Mary Lee

Mary Lee (born Mary Ann McDevitt; 13 August 1921 – 13 March 2022) was a Scottish singer, variety performer and broadcaster whose career spanned the 1930s to the 1990s. She achieved early recognition whilst still a teenager as a vocalist with Roy Fox's dance band, which was one of Britain's most popular in the interwar period. At the time of her death, Lee was the last surviving singer who had been active with the British dance bands in the 1930s, the heyday of their popularity. She later became known in Scottish variety through performing with her husband, comedian Jack Milroy, and presented an award-winning programme on Radio Clyde in the 1990s. Early life Mary Ann McDevitt was born into a working-class family on 13 August 1921, in a second floor Glasgow tenement flat on Scotland Road in Kinning Park. She was the first child of Isabella and Willie McDevitt; her mother was a housewife, and her father was a lorry driver for Shell-Mex & BP. McDevitt's younger brother Eddie was born three and a half years later. As a child, she sang along to the bands on the radio at home. She attended Scotland Street Primary School and Lambhill Street School, originally planning to be a hairdresser. Aged ten, she began singing on Saturday nights at a church hall. There were no microphones, so she sang with a megaphone. Career Dance band singer She began singing at concerts locally, also doing impressions of popular stars like Gracie Fields and Maurice Chevalier. At 13, she read an advert in the local newspaper seeking a girl singer for a competition, and went to the auditions at the Pettigrew & Stephens department store, with the famous dance band leader Roy Fox in charge. She sang "My Kid's a Crooner", and when asked how old she was, claimed to be 14, the age requirement for the contest. At the final, held in the Glasgow Empire Theatre, McDevitt won, being given a prize of five guineas. The orchestra manager asked her to join them on a permanent basis, to which her father responded that she would not be available until her upcoming fourteenth birthday in August 1935.