{"id":1070,"date":"2013-01-18T16:19:30","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T16:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peggylee.com\/wp\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2021-08-04T10:19:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T14:19:19","slug":"miss-lee-endures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peggylee.com\/miss-lee-endures\/","title":{"rendered":"Miss Lee Endures"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

by Jan Hodenfield<\/p>\n

She brings to mind, Miss Peggy Lee, Liz Taylor\u2019s 40-carat diamond.<\/p>\n

On the afterthought of a stage at the Waldorf\u2019s Empire Room, where she opened last Thursday evening to an audience in cocktail dresses and double-knit suits, in front of a 21-piece orchestra and backed by a three-girl soul chorus in discreet stance at stage rear, now slimmer but still abundant and lush in a flowing peach chiffon gown by Stavropoulous, she is perfection overblown to the grandiose.<\/p>\n

Her songs are new and of the moment, by James Taylor and Thom Bell and Linda Creed and Paul McCartney and Melissa Manchester, and each one interpreted with immaculate grace and a total precision incorporating gesture of infinite degree, is a movie of her mind projected with spellbinding efficiency.<\/p>\n

And so it always seems to have been with Peggy Lee, back through packages of newspaper clippings now yellowing and stiff with age, tributes that began accumulating in 1941 when she was singing in front of Benny Goodman\u2019s band and her rendition of “Why Don\u2019t You Do Right?” sold more than a then-phenomenal million copies.<\/p>\n

What strikes the interest this time around, as opposed to past performances of equal splendor, is the lighthearted energy and her command of it.<\/p>\n

That, and yet again the extraordinary professionalism she brings to polishing, shining and refining love songs to be sung in saloons, so that when she has completed her program, demands for encore are at best fatuous exercise in redundancy.<\/p>\n

How does she do it? Even more to the point, perhaps, why?<\/p>\n

An appointment is arranged and on Saturday the reporter goes to a Waldorf Towers suite and is brought to Miss Peggy Lee.<\/p>\n

Although she no longer depends on the oxygen tank she once carried about in order to breathe, she insists that the state of her health not be discussed in print, allowing later, when her substantial weight loss is breached, that such matters interfere with “the mystique.”<\/p>\n

Her ice cream sundae face untouched by expression save for the whisper of a grin, her private speaking voice that of a middle-class, Midwestern, middle-aged matron, she makes sure the tape recorder is in operating order \u2013 listening to the tape later she sounds just like the public Miss Peggy Lee \u2013 and she asks with cool interest just what sort of interview this is meant to be.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s to find out, she\u2019s told, why she endures.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s talked of it before. And, 54-years-old, she talks of it again, impassively gearing her mind to yet another interview, summoning answers before the questions are even posed.<\/p>\n

Ah yes, she says, she has a new album, Let\u2019s Love, and yes, after many years at Capitol she\u2019s gone to Atlantic \u2013 it\u2019s a “lively” company.<\/p>\n

Yes indeed, she says, she\u2019s impressed with the new generation of songwriters and she herself called on Paul McCartney, after which he wrote and produced for her the song “Let\u2019s Love.”<\/p>\n

Oh yes, she says, she did take up Transcendental Meditation six years ago and now, if the Mahesh Maharishi Yogi agrees, she\u2019ll be moving into the third stage, and absolutely, it\u2019s helped her to go on.<\/p>\n

She goes on, she says, for the work itself, because of the pleasure that work brings to others, because it allows her “to live gracefully” and because, she adds carefully, “I love it.”<\/p>\n

She keeps her gaze on him.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s something,” she says in a starlit voice that acknowledges the infinite disorder of the universe, “that\u2019s never let me down.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jan Hodenfield She brings to mind, Miss Peggy Lee, Liz Taylor\u2019s 40-carat diamond. On the afterthought of a stage at the Waldorf\u2019s Empire Room, where she opened last Thursday evening to an audience in cocktail dresses and double-knit suits, in front of a 21-piece orchestra and backed by 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-1070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library"],"yoast_head":"\nMiss Lee Endures - 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\/miss-lee-endures\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Miss Lee Endures - Peggy Lee\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Jan Hodenfield She brings to mind, Miss Peggy Lee, Liz Taylor\u2019s 40-carat diamond. 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