{"id":1283,"date":"2013-01-19T11:23:30","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T11:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peggylee.com\/wp\/?p=1283"},"modified":"2021-08-04T10:19:13","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T14:19:13","slug":"the-woman-in-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peggylee.com\/the-woman-in-white\/","title":{"rendered":"The Woman in White"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n by Patricia O’Haire<\/p>\n

She comes into the room, and she\u2019s dressed all in white. Platinum hair, bangs straight cut across her forehead, white pantsuit \u2013 even white nail polish on her toes. The only bit of color \u2013 aside from the red and blue sparks the light makes as it bounces off the stones in the rings on her fingers \u2013 is a beige blouse.<\/p>\n

“Do you mind if I\u2019m not wearing shoes?” Peggy Lee asks. “My latest affliction,” she says, pointing to her toes. “I don\u2019t know why they hurt, but they do. The pain jumps from the left to the right, kinda like ping-pong balls.”<\/p>\n

White is her color; she wears it onstage and off. In this case, “off” is a suite overlooking Central Park, where she pours herself some tea and settles down on a couch.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s in town to make her annual appearance at the Ballroom (two weeks, starting tonight), and to record four albums \u2013 albums she\u2019s been meaning to get around for quite a while now, she confesses.<\/p>\n

Peggy Lee has been the ultimate cabaret singer-stylist for as long as she\u2019s been singing in nightclubs and cabarets (she\u2019s celebrating her 50th anniversary as a performer this year \u2013 she says it\u2019s 53. She\u2019s honest.)<\/p>\n

And she\u2019s always been the most sophisticated. Possessor of a most distinctive voice, she\u2019s honed her style to an almost lazy perfection over the years. Not lazy as in sluggish, but lazy as in steamy. Hot. There\u2019s a reason she raised temperatures with “Fever.”<\/p>\n

Yet this ultimate in nightclub sophistication was born 67 years ago about as far from the bright lights and big city as one can be \u2013 as a lonely, unhappy child in a tiny North Dakota town.<\/p>\n

Her only friend was her radio, and she listened to the music coming from it, learning the songs, the words and the inflections of the singers. When she was old enough, she left home and worked at anything and everything until she could sing.<\/p>\n

She remembers the radio programs fondly. “I heard Bessie Smith, Lil Green \u2013 she wrote “Why Don\u2019t You Do Right?” way back then. I still love those kind of blues, the kind you have to be real careful with when you sing the lyrics. Most of the words have four or five different meanings, and if you don\u2019t do \u2018em right, people don\u2019t get all the nuances.”<\/p>\n

She\u2019s done all kinds of music since then, and her performance spans most of the trends over the years, from old blues to big bands to jazz. She sang with the Benny Goodman Orchestra; her “Ma\u00f1ana” helped Latin music cross over to mainstream; “Lover” and “Fever” established her jazz credentials. The haunting “Is That All There Is?” defies classification, as does “Let\u2019s Love,” written for her by Paul McCartney.<\/p>\n

If you had to describe her in a word, it would have to be indomitable. She\u2019s had four husbands, one daughter and enough health problems to make Blue Cross shudder \u2013 but she\u2019s a survivor who faces her troubles with humor. “There\u2019s a beautiful rose named after me,” she says. “I have bushes of them all around my house.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s painful for her to stand for long, so she designed a chair to fit under the curve of the piano for her two weeks at The Ballroom.<\/p>\n

“The doctors told me I should stop working. I told them they\u2019re crazy. I like my house, but what would I sit and wait for? No thank you. Not me.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Patricia O’Haire She comes into the room, and she\u2019s dressed all in white. Platinum hair, bangs straight cut across her forehead, white pantsuit \u2013 even white nail polish on her toes. The only bit of color \u2013 aside from the red and blue sparks the light makes as it[…]<\/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-1283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Woman in White - 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-woman-in-white\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Woman in White - Peggy Lee\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Patricia O’Haire She comes into the room, and she\u2019s dressed all in white. 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