FROM THE EDITOR

Fifteen top 10 hits, toured with Bowie, partied with Jagger, sang with Ray Charles and the Bee Gees, drank with John Wayne in Saigon when she performed (as a volunteer) for troops in the Vietnam War. And that was just the 60s. Dinah Lee is a force of nature – one that is still making and recording music 50 years later. At the age of 74, she has plans to release a new album from her home studio in Sydney, where she now lives.

Outside of music, she was a fashion icon, literally making her own clothes, and forging her own rebellious image, with a blunt black bob and a “bold look”. In her own words, she wasn’t a “pretty dolly” but she attracted attention from international fashion and beauty brands and she was invited to become the face of Yardley Cosmetics – not bad for a “farmer’s kid” from the small town of Waimate in Canterbury.

Lee was a feminist then, and is even more so now, fighting even harder for her voice to be heard as a woman in her 70s in the music industry. While she’s delighted by the #MeToo movement, and witnessed sexist behaviour “on the casting couch” in the past, he says she was never harassed or bullied herself, which she puts down to men being intimidated by her... I mean, what’s not to love about this lady?

Our writer Vicki Anderson has interviewed Lee several times and is in awe of her: “She is incredible and so inspiring.” Let’s all hope that Lee’s many successes are soon officially recognised, and she is inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame, where she truly belongs. Page 8.