

Mary Lee was born in Ireland at Kilknock Estate, county Monaghan. She was married in 1844 to George Lee. The couple had seven children however little more is known about her life in Ireland. Her son Ben moved to Adelaide, South Australia. When he fell ill in 1879, Lee and her daughter, Evelyn, immigrated to Adelaide as well. They travelled on the maiden voyage of the steamship Orient. Her son died on 2 November 1880.

Australia

In 1883 Lee became active in the ladies' committee of the Social Purity Society. The Society advocated changes to the law relating to the social and legal status of young women, advocating an end to child labour to protect girls from abuse and preventing them from becoming prostitutes or child brides. The group's success was a passage in the 1885 Criminal Law Consolidation Amendment Act that raised the age of consent from 13 to 16. Her first achievement was a new law to protect young women, which made it illegal for a man to have sex with a girl under 16.

Mary Lee (actress)

Mary Lee (born October 24, 1924, Centralia, Illinois – died June 6, 1996, Sacramento, California) was a big band singer and B movie actress from the late 1930s into the 1940s, starring mostly in Westerns. She maintained a youthful look well into her thirties.

Early years

Born Mary Lee Wooters in Centralia, Illinois on October 24, 1924, her mother and father were Lela Myrtle Telford (1898) and Louis Ellis Wooters (1897). They had four daughters, Vera Mae (1920), Dorris Lucille (1923), Mary Lee (1924), and Norma Jean (1929). Dorris Lucille died shortly after birth in 1923. When Mary Lee was four years old the family moved to Ottawa, Illinois where Louis Wooters opened a barbershop. At age six Mary Lee began singing with her father and older sister, Vera, who were already performing country and popular songs over a low power radio station and at various events in the LaSalle County, Illinois area.

Music

In mid-June 1938, Mary Lee joined the Ted Weems Orchestra, traveling with the group four months a year, accompanied by either her mother or her older sister as companion and teacher. She recorded five sides with the Weems band including "Back to Smokey Mountain", a duet with Elmo Tanner from an October 5, 1939 session, issued as Decca 2829-B. In the summer of 1942, Mary Lee recorded eight tracks in two sessions with Bob Crosby's Bob Cats, reissued in Australia on Swaggie CD 504 as Bob Crosby's Bob Cats - Volume Four 1941-1942.

The Channels

The Channels were an American doo wop group from New York City.

An R&B/soul group of the 50's, The Channels formed in 1955 around the singers Larry Hampden, Billy Morris, and Edward Dolphin; they started as a quintet with two additional part-time members, but soon after they permanently added Earl Michael Lewis and Clifton Wright, formerly of The Lotharios. Lewis was the group's main songwriter, writing (among others) their regional hit "The Closer You Are" (1956).

The Channels recorded for record labels Gone, Fury, Port, Hit, Enjoy, and Groove. The lineup changed several times over the course of the band's lifetime. They enjoyed significant regional success on the East Coast but never charted a major nationwide hit.

Other notable (though not nationally charted) singles include "Bye Bye Baby" b/w "My Love Will Never Die," "That's My Desire," "The Gleam in Your Eye," "Anything You Do," and "You Can Count On Me."

Frank Zappa covered "The Closer You Are" on his album Them or Us (1984).