Yao Lee — Ya Li
Chinese singer, named with 周璇, 白光 and others as one of the seven great stars of the Shanghai scene in the 1940s, singer of "玫瑰玫瑰我愛你", and called "the silver voice" after moving to Hong Kong in 1950.
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About the artist
Yao Lee is a Chinese singer. The original name is 姚秀云. The ancestral home is Ningbo, Zhejiang. Yao Lee was a famous singer of the Shanghai Bund period, and the younger sister of composer 姚敏. Records of the birth date differ: it is often given as September 10, 1922, and also as September 3. The singer 莫旭秋, a close friend, relayed that the identity card says July 19, 1922. There is also an account of a birth in 1921.
English names and romanizations include Nancy Yao Lee, Yao Lee, Yao Li, Yiu Lei and Hue Lee.
Yao Lee was born in Shanghai. The family was poor and there was no condition for schooling. From childhood Yao Lee stayed by the radio, took 周璇 as the only idol, and the imitation was very close.
At thirteen (1935) Yao Lee began performing on the radio. While recording a charity programme in the radio booth, the voice drew the notice of 周璇, who was broadcasting in the same place, and of composer 严华. In 1937, through an introduction by the two, Yao Lee at sixteen signed with Pathé and the first record released was "賣相思". At Pathé the place was after 周璇, 白虹 and 龚秋霞, and Yao Lee was called the fourth leading actress of song. There is another account that "賣相思" was recorded and released in 1939.
Of the 1940s, Oriental Daily News records that Yao Lee was named together with 周璇, 白光, 白虹, 龚秋霞, 李香兰 and 吴莺音, called the Shanghai Bund's "seven great divas". Stars including Teresa Teng and 徐小鳳 also took Yao Lee as an idol.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Yao Lee's rather high and soft singing was influenced by the idol 周璇. It was precisely by imitating 周璇 that the Shanghai entertainment business found Yao Lee. After entering the business there were, in different periods, the other names "little 周璇" and "the silver voice". The latter is set against 周璇, "the golden voice".
The insert song "玫瑰玫瑰我愛你" (original title "玫瑰啊玫瑰"), sung in 1940 for the film "天涯歌女", is recorded by Central News Agency as hugely popular for a time. In 1951 the American singer Frankie Laine covered it in English as Rose, Rose, I Love You, and the Chinese original became popular in the United States, once reaching number 3 on the US Billboard chart. There is another account that Laine's cover was in 1950 and that it entered the top three of the chart in 1951. After this song 陈歌辛 and Yao Lee worked together many more times. 陈歌辛 later wrote both words and music, and offered "苏州河边" to Yao Lee and 姚敏 to sing as brother and sister.
Because Yao Lee covered many famous songs of Patti Page, Yao Lee was called "China's Patti Page", and there is also the name "Hong Kong's Patti Page".
Older brother 姚敏 took his wife and children to Hong Kong, and Yao Lee and husband 黃保羅 followed south in 1950. After the war the brother and sister were reunited in Hong Kong. The Chinese Wikipedia records that Yao Lee was the most commanding diva of Hong Kong in the 1950s, and also the singer with the highest sales.
After going to Hong Kong, 姚敏 wrote Mandarin standards including "春风吻上我的脸" and "站在高岗上", and gave most of them to Yao Lee to sing first. Southern Weekly, drawing on material from the Hong Kong Film Archive, records that after the two in 1956 took part separately in composing and in the lead vocal (that is, playback singing) for the Hong Kong film "桃花江", they "started a current of Mandarin song films", and that the "iron triangle" the brother and sister formed with 陈蝶衣, a lyricist of the Shanghai Pathé period, almost became a box-office guarantee for this kind of film.
Yao Lee chose to keep working with the old company and to concentrate on being a "record singer", while 姚敏 had already written both words and music while in Shanghai, and after going south returned to Pathé and put effort into writing "shidaiqu". By then Yao Lee's voice was very different from the girlhood voice, moving gradually from a bright "folk-song-like voice" to a mezzo-soprano.
After 姚敏 died suddenly in 1967, Yao Lee gradually left the scene. Not until 1969, at Pathé's strong invitation, did Yao Lee turn to record production, and along the way arranged the brother's remaining work, then in 1976 retired completely and went home. The English Wikipedia instead records that in 1969 Yao Lee accepted an invitation to serve as general manager and producer of EMI Music Hong Kong, that in 1970 Yao Lee went to Taiwan to discuss signing Teresa Teng into EMI's Hong Kong market but did not succeed, and that as a producer Yao Lee made records for many artists and left that post in 1977.
At thirty years from debut, Yao Lee chose to leave the scene and grew old hand in hand with husband 黃保羅. In 1985, after more than thirty years away from Shanghai, Yao Lee decided to go north to visit old friends. In a 2009 interview with Shanghai's "新民周刊", Yao Lee said that the way the Hong Kong record business worked was in the end hard to get used to: "Now when they record, one song can be sung over and over for an hour. If it is sung badly it can be sung again, and then it is edited."
In 2011, at the age of ninety, Yao Lee stepped back into a studio at the invitation of the Hong Kong jazz-singer group 鍾氏兄弟, took part in recording their album "齊唱。吳秉堅之歌", and sang the classic gospel song "親愛主" in duet. It is Yao Lee's last recording.
On July 19, 2019 Yao Lee died in Hong Kong, at the age of ninety-seven. Central News Agency records that in recent years a leg injury made movement difficult, and that after being hospitalized with a high fever Yao Lee died that morning in sleep. Southern Weekly called Yao Lee "the last famous singer of Shanghai shidaiqu".
Overview
- Born
- September 3, 1922
- Born in
- Shanghai · Mainland China
- Died
- July 19, 2019aged 96
- Died in
- Hong Kong
- Gender
- Female
- Aliases
- 姚莉, 姚秀云
- Instruments
- Vocals
Catalogued works & releases
No catalogued works yet.