WILMA READING

Wilma Reading got her first big break in the late 50s singing with a Brisbane-based 17-piece swing band and with the ABC Orchestra. Wilma appeared on Bandstand in Sydney and recorded with Festival Records. She became very popular in Europe where she played Julie in the musical Showboat and made over 30 BBC TV appearances, including her own Wilma Reading BBC TV Specials. After a first engagement at the Goodwood Hotel in Singapore, Wilma then toured for Hilton Hotels International. She was discovered at the Tokyo Hilton by the American ABC Agency who contracted Wilma to appear at the Riviera Hotel, Las Vegas. A string of other live U.S. appearances followed including a season at the legendary Copacabana Nightclub, New York. Wilma appeared on the renowned Johnny Carson Show and for an entire season on the Morecambe and Wise Show around 1973/74.

Wilma worked with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, starring with Jim Brown in the U.S. film Pacific Inferno, a UNICEF television special with Danny Kaye, thirty-three one-woman concerts in Russia and appeared in on over seventy-five international television shows. She did a BBC concert with Charles Aznavour at the London Festival Hall and recorded the soundtrack title song for the Julie Andrews-Omar Sharif film "The Tamarind Seed". Wilma performed at the reunification concert in Berlin with the West Berlin Symphony (RIAS) on her left and the East Berlin Symphony on her right. Wilma Married Ray Lehr (now deceased) her agent in South Vietnam. Reading is of English, Irish, Torres Strait Islander, Jamaican, Afghan, Scottish, and Australian Aboriginal ancestry. She is the daughter of Heather Pitt and niece of singer Georgia Lee. She is still singing today. In August 2019, Reading was inducted into the National Indigenous Music Awards Hall of Fame. On 2 November 2019, Reading opened the Sydney International Women's Jazz Festival.

SINGLES

''Nature Boy / Fool, Fool, Fool'' 1960 Rex
''In My Little Corner Of The World / If I Were A Bell'' 1960 Rex
''I Only Came To Say Goodbye / That's How I Go For You'' 1961 Rex
''One More Mountain / Stay With Me Baby'' 1973 Astor

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Reading