Virginia Lee

Virginia Lee was South Africa's best-selling female recording artist of the late Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies. She was born in Port Elizabeth on 27 June 1927 and schooled at North End Grey and Victoria Girls High in Grahamstown, and possessed a warm, clear ballad voice that made her a household name.

She made her recording debut in 1957 under the guidance of Dan Hill, and the hits flowed for the next two decades.

On 15 December 1965 she became the first South African woman ever awarded a gold record, for Goodbye My Love and collected a second only seven months later for Darling It's Wonderful. That same year she toured 37 cities with American country star Slim Whitman. Over her career she recorded more than 800 songs including sentimental ballads, country-tinged pop and Afrikaans favourites, an output few South African artists of any era have matched.

Known to the industry as 'Ginny', she married Johnny Lee in 1948 and later Lea Bergman in 1987. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and died in Johannesburg on 7 January 1990, aged 62. For a generation of South Africans hers was the voice on the radiogram on Sunday afternoons, and her voice will always live on.