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A native of Dallas, Texas, Ed grew up in the Highland Park area of
Dallas in the 1940's and 1950's. He has been in the music and entertainment business since joining his brother's country
music band as their tenor banjo player in the late 1940's. Having been a mainstay on the football, basketball, track and swimming teams
during his years at HPHS, he followed his brothers, Dick and Bob, to SMU in the Fall of 1951 on a football scholarship. He
graduated with a degree in Banking and Finance in 1955, was chosen for the Chicago College All-Star Football game that Summer
and was second draft choice for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1955 and spent that season with them. Following that season, he spent two years in the Air Force at Bolling
Air Force Base in Washington, DC, and several more years trying his hand in the pros...Pittsburgh, Montreal, Chicago, Calgary
and, finally, the Dallas Texans (who later became the Kansas City Chiefs) during their first couple of years in the American
Football League. He had played in musical groups in high school and college...he joined his brother, Dick,
in Bob Irby's Hilltop Ramblers at Highland Park and SMU...and the two of them joined five other friends in a great dixieland
showband, the Cell Block Seven, at SMU. When he returned to Dallas after his military service and football endeavors,
he got together some of the men with whom he'd played and started a new dixieland band. A short time later, he opened
a small nightclub, The Levee, on Mockingbird Lane. That small club became one of the busiest, best-known and most successful
entertainment places in Dallas during the 1960's. He started booking bands in 1961, as his two groups, The Levee Singers and the
Levee Dixieland Seven, became two of the most in-demand groups in Dallas. The booking agency came about as a result
of helping people book other acts when the two Levee bands were unavailable. In addition, Ed owned the area's most popular
recording studio, Sumet-Bernet Sound Studios, so he became friends with all the area's best musicians who came to the studio
to record. He's also had a life-long interest in art...some in painting, but mostly in sculpture. Ed
sold the studio in 1997 and has since been able to spend more of his time with his art and entertainment booking agency. When
not working in his office, Ed is usually in his "garage workshop/studio"...working on a variety of projects in which
he's involved...and, in more recent years, on his art business...sculpting bronze statues of a variety of subjects and brokering
the sale of "life-size and larger" bronze sculptures for a number of well-known artists and customers. He
and his wife, Susie, were married in 1962. Their two sons, Blake and Brant, and daughter, Jenny Galbraith, are happily
married, live nearby and have 9 children (now grown up!) among them...6 girls and 3 boys. Ed's son, Ed Lee, from his first
marriage, lives in Minnesota and has two sons. While family and their Christian faith are most important in the lives
of Ed and Susie, music and art play a large part as well.
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