Laura Lee Newton was born in Chicago in 1945 but grew up in Detroit. In 1956 she joined a Gospel group, the Meditation Singers, touring widely on the Gospel circuit and recording for Checker Records. Around 1965 Lee began singing as a solo artist in clubs in Detroit, performing secular R&B material. Her first single release was on the Ric-Tic Records label in 1966.
Lee signed for Chess in 1967 and was soon in the studio recording two singles, “Stop Giving Your Man Away”/ “You Need Me As Much As I Need You” and “Love More Than Pride”/ “Mama’s Got A Good Thing”, arranged and produced by Gene Barge. On the strength of these performances, she was added to the list of artists that Leonard Chess decided to send down to FAME Studios in Alabama to work with Rick Hall.
Laura Lee cut a series of tracks there that were taken back to Chicago. Five singles were drawn from the FAME recordings, two issued in 1967 and three released in 1968. All five entered the charts. “Dirty Man” (produced by Rick Hall) reached number thirteen on the R&B chart and number sixty-eight on the Pop chart. “Uptight Good Man” went to number sixteen R&B and number ninety-eight Pop, followed by “As Long As I Got You”, which reached number thirty-one R&B. “Need To Belong” went to number forty-four R&B, and finally “Hang It Up” reached number forty-eight R&B in 1969.
Sadly, Chess was going through a period of change, with the departure of Leonard Chess and the sale of the company to GRT. Many of the artists that Leonard had signed left the company to seek security elsewhere, including Lee, who signed for Atlantic subsidiary Cotillion Records in 1969, before moving to the new label Hot Wax, that the Holland brothers and Lamont Dozier had set up in Detroit, following their departure from Motown. She had several more hits before ill health forced her to retire from the industry. She built up a strong following based on her uncompromising attitude to women’s rights, which was reflected in many of her songs.
After Lee’s departure from Chess, an album of her songs was compiled by Ralph Bass and released in 1972 on the Cadet label, entitled “Love More Than Pride”. The eleven tracks combine seven of the Muscle Shoals FAME recordings produced by Rick Hall with four of the Chess recordings produced by Gene Barge. Most of the songs are from Chicago songwriters, including Gene Barge, Curtis Mayfield, Bobby Miller, Calvin Carter and Jerry Butler. Two of songs have a Muscle Shoals origin and they stand out. Jimmy Hughes’ “It Ain’t What You Do (But How You Do It)” has a strong feel of Memphis. “It’s All Wrong But It’s Alright” by Eddie Hinton and Marlin Greene comes from Quin Ivy’s Norala Studio in Muscle Shoals, where Percy Sledge had recorded the song a few months before Laura Lee’s session at FAME. The collection was later re-issued with the addition of twelve more tracks, retaining the album’s title. Two further compilations were issued in 2010 and 2012. They both cover the post-Chess material.
She returned in 1983 with a Gospel album “Jesus Is The Light Of My Life”, with the support of Al Green, and then worked towards her ordination as a minister of the church.
