Uploaded June 2020 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Jeanne Lee was one of the great forces in jazz and New Music vocal art, but the full range of her career is still sadly under-appreciated. The track posted here comes from the album ‘Gunter Hampel Group + Jeanne Lee’, recorded in the Netherlands in 1968, and the first recorded under her name since ‘The Newest Sound Around’, her duo with pianist Ran Blake released earlier in the 1960s. (In the meantime, she’d been involved with performance, Fluxus and happenings in New York). The band features Lee on vocals, Hampel on bass clarinet and vibraphone, Willem Breuker on saxophones and bass clarinet, Arjen Gorter on bass and Pierre Courbois on percussion. This is Lee’s first recording with Hampel, and she would frequently co-lead ensembles with Hampel known under the collective title of the ‘Galaxie Dream Band’ in ensuing years. In these ensembles. Lee explored music that was often freely improvised, as she sang wordless or ‘scat’ phrases, occasionally deploying the lyrics and melodies to standards or her own poetry. This phase of her career is sadly still little explored, particularly in the United States, with much of the music released on Hampel’s own Birth label in Europe.
On this track from ‘Gunter Hampel Group + Jeanne Lee’, Lee performs a version of the medieval lyric ‘O Western Wind’. On the record sleeve, the lyrics are printed with the following note: “The music I am making now is dedicatd to my personal muse, my husband D”.
Jeanne Lee (vocals)
Willem Breuker (bass clarinet)
Gunert Hampel (vibraphone)
Arjen Gorter (bass)
Pierre Courbois (percussion)
Recorded: April 1968
Studio: André Van De Water, Soest (Netherlands)
Jeanne Lee was one of the great forces in jazz and New Music vocal art, but the full range of her career is still sadly under-appreciated. The track posted here comes from the album ‘Gunter Hampel Group + Jeanne Lee’, recorded in the Netherlands in 1968, and the first recorded under her name since ‘The Newest Sound Around’, her duo with pianist Ran Blake released earlier in the 1960s. (In the meantime, she’d been involved with performance, Fluxus and happenings in New York). The band features Lee on vocals, Hampel on bass clarinet and vibraphone, Willem Breuker on saxophones and bass clarinet, Arjen Gorter on bass and Pierre Courbois on percussion. This is Lee’s first recording with Hampel, and she would frequently co-lead ensembles with Hampel known under the collective title of the ‘Galaxie Dream Band’ in ensuing years. In these ensembles. Lee explored music that was often freely improvised, as she sang wordless or ‘scat’ phrases, occasionally deploying the lyrics and melodies to standards or her own poetry. This phase of her career is sadly still little explored, particularly in the United States, with much of the music released on Hampel’s own Birth label in Europe.
On this track from ‘Gunter Hampel Group + Jeanne Lee’, Lee performs a version of the medieval lyric ‘O Western Wind’. On the record sleeve, the lyrics are printed with the following note: “The music I am making now is dedicatd to my personal muse, my husband D”.
Jeanne Lee (vocals)
Willem Breuker (bass clarinet)
Gunert Hampel (vibraphone)
Arjen Gorter (bass)
Pierre Courbois (percussion)
Recorded: April 1968
Studio: André Van De Water, Soest (Netherlands)
