Her initial musical training occurred in the family; she obtained her piano at the age of 10 and had gifted ragtime pianists including Charlie Watts and Scrap Harris as her tutors.
[4] Lee continued her education with formal music studies at the Western University, a historically black college in Quindaro, Kansas.
[6] Julia sang "He's Tall Dark and Handsome" and "Won't You Come Over to My House" in her sexy, coquettish voice and played piano with flamboyancy.
[9] In 1934, during the Great Depression, Lee, who disliked touring after suffering from a major car crash in 1930,[10] started performing at Milton's Tap Room, a then-new white nightclub, and stayed there until 1950, with only brief appearances in Chicago at Offbeat Club, Silver Frolics, Downbeat Club,[11] and performances in New York at Apollo Theater (May 1948), Los Angeles (Million Dollar Theater, September 1948).
[13] The Capitol recordings did not catch on initially, and Lee moved on to H. S. (Bert) Somson's short-lived Premier label with a few songs, the most notable being the "Lotus Blossom" (also known as "Marijuana").
Lee sang "King Size Papa" at a White House Correspondents' Association dinner on March 5, 1949, before President Truman.
"[16] There are multiple explanations of this, from criminal connections of Milton Morris causing lack of out-of-town performances, to Lee's dislike of travel (she once said that she could only travel if she "can keep one foot on the ground"), to her being just a consistently good singer, bound to eventually start repeating herself, to lack of desire to go the distance (she once stated "If you are not happy, there is no percentage in the big money").
[21] Lee continued to sing (in Cuban Room in Kansas City), and, in 1955, made an appearance in The Delinquents, a film by then little-known Robert Altman.
[22] The marriage lasted for nine years;[6] their only son, pitcher Frank Duncan III, played alongside his father in 1941, and they are thought to have been the first father-son battery in professional baseball history.
[24] According to Dave Dexter Jr., he coined the name for Lee's band, 'Her Boy Friends', after a succession of men in her life that won her affections and took her money.