MARY LEE KORTES
 

LATEST

will anybody know that I was Here: the songs of beulah rowley

NOW ON CD AND DOUBLE VINYL! ORDER YOURS HERE.

 
Just because I made this all up doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
— Mary Lee Kortes
 
...quite simply, spectacular
— The Alternate Root

The Songs of Beulah Rowley came to me through a magical accident. A depression era singer and songwriter, Beulah achieved regional fame performing at her father’s Michigan cinema and touring county fairs in the Midwest. Tragically, she died at just 21 years of age in a house fire, but her songs and story survived in a locked, wrought-iron piano bench that travelled over the decades through flea markets and families till it landed in my own. On my tenth birthday, my father pried the bench open for me and there I found them: Beulah’s songs and diaries all carefully preserved. I fell in love with the melodies and words, figuring them out on the bench where she wrote them. I decided I must one day become a famous singer and bring her songs and story back to the world where they belonged. And now, with a lot of help from my friends, here they are for you: the Songs of Beulah Rowley. 

PURCHASE LP HERE
PURCHASE CD HERE
PURCHASE THE SONGS OF BEULAH ROWLEY BOOK HERE

 

 

ABOUT

Mary Lee

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Perhaps the New York Times described her songwriting best when it called the songs of Mary Lee Kortes "so meticulously crafted they sound completely natural". The Village Voice agreed, calling her "a masterful songwriter", and clearly one with her own voice, says Rolling Stone, proclaiming "the bright bite in Kortes' voice combines the high-mountain sunshine of Dolly Parton with a sweet-iron undercoat of Chrissie Hynde”.

Mary Lee has released four CD's of original compositions under her performance name "Mary Lee's Corvette", all to international acclaim and all landing on Billboard Magazine's "ten best records of the year" in their years of release. She also released one album of covers -- a complete, song-for-song recording of Dylan's classic "Blood On The Tracks," hailed by many critics as daring, and earning four stars from Rolling Stone for its "quietly direct magnificence.... Dylan likes this album so much he's featured one of the tracks on his web site".

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Additional tour cities and dates coming soon!


 
…there’s definitely no better or more diverse songwriter than Mary Lee Kortes working right now, anywhere in the world.
— NY Music Daily
 
 

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