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| From | "floatingunder" <Steven.Durben@cignabehavioral.com> |
| Subject | Lee Mallory 1945-2005 |
| Date | Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:04:08 -0000 |
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Sad news..
This is from Joe from Rev-Ola via the Rev-Ola yahoo group.
Thought I'd pass it on.
____
It is with heavy hearts that we here at Rev-Ola join his family and
many, many
friends and admirers in mourning the passing of Lee Mallory.
Genial performer, profound songwriter, good friend, gentleman....
Best known perhaps as a member of the legendary Millennium, Lee's
rooots go back
to the San Francisco/Berkeley folk clubs of the early 1960's, where
so many of
the
performers who were to shake the world in the coming decade got their
start...
When the so-called British Invasion effectively put paid to the Folk
Boom, many
floundered...Lee got himself down to Los Angeles, where the likes of
The Byrds
were pioneering "Folk Rock"....into this magical and optimistic
jingle-jangle
morning
comes Lee, to an audition for The Lamp Of Childhood, a band being
formed by Jim
Hendricks, then married to Lee's folk-days friend Cass
Elliott...though he
doesn't get
the gig, he hits it off with two other auditionees, Curt Boettcher
(late of
mainstream
folkpoppers The Goldbriars) and Byrd Chris Hillman's then girlfriend
Victoria
Winston, both budding writer/producers...within hours of this
meeting, Lee and
Curt
started writing together, Curt touting his new friend as major
discovery, and
getting
him in as a crucial session player and songwriter on all his
projects, from The
Association to Tommy Roe. Many solo recordings were made during this
period,
with Lee touring in support backed by both the mysterious psychedelic
aggregation
Goldenrod, and the all girl (all sisters actually) Clingers....(at
different
times, of
course!)....simultaneously Lee was playing and writing for Curt's
group, the
ill-fated
Ballroom....who were discovered on the point of breakup by Columbia
producer
Gary
Usher...who was perhaps more interested anyhow in Curt, Lee, and
Sandy Salisbury
as performing/writing adjuncts to his own (albeit fictitious) group,
Sagittarius....which
became the testing ground for The Millennium: this legendary group
started life
with
Curt attempting to revamp Lee's touring group...bringing in and
adding new
players
until he had a supergroup of sorts on his hands...which the members,
despite
Curt's
controlling tendencies and everyone's egos, considered Lee's band,
such was the
love and respect he inspired...An innovative group came together over
the
Sagittarius sessions, and bcame The Millennium... and Lee was
certainly at the
forefront with such powerful compositions as "Karmic Dream Sequence"
and "Some
Sunny Day" and his unmistakeable rhythm guitar and singing...
The amazing story of The Millennium, their rise and fall, their
return to
international
cult status in the 1990s..all of this is pretty well known by
now....Lee's
adventures
with the cast of Hair, the Plastercasters and many others, perhaps
less
so....his
struggle with many years of on-off ill health hardly at all....
But his triumphant return to performing...well, that shook the
world!...well,
OK,
perhaps not the world, but certainly a hell of a lot of admirers
worldwide, as
he
played everywhere from the very San Francisco clubs he started in, to
prestigious
showcases in Japan as a duo with old colleague Joey Stec....his
energy and
enthusiasm stretched to forming a new band, pretty darn good
actually...he was
in
the midst of recording a new album when his health suddenly
worsened...to say
all
of us here were and are shocked and saddened is putting
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