Return to Rock-and-Roll Page.Lesley Gore was born in New York City in 1946 and raised in Tenafly, New Jersey. While she was still in high school, Quincy Jones discovered her singing at a hotel in Manhattan and brought her to Mercury Records. Her first release, It's My Party, was on the record charts within a week after she recorded it and reached #1 in 1963.
She had phenomenal success with her early records, with Judy's Turn To Cry, She's A Fool and You Don't Own Me all achieving top five status within a year.
Lesley Gore placed 15 more entries in the top 100, including four in the top twenty, from 1964 to 1967, among them such hits as Maybe I Know, Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows and California Nights. She appeared in the movies Ski Party, Girls On the Beach, and The T.A.M.I. Show and, of course, played The Catwoman's assistant Pussycat [and sang] on the Batman TV show.
Early in her career Lesley worked closely with producer Quincy Jones, until he left to pursue other interests in mid-1965. Lesley was handed from one producer to the next without much promotion and without much success, although Quincy Jones later returned to produce some of the song's on Lesley's California Nights album. She returned to school for several years and left Mercury Records and the music business in 1969, then returned to work with Bob Crewe and later, Mowest [Motown] in the early 70's. A lot of Lesley's work in the 1970's received very good reviews, but little promotion. She had been writing songs since the mid-60's and co-wrote some for the soundtrack of Fame with her brother Michael in 1980.
She has appeared in oldies shows throughout the 80's and 90's, often touring with Lou Christie. The early 21st Century found Lesley recording a Christmas CD and a CD of material she had written and performed over the years. In the fall of 2010 Lesley took to a Broadway stage with the cast of Million Dollar Quartet to peform in a jam session for a packed house in New York City.
Lesley suffered from lung cancer and died in Manhattan, New York cirty, in 2015.
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