Lonnie Lee is the stage name of David Laurence Rix (born 18 September 1940), an Australian singer, who has fronted Lonnie Lee and the Leeman and Lonnie Lee and the Leedons. He is a pioneer of Australian rockabilly music and has worked in the industry for 60 years. At the peak of his career, Lee had eight top 100 singles, which included three top 20s, "Ain't It So" (November 1959), "Starlight Star Bright" (January 1960) and "I Found a New Love" (September). He achieved five gold records. His last single, "Sad Over Someone", was in 1969, and he continued to tour and perform into the 2000s. Biography Lonnie Lee was born as David Laurence Rix, in 1940 and grew up on a sheep farm in Rowena, New South Wales. At the age of seven he started singing in the local church choir, he took up the guitar and did Johnnie Ray impersonations as a teen. He also impersonated Nat King Cole. After leaving secondary school he started work as a bank clerk in Greenacre. In 1956 he competed in a radio talent quest, 2UW's Alan Toohey's Amateur Hour, where he came second. In February of the following year, as Laurie Lee, he won a contest for "Australia's own Elvis Presley" and was soon managed by fellow rock 'n' roller, Johnny O'Keefe. O'Keefe recommended a name change to Lonnie Lee – in tribute to Lonnie Donegan – and got his artist signed to Leedon Records, owned by Lee Gordon. The label issued his first single, "Ain't It So", which was written by O'Keefe and became a top 10 hit in Sydney in November 1959. Lee started Sydney's first rockabilly trio. In July 1959 he made his first TV appearances on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's rock and roll show, Six O'Clock Rock, as well as Nine Network's Bandstand and later that year appeared in Lee Robinson's feature length documentary Rock'n'Roll (1959) His backing band, the Leemen, initially had Peter Bazley on rhythm guitar, Tony Gaha on drums, Johnny Ryan on bass guitar, Dave Scott on saxophone and Derby Wilson on lead guitar. He later recalled, "It wasn't until 1959 that I did TV. Things really changed. Within a month, I was recording. Within about six weeks I was performing at the stadium with... to 10,000 people and it just went on and on and on. And all of us knew that." His