{"id":1008,"date":"2013-01-18T04:31:20","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T04:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peggylee.com\/wp\/?p=1008"},"modified":"2021-08-04T10:19:25","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T14:19:25","slug":"peggys-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peggylee.com\/peggys-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"Peggy’s Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

by Joseph Wershba<\/p>\n

Jazz historian Leonard Feather has already written the definitive critique of Peggy Lee: “If you don\u2019t feel a thrill when Peggy sings, you are dead, Jack.” But this doesn\u2019t completely explain how a nice, shy, flaxen-haired, Gretchen-faced Swedish-Norwegian girl from the plains of North Dakota became a leading white American singer who comes closest to the free-throated style traditionally associated with the greatest Negro jazz singers. Miss Lee isn\u2019t sure of the answer either.<\/p>\n

“I keep getting deeper into the songs,” she says. “I learn from musicians. I like variety \u2013 folk songs, jazz. Ray Charles, now… he\u2019s an inspiration to many singers because, while he\u2019s a jazz artist, he sees nothing wrong in singing country-western. He does it because he loves it. Variety…that\u2019s always been my conception of singing.”<\/p>\n

Miss Lee, currently singing to standing-room crowds at Basin Street East, developed her distinctive styles 20 years ago with Benny Goodman\u2019s band and “Why Don\u2019t You Do Right?” The Lee style can be insinuating, lowdown growly, hushed, provocative, lullabyish \u2013 almost always effortless, almost always a woman in love. When sex is deliberate, she humors it; when she means business, the audience has to sense it. Audiences never seem to have any trouble.<\/p>\n

“Of course,” she says, “if I tried to vamp and manufacture the sexiness, then I\u2019d really be funny. Anything that is forced comes over fake.” Onstage, she comes over as the apotheosis of one of her songs: “I\u2019m a W-O-M-A-N.” Offstage, she has been quite properly compared to a friendly, small-town librarian. “But I don\u2019t know why people have written that I\u2019m moody or depressed. I\u2019m not that at all. I\u2019ve had a lot of sadness in my life, but sadness is not my nature,” she says.<\/p>\n

She travels on tour with 13 people: dresser, hairdresser, road agent, light man, press agent and eight musicians, the largest entourage of any solo performer in show business. “I\u2019m lucky; we all project together. The things that get me sore are the stupid mistakes; like the spring in the hair dryer breaks. The people,” says Miss Lee, “are wonderful. It\u2019s the machines you gotta watch out for.”<\/p>\n

Besides nightclubs, records and television, Miss Lee earns her bread as a successful composer (“Ma\u00f1ana,” “Golden Earrings,” among others). She\u2019s president of Peggy Lee Enterprises, which includes two publishing houses. She relaxes with sculpture, poetry, readings in philosophy. She also has strong feelings about non-profit, civic responsibilities: she\u2019s chairman of the Tom Dooley Foundation for medical aid to Laos and Vietnam.<\/p>\n

She was born Norma Deloris Egstrom, daughter of a railroad station agent in Jamestown, North Dakota. “I sang even before I could talk. I sang in churches and at colleges. I was annoyed with the college boys. They always thought of me as their little sister. I was 14. I made a tremendous amount of money \u2013 got 50 cents one night. Gave it back to the band leader. He bought me chili. Then we were both broke. But al least I could consider myself a professional.”<\/p>\n

She borrowed her father\u2019s railroad pass, took her savings of $18, tried to break into Hollywood and flopped. Back home again, she sang on the local radio station, changed her name to Peggy Lee, began her one-night club stands with bands. “I remember these days now happily,” she says, “but I can\u2019t understand how I did it. I took care of my hair, my gowns, lived out of valises and buses, never got any sleep. I was young; I didn\u2019t know any better. When I think of some of those gowns, I shudder. Now I have a wonderful designer, Sebesta. He\u2019s an engineer, the way he creates gowns you can move around in. But the gowns must never dominate.”<\/p>\n

Miss Lee has a 19-year old daughter, Nicki, from her first marriage, to guitarist-composer Dave Barbour, with whom she has written a number of her best songs. She has been married and divorced twice more since. A fourth venture may be in the cards. Of her current escort, she says: “Love that man.”<\/p>\n

Miss Lee wants another try at the movies. Her last time around, in Pete Kelly\u2019s Blues, she won an Academy Award nomination as the alcoholic, mentally-ill blues singer. “But I don\u2019t want to be typed,” she says. “After that picture, I started getting calls from AA\u2019ers on the 12 Steps back to sobriety, and people kept advising me how to overcome mental despair. I don\u2019t want roles of violence. There\u2019s too much of that in films, even perversion. When it\u2019s over, it doesn\u2019t prove a thing.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019d like to do some bewildered comedy. I\u2019m not funny myself, but things that happen to me are funny.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m really not very theatrical. Whatever has happened to me seemed just to happen by itself. I don\u2019t think I had much choice,” says Peggy Lee.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Joseph Wershba Jazz historian Leonard Feather has already written the definitive critique of Peggy Lee: “If you don\u2019t feel a thrill when Peggy sings, you are dead, Jack.” But this doesn\u2019t completely explain how a nice, shy, flaxen-haired, Gretchen-faced Swedish-Norwegian girl from the plains of North Dakota became a[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library"],"yoast_head":"\nPeggy's Blues - Peggy Lee<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.peggylee.com\/peggys-blues\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Peggy's Blues - 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