Peggy Lee is the Bomb

I like the Peggy Lee alb 'Black Coffee'.

What was the name of her "difficult" album? There was an article about it in Vanity Fair (!) that really made me want to track it down.

PEGGY LEE HAS THE BOMB!

....and I get the fear.

(cries)

have you heard "lover"--who else could find the melody and stick with it over THAT arrangement?

also i really like "don't smoke in bed"

and 1,000 other tunes

wait a minute maybe that DOES count

yeah dock she was working constantly in an ever-changing commercial context (and she stayed atop commercial pop for an unusually long period of time) so it's inevitable that there is much dross. sometimes i find her coasting with her fantastic tone--not doing much interpretation really. it depends on what she's given to work with, and if she has a challenging song she usually made the most of it. although her voice went to hell pretty quickly in her older age.

i dunno about "white voice"--surely she doesn't sound like sarah vaughan or something but peggy lee imported a lot of then-cutting-edge black vocal styles into white pop (along with ella mae morse and even doris day!) and in those terms was something like bing crosby in the 20s/30s, a real hipster.

Fuck if i know, I just work there.

www.ravinia.org

hm, this could go either way. well probably it'll be on the bad side. but grady tate! hm, i'm gonna sleep on this one.

no, wait, i don't have a car. never mind.

i didn't realize the metra was so convenient. i'll have to find someone to go with now i guess.

I knew Lieber and Stoller wrote it, but I never knew that Randy Newman arranged and conducted it.

Is that all there is?

BEST CHRISTMAS ALBUM EVER

I heard her version of "Golden Earrings" a few weeks ago. I think I may have to do some further study.

Ha, I was listening to "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "I Get Ideas" when I got up this morning.

The immediate reason for reviving thread was that guy on jazz station played "Is That All There Is?" as a run-up to the Grammy Awards, since apparently Peggy Lee won such an award for it, in some short-lived category.

Looks like it was
Best Contemporary Vocal Performance, Female.

The year before it was known as
Best Contemporary-Pop Vocal Performance, Female

and two years later it was known as

Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female

Is that all there is to the circus? Is that all there is?

CHRISTMAS ALBUM

When she was in the news for being released from the hospital a few years before she died, one of my co-workers said, "She's a tough broad; she's taking the bus home."

I adore Peggy Lee, but Judy G is really the star of this 'I Like Men' medley. DO NOT MISS her banshee howl at 1:50.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5W8abhf8ng

Three billion things by her on Spotify. If I love 'Fever', 'Is That All There Is' and 'Don't Smoke in Bed', where's a good place to start? The various Greatest Hits or Best Ofs seem all over the shop

"Is That All There Is" is all time.

The Great Ladies of Song series is pretty good -- not a bad place to start. It hasn't ever let me down in the past.

"Is That All There Is" playing now. This is great. Will check out Great Ladies next. Thanks!

Huh...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka7hdnRmIVA

Mirrors, her mid 70's neo-caberet/Leiber/Stoller album is equally odd and brilliant and they also shoe-horned Is That All There Is? on to it. It occasionally comes off the rails, but the highs on it are so very high.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mB_VgQVBEI

I'm totally in love with her intimate radio transcriptions set from the 40s, probably my most played recording of the last couple years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19u8Cb5Avhw

new bio on her

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/books/review/is-that-all-there-is-a-peggy-lee-biography.html

The bio is incredible. Perhaps you could say of any major celebrity that their life story is unlikely, but that seems to apply especially profoundly to her.

It's exciting to be all the way up to "Is That All There Is?" when there's still 200+ pages to go. One intriguing tidbit is that Lee and Jerry Leiber disagreed somewhat about the meaning of that song (and she reworded one line in it, which he disapproved of).

What an unusual person.

Looking forward to reading that bio although never got around to reading earlier bio, Fever.

"Undeterred by three divorces Lee plunged into a fourth marriage with bongo player Jack Del Rio."

i want a business card that says Bongo Player, plus have the name "Jack Del Rio"

I love "Undeterred by three divorces..."

now i wanna read it too

Can't stop mentally singing:

Can I have your autograph
Undeterred by three divorces

The book is consistently respectful of her artistry but devastatingly critical of her as a human being - so much so that ex-friends of hers are on amazon saying it's unfair.

So it's a pathography?

Yes, it doesn't start off that way but there's some foreshadowing of it when the writer suggests Lee exaggerated the abusiveness of her stepmother. Then throughout the 1960s the crazy keeps amping up. It's not quite Kitty Kelley on Sinatra but it gets pretty grim.

First Mad Men, now Kurt Cobain's mother comparing her dissatisfaction with life circa 1974 to "Is That All There Is" in Montage of Heck. It's been a busy month for Peggy Lee. Hope this isn't forgotten (I did see it mentioned in one of the Mad Men post-episode analyses I read):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrhLjhxx5U0

Criminally overlooked/underrated Scorsese film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fIhPW9hns

"Undeterred by three divorces Lee plunged into a fourth marriage with bongo player Jack Del Rio."

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, December 29, 2014 11:52 AM (seven years ago) bookmarkflaglink

That’s exactly the kind of sentence to pull to convince me to read this.

You give me fevah

EGGY LEE
Capitol Record And Universal Music Enterprises
Celebrate the 50th Anniversary of

NORMA DELORIS EGSTROM FROM JAMESTOWN, NORTH DAKOTA

LONG-OUT-OF-PRINT FAN FAVORITE GETS DELUXE EDITION NOVEMBER 18
Features Seven Bonus Tracks Making Digital Debut

New Edition Of Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography Now Available

“100 Years Of Peggy Lee” GRAMMY Museum Exhibit Extended Through May 2023

With a title that pays tribute to her roots, Peggy Lee's introspective album includes such enduring classics as “A Song for You,” “Just for a Thrill,” "Superstar," “The More I See You," “I’ll Be Seeing You," and many other songs about love, loss, and longing. The 23-page booklet, annotated by Iván Santiago, features new interviews with Tom Catalano, Artie Butler, and Brian Panella and previously unseen photos from the 1972 recording session.

This spring saw the release of a new edition of Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography. First published in 1989, the 2022 version features her never-before-released book of poetry, Softly With Feeling; a new cover; an epilogue by jazz and music writer Will Friedwald; a comprehensive discography and recommended listening section compiled by archivist Iván Santiago; and a new foreword by Peggy’s granddaughter, Holly Foster Wells.

Following Lee’s 2020 centennial, the celebrations for this extraordinary jazz legend continue, including a GRAMMY® Museum exhibit, “100 Years of Peggy Lee,” which was recently extended until May 2023; a CBS Sunday Morning profile tracing “Peggy Lee and her cool power” back to her beginnings in North Dakota; and a recent Hollywood Bowl tribute to Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra with the Count Basie Orchestra, featuring special guests Billie Eilish, Debbie Harry, Dianne Reeves, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Seth MacFarlane, among others.

Norma Deloris Egstrom From Jamestown, North Dakota [CD; digital]

1. Love Song – (Lesley Duncan)
2. Razor (Love Me As I Am) – (Jack Schechtman)
3. When I Found You – (Mike Randall)
4. A Song For You – (Leon Russell)
5. It Takes Too Long To Learn To Live Alone – (Leon Carr, Robert Allen)
6. Superstar – (Leon Russell, Bonnie Bramlett)
7. Just For A Thrill – (Lil Hardin Armstrong, Don Raye)
8. Someone Who Cares – (Alex Harvey)
9. The More I See You – (Harry Warren, Mack Gordon)
10. I’ll Be Seeing You – (Sammy Fain, Irving Kahal)

Bonus Tracks:

11. It Changes – session outtake^ - (Robert Bernard Sherman, Richard Morton Sherman)
12. Pieces of Dreams – 45-single^ - (Marilyn and Alan Bergman, Michel Legrand)
13. When I Found You – alternate take^
14. A Song For You – alternate take^
15. Someone Who Cares – alternate take^
16. The More I See You – alternate take^
17. I’ll Be Seeing You – alternate take^

^making digital debut

Born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, she was christened Peggy Lee in 1937 by a local North Dakota DJ, Ken Kennedy. With her captivating voice and sultry style, Lee helped redefine what it meant to be a female singer and artist, breaking barriers, and blazing trails for generations of artists who have followed.

Coined “the female Frank Sinatra” by Tony Bennett, Lee did something few of her male counterparts attempted: she wrote songs. As one of the first contemporary singer-songwriters, Lee ranks among the most successful female singer-songwriters in the annals of American popular music. Over her remarkable seven-decade career, she wrote over 270 songs and recorded over 1,100 masters.

About Peggy Lee
One of the most important musical influences of the 20th century, Peggy Lee wrote over 270 songs, recorded over 1,100 masters, and had over 100 chart hits throughout her seven-decade career. As one of the world’s first female contemporary singer-songwriters, she co-wrote and sang many of her own hits, most notably “He’s A Tramp” for Disney’s Lady and the Tramp as well as “Mañana” and “It’s A Good Day.” She’s best known for hits “Why Don’t You Do Right?” “Fever,” “I’m A Woman,” and “Is That All There Is?” for which she won the GRAMMY® for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance. A 13-time GRAMMY® nominee, she received Lifetime Achievement Awards from NARAS, ASCAP, and Society of Singers, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Pete Kelly’s Blues. For more information about Peggy Lee, visit peggylee.com

this last bit from her Close Enough for Love wiki entry has me intrigued.

Reviewing the album for AllMusic, JT Griffith said that "Peggy Lee's voice sounds a bit depressed on this album, indicating, perhaps, an unfamiliarity with the new musical trappings. But that quality also gives the album's more straightforward numbers, like "Rain Sometimes" and "Come in From the Rain" (sounding like Wings), a moving, somber tone. An example of a dated album, but one that is a ripe for a rediscovery."[1]

Kind of wishing Peggy Lee had also been on that Iggy/Bowie edition of The Dinah Shore Show.

There could have been some kind of rivalry between those two swing era canaries. Dinah failed an audition for Benny Goodman's orchestra, while Peggy was accepted by Goodman and was with him for two years. Both singers were on Capitol Records 1959-1962, where Peggy had success and Dinah didn't.

Mirrors, her mid 70's neo-caberet/Leiber/Stoller album is equally odd and brilliant and they also shoe-horned Is That All There Is? on to it. It occasionally comes off the rails, but the highs on it are so very high.
― xelab, Thursday, December 11, 2014

I'm totally in love with her intimate radio transcriptions set from the 40s, probably my most played recording of the last couple years.
― The Thelonius Monk of nu-ki? (Dan Peterson), Thursday, December 11, 2014

Leiber, sorry! Ach du lieber.

Hah, common mistake, no worries! Think I maybe also heard he was bipolar although lips are kind of tight. Whatever it was, lots of stories about how difficult he was whereas Mike was the opposite.

You should really also read the thing about them in Bruce Jay Friedman’s son’s book, you know the one who dated Ronnie Spector for a bit, not the other one who draws the cartoons. He gives a few details that they later decided to leave out of Hound Dog.

I keep meaning to ask one old-timer about them but I haven’t quite gotten the chance. I asked another one and he gave me the tight/lipped version. I do have a neighbor who told me he interviewed both of them (!) for a certain EMP article.

Tell the Truth Until They Bleed: Coming Clean in the Dirty World of Blues and Rock 'n' Roll, by Josh Alan Friedman. Kind of must read and not a must to avoid, at least in my book.

Contains everything you ever wanted to know about Record Man George Goldner.

Sorry, I just wanted to type those last four words and it’s been a while.

Oh I remember Record Man George Goldner from Hound Dog, yes indeed.

The Peggy Lee/June Christy Capitol Transcriptions Sessions boxed set is my favorite album of all-time.

I haven’t heard the above album, but I have to say, Something Cool by June Christy is so special to me that it was the only full-length LP I had on my iPod when I still had an iPod

Awesome to see this thread revived as the chances of me getting to talk to anyone familiar with Lee's work in real life is pretty low right now. I have to agree with the prior comments about the Capitol Transcriptions Sessions boxset from Mosaic. Hearing tracks from that for the first time was an instant epiphany, like "Oh yes, THIS is how I've been wanting to hear her this whole time." I like <i>Black Coffee</i> for sure and enjoy others that are relatively small combos, but hearing her in that quartet/quintet setting is just about perfect.

(To me, the June Christy tracks are similar--I keep <i>wanting</i> to get into her albums on Capitol but the relatively larger arrangements don't quite situate her where I want to hear her...and these transcription tracks do. But I'm happy to entertain any album recommendations for her, especially beyond <i>Something Cool</i>.)

I agree with some other comments here--the Christmas album is lovely and unique, her version of "Where or When" with Benny Goodman stops time...I'm assuming the "difficult" album that posters wrote about at the start of the thread is <i>Sea Shells</i>? Could be wrong, but a 1958 album of poems and traditional folk songs accompanied only by harp and harpsichord is likely the one. I am pretty into that record, it can be remarkably gentle and almost proto-new age in places but not something I keep in regular rotation.

sorry for my formatting screw-ups...let's see if I embed the opener from Sea Shells correctly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVXm9AwwxGk

Bought a used copy of this today:

https://i.postimg.cc/hGP7GzKj/norma.jpg

I bought it because it was in perfect shape and only $5--honest to god, had no idea it was Peggy Lee. I didn't look all that closely at the photo; thought I was buying some obscure singer-songwriter from 1972. She covers "Superstar."

Ha, because it has her real name on the cover.

It would be funny if you went ahead and praised that album in the "ladies of the '60s/'70s that aren't receiving any hipster kisses" thread.

How many people on this thread actually saw Peggy Lee perform live?

*raises hand*

Where was that?

James, where did you see Peggy Lee live?

YEAH! WHERE? AND HOW was it?? Details please, at least a few.

Tell the Truth Until They Bleed: Coming Clean in the Dirty World of Blues and Rock 'n' Roll, by Josh Alan Friedman. Kind of must read and not a must to avoid, at least in my book.

― The Dark End of the Tweet (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, November 26, 2022 8:40 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Contains everything you ever wanted to know about Record Man George Goldner.

― The Dark End of the Tweet (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, November 26, 2022 8:41 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sorry, I just wanted to type those last four words and it’s been a while.

― The Dark End of the Tweet (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, November 26, 2022 8:42 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh I remember Record Man George Goldner from Hound Dog, yes indeed.

― dow, Saturday, November 26, 2022

James, where did you see Peggy Lee live?

Can’t seem to find any mention of this gig on the intranetz.

Thank you. I've found that gig information for singers like Peggy Lee - and for venues such as the Rainbow Room, the Empire Room at the Waldorf, the Persian Room at the Plaza, the Copacabana, the Latin Quarter, Basin Street East, and so on - is quite patchy. I wish there were some obsessive out there who could research all of this and put it in the record.

What I've gleaned from skimming James Gavin's bio of Peggy Lee, Is That All There Is?, is that in 1985-1990 Peggy played five engagements at a place called The Ballroom (200 capacity) located on W. 28th St. near 8th Avenue., and that the first of these was her first NYC club engagement since 1976. The next thing I see is she played a room called Club 53 in the Hilton at 6th Ave./53rd St. in July/August 1992. And then apparently her final NYC gig was at Carnegie Hall in June 1995.

And also in April 1988 she went on stage at a Frank Sinatra/Sammy Davis Jr. show at Radio City Music Hall and did some of her famous numbers.

And then apparently her final NYC gig was at Carnegie Hall in June 1995.

RIP Arthur Hamilton, 98, whose songs "He Needs Me" and "Sing a Rainbow" were performed by Peggy Lee in the film Pete Kelly's Blues (1955) and who also wrote the immortal "Cry Me a River."

Wow, didn't know about him.

He was Julie London’s high school boyfriend iirc, which is how that song came to prominence.

Think it must have been that Club 53 gig. Good work!
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/03/arts/review-cabaret-the-peggy-lee-charisma-that-withstands-the-years.html

https://www.peggylee.com/a-fever-pitch-comeback/

Just now in a sunshower daydream, I beheard Miss Peggy Lee singing "Like A Rolling Stone." Cooling down, getting way down inside certain words and syllables and notes, but getting on with it too. (Like Jimi on the verses at Monterey, but not louder and more emphatic on the chorus, or not like he did.) Frosty the Blonde, yet acknowledging the sense of it, having been there a bit, maybe, and maybe a soupcon country, Peggy Lee passing Brenda Lee (c'mon, we know you're from North Dakota, not so far from Dylan's sticks).
Maybe we could commission Shelby Lynne, I dunno who else>

My dad worshipped her, so I akways seek out Peggy Lee records, but she must have smoked like a furnace, her early 70s stuff, which I recently discovered as a fan of post-reefers/LSD adult pop records is such a dramatic departure from anything 1965 or before. By that point, her voice is completely ravaged and the records are depressing and weird.

Spacey. But that hair is eternal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=678VC4-5rgk

Spacey. But that hair is eternal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=678VC4-5rgk

She's the most unreal fabulous woman!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkFrO5nhI_Y

Yes, she was a heavy smoker for years - even endorsed the Chesterfield brand in the early 1950s! But then she quit altogether in 1971 or '72.

Her biographer James Gavin has said his favorite of all her albums is Norma Deloris Egstrom from Jameston, North Dakota, which is the album "A Song for You" is from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_udW-G6VEhg

these days I just love her Black Coffee album from '53, it's fucking perfect.

Holy Moly---revelatory, at least to Lee noob me (whole show is streaming here (Public Radio, so get it while you can) https://www.ipm.org/show/afterglow/2025-08-22/peggy-lee-the-singer-songwriter

When she was 25, she was already having her music recorded by Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAYF9SIs5eo
What More Can a Woman Do?: Sarah Vaughn, Dizzie Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Max Roach + more! (1945)

Yeah! The show also includes several more co-writes with her guitarist and husband, Dave Barber. They divorced, but She kept writing, sometimes with other collaborators.

Cool