Irving Lee Dorsey (December 24, 1924 - December 1, 1986) was an African American pop and R&B singer during the 1960s. His biggest hits were "Ya Ya" (1961) and "Working in the Coal Mine" (1966). Much of his work was produced by Allen Toussaint with instrumental backing provided by the Meters. After meeting Toussaint at a party, he recorded "Ya Ya", a song inspired by a group of children chanting nursery rhymes. It went to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961, sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Although the follow-up "Do-Re-Mi" also made the charts, later releases on Fury were not successful. In 1965 he recorded Toussaint's song "Ride Your Pony" for the Amy label, a subsidiary of Bell Records. The song reached no.7 on the R&B chart in late 1965, and he followed it up with "Get Out of My Life, Woman", "Working in the Coal Mine" - his biggest pop hit - and "Holy Cow", all of which made the pop charts in both the US and the UK. Dorsey toured internationally, and also recorded an album with Toussaint, The New Lee Dorsey in 1966. In 1970 Dorsey and Toussaint collaborated on the album Yes We Can; the title song was Dorsey's last entry in the US singles chart. It was later a hit for the Pointer Sisters under the title, "Yes We Can Can". With declining sales, Dorsey retired from recording until 1978 when he recorded the Night People album which failed to make much impact chartwise.
Below is a list of Lee Dorsey songs, sorted by the most popular first. Place mouse on
to see information about song. Click song title to play song and to read details about the song including lyrics (if available). Click year to list all songs from that year. Click label to list songs from that record label. Songs with chart position "---" either never made it into the US top 100 R&B or UK charts or we have no details of their highest chart positions if they did.
(Song are sorted in highest US R&B Top 100 and/or UK Top 100 chart position order)