{"id":1273,"date":"2013-01-19T08:44:44","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T08:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peggylee.com\/wp\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2021-08-04T10:19:14","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T14:19:14","slug":"the-pure-joy-of-peggy-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peggylee.com\/the-pure-joy-of-peggy-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pure Joy of Peggy Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n by Curt Morgan<\/p>\n

How does a singing legend stay a legend for almost 50 years? Is it luck, chance… the blind draw of fate?<\/p>\n

Is that all there is?<\/p>\n

“Musicians keep a song fresh. You never stop listening to them and hearing what they\u2019re doing…<\/p>\n

“I\u2019ve been working a lot with Brazilian musicians lately. I was the first one to do that \u2013 with American songs using a Latin beat…<\/p>\n

“The feeling is like riding a horse in the Kentucky derby \u2013 the trot, canter and gallop. I tried to explain that for Time magazine once, and I thought they were going to come and take me away.”<\/p>\n

The speaker is Peggy Lee, whose 47-year career in show business owes very little to luck, chance and fate, blind or otherwise.<\/p>\n

“I had complete control over my career. It was essential to me that I always knew what I was doing.”<\/p>\n

So much for the idea that some Svengali invented the Peggy Lee persona: a voluptuous blond in a tight spotlight, not so much singing a song as coaxing it to life with a breathy, rhythmic delivery and pinpoint phrasing. It set her apart in an era that was full of “girl singers” fronted by the big bands of Miller, Goodman, and the Dorseys.<\/p>\n

And it serves her well today, with an unbroken career, about 60 albums, 631 recorded songs. And an award r\u00e9sum\u00e9 about as thick as a Spiegel\u2019s catalog.<\/p>\n

Lee is bringing her class act to San Francisco\u2019s Memorial Theater through January 17. She\u2019s been looking forward to it.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m seeing a lot of young people (at concerts) these days. I think they respond to the music. I mean, you\u2019re seeing something that could be on Broadway \u2013 that kind of quality. <\/p>\n

“And I toss a little bit of humor. I like to get an audience to feel that I\u2019m entertaining them in my living room.”<\/p>\n

The set calls for 25-26 numbers, standards and her own favorites. She\u2019s been rehearsing with a five-man group that includes Brazilian drummer Joe Heridia.<\/p>\n

The show also features a dramatic tribute to Billie Holiday, which has Lee delivering a medley of tunes in Lady Day\u2019s style \u2013 including “God Bless the Child.”<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s fitting. There is a something, just outside the spotlights, that unites a Peggy Lee and a Billie Holiday. The singing can give it away \u2013 that little tinge of pain that colors a blues note and curves it into just the right mood.<\/p>\n

Miss Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota. Her mother died when she was four, and she was raised by a severe stepmother. Her first marriage \u2013 to guitarist Dave Barbour \u2013 ended in divorce, as did three other unions.<\/p>\n

A gentle wall goes up to questions about her private life. This is, after all, an interview about her local show. And then again, Miss Lee has her own story to tell, in an autobiography she\u2019s been working on.<\/p>\n

“I just mailed off the first 11 chapters on Friday,” she said. “I haven\u2019t been doing very much besides writing for the past six months.”<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, that essential darkness and light of life is the essence of the blues. But it wasn\u2019t in a song that Lee captured it most memorably. It was as the alcoholic, mentally unstable singer Rose Hopkins in Jack Webb\u2019s Pete Kelly\u2019s Blues. Her performance in that 1955 film earned her an Oscar nomination.<\/p>\n

It was to be one of her few film roles, however.<\/p>\n

“My agents decided they could make more money with me as a singer,” she said, laughing. Then she added: “No, seriously\u2026For some reason, they always thought of me as a singer. I didn\u2019t get another offer.<\/p>\n

“Singing is very similar to acting. You underscore as you go \u2013 with music.<\/p>\n

“I always sang,” she said. “I knew when I was 14 that I was going to sing. If you have that kind of belief in your mind, it does happen.”<\/p>\n

Lee was hired by Benny Goodman in 1941, to take over for Helen Forrest. Her first hit with the group was in 1942, with “Why Don\u2019t You Do Right?,” a song she discovered.<\/p>\n

“(The band) had been working with Helen, and the songs weren\u2019t really in my key,” she said. “In those days, the band set the tempo, you came in with your little chorus and then you went away and sat down again.”<\/p>\n

In the postwar years, Lee was more or less a free agent, and with collaborators like Barbour, Cy Coleman, Duke Ellington and Victor Young, she began carving out hits of her own by collaborating on compositions like “Ma\u00f1ana,” “Johnny Guitar,” “It\u2019s a Good Day” and “Where Can I Go Without You?”<\/p>\n

The current re-release of Walt Disney\u2019s Lady and the Tramp can only add to luster to Lee\u2019s reputation. Not only did she sing and dub the voices for four characters in the film, she and Sonny Burke composed the nine songs in the soundtrack, including the theme “Bella Notte.”<\/p>\n

“It was the best experience in my life,” Lee said of the project. “Walt (Disney) was very open to ideas. When I suggested the extra soliloquy to open (the song) \u2018What Is a Baby,\u2019 he went with it.<\/p>\n

“And I take full credit for saving Old Trusty\u2019s life,” she recalled with a giggle. In the film, the aging bloodhound is seemingly killed by a careening coach, only to reappear in a later sequence with a small injury. That was her suggestion, she said: in the original cut, the old dog really did die.<\/p>\n

Lee will include “He\u2019s a Tramp” and “The Siamese Cat Song” in her San Francisco appearance.<\/p>\n

And, of course, she\u2019ll sing “Is That All There Is?,” the Leiber-Stoller hit she released to some controversy in 1969. Some fans thought the lyrics of the song were cynical and negative.<\/p>\n

“It took me a year to work that out before I recorded it,” Lee said. “The lyrics were based on Thomas Mann\u2019s essay on disillusionment. It\u2019s about the experience you go through in life that\u2019s necessary for growth. In some way it has paralleled my life.<\/p>\n

“The attitude has a lot to do with how we survive,” she said. “If you can love work enough to take the dues you have to pay, it\u2019s worth it. If not, there must be something else you can do to make you happier.”<\/p>\n

Lee said she took her cue from some of the best.<\/p>\n

“Count Basie, Maxine Sullivan, they were some of my influences\u2026 with Basie, every note counted, nothing was there that wasn\u2019t essential.”<\/p>\n

For the future, Lee is casting about for material for a possible album. She appeared in a series of concerts in New York last summer \u2013 for the first time since a coronary in October 1985. Everything seems fine, now.<\/p>\n

“I love new music \u2026 but not synthesizers. My ears say \u2018no.\u2019 I experimented with (synthesizers) when they first came out about 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

“No matter how much they can duplicate sound \u2013 it\u2019s not quite it,” she said. “I\u2019m always for progress \u2013 but I\u2019m more for human beings.”<\/p>\n

And the human touch hasn\u2019t failed her yet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Curt Morgan How does a singing legend stay a legend for almost 50 years? Is it luck, chance… the blind draw of fate? Is that all there is? “Musicians keep a song fresh. You never stop listening to them and hearing what they\u2019re doing… “I\u2019ve been working a lot[…]<\/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-1273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pure Joy of Peggy Lee - 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\/the-pure-joy-of-peggy-lee\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pure Joy of Peggy Lee - Peggy Lee\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Curt Morgan How does a singing legend stay a legend for almost 50 years? 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