Frederick Eugene John Lees was a Canadian music critic, biographer, lyricist, and journalist.
11 Facts About Gene Lees
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Gene Lees's sister, Victoria Lees, is the former Secretary General of Montreal's McGill University, and his brother, David Lees, is an investigative journalist and science writer.
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Gene Lees wrote nearly one hundred liner notes for artists as diverse as Stan Getz, John Coltrane, George Barnes, and Quincy Jones.
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Gene Lees won the first of five ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards in 1978 for a series of articles published in High Fidelity about US music.
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Gene Lees wrote about racism in jazz music in Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White and on the effect of racism on the careers of Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Jackson and Nat King Cole in You Can't Steal a Gift: Dizzy, Clark, Milt and Nat.
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Gene Lees studied composition by correspondence with the Berklee College of Music, in the early 1960s and piano with Tony Aless and guitar with Oscar Castro-Neves in New York City.
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Gene Lees became a lyricist in the 1960s, writing many of the English language lyrics for Bossa Nova songs, translating them from their original Portuguese.
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Sinatra recorded four songs by Jobim with lyrics by Gene Lees, Sinatra's recording of "Quiet Nights", is considered by Gene Lees to be definitive.
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Gene Lees wrote the lyrics for Charles Aznavour's, "Paris Is at Her Best in May" and "Venice Blue", and Aznavour's 1965 Broadway concert, The World of Charles Aznavour.
10.
Poems by Pope John Paul II were translated by Gene Lees and recorded by Sarah Vaughan as part of a song cycle on her album The Planet Is Alive.
11.
Gene Lees died of a stroke on April 22,2010, at his home in Ojai, California.