{"id":1297,"date":"2013-01-19T11:40:31","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T11:40:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peggylee.com\/wp\/?p=1297"},"modified":"2021-08-04T10:19:11","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T14:19:11","slug":"peggy-springs-eternal-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peggylee.com\/peggy-springs-eternal-lee\/","title":{"rendered":"Peggy Springs Eternal-Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n by Harry Haun<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t go to just anyone to write a song for a Sterling Hayden stalwart, but then Peggy Lee has never been accused of being just anyone. She is \u2013 above and beyond being one of our supreme song stylists \u2013 a songwriter of some note, both sharp and flat, and she\u2019s been doing that for most of her half-century in the business.<\/p>\n

A singer who writes his own material is Standard Operational Procedure today, but Peggy Lee led that parade as far back as “Ma\u00f1ana.” As a woman, she\u2019s the George Eliot of American pop music (only, unlike the authoress of Silas Marner, she made her way in this male-dominated world under her own name \u2013 and steam).<\/p>\n

Tonight, when she bows at the Ballroom for a three-week return engagement, she\u2019ll be leafing lightly through something called The Peggy Lee Songbook \u2013 which, not so incidentally, is the name of her new album Musicmasters releases a week from today. The show and the record (subtitled There\u2019ll Be Another Spring) are brimming with primal Peggy Lee, songs she has written the words and\/or music to away from the spotlight. “You\u2019d think after a while I wouldn\u2019t be excited about anything, but I am \u2013 I still am,” she declares with a slight lilt in her smoky voice. “The musicians have talked me into doing my own songs.”<\/p>\n

Many of these are standards now, but she and her guitarist-musical director, John Chiodini, mixed in a few new numbers and updated others, like adding fresh lyrics to her signature “Fever.” She figures she has a couple hundred others where these came from. “We have Volume One out now, and John and I hope to do Volume Two \u2013 and Three.”<\/p>\n

The Lady Lee hung around with some pretty classy composers in her time and has songs to prove it. Her longtime friendship with Victor Young yielded [the theme song from] About Mrs. Leslie, “Where Can I Go Without You?” and the aforementioned Sterling Hayden title-tune (“Johnny Guitar,” a.k.a. Joan Crawford Goes West).<\/p>\n

Producer George Pal got her to write a particularly perky score for tom thumb and a song \u2013 “The Land of the Leal” \u2013 that was cut from his film, The Time Machine.<\/p>\n

But her best-known, and best-loved, lyrics were the six songs she and Sonny Burke wrote for Walt Disney\u2019s 1955 animated feature Lady and the Tramp. For that chore, she received $1,000 \u2013 plus another $3,500 for doing the voices for “two cats, one dog and one human being.” In November, 1988, when the film rang up $90 million in videocassette sales, Lee slapped at $25 million suit against the studio.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s still pending,” she says. “In fact, I just received about 2 pounds of paper for me to read while I\u2019m preparing for my Ballroom opening. They haven\u2019t made any moves to offer a settlement so I\u2019m perfectly willing \u2013 in fact, very happy \u2013 to go right on straight to trial. An artist lives by making money on his art. I don\u2019t know why they don\u2019t realize that. When you hear some of the executives there make $50 million a year \u2013 plus perks \u2013 you wonder what they\u2019d miss by paying a few artists.”<\/p>\n

The irony is Peggy Lee \u2013 for all of her high profile \u2013 has made more of a mark in movies as a lyricist than as a singer-actress. She has only starred in two films; one was an unfortunate remake of The Jazz Singer with Danny Thomas, the other was a showy supporting stint in Pete Kelly\u2019s Blues. Her work in the latter was extraordinary. She played a saloon-singer moll who boozes too much, gets battered by her gangland boyfriend, goes crazy and, hardest of all, has to sing off-key. (One immortal line: “Well, there won\u2019t be no patter of little feet in my house \u2013 unless I was to rent some mice.”) It was a role that came very close to winning Lee an Oscar. “Sometimes I think the reason I wasn\u2019t given any other movie roles to play was because I played the alcoholic too well, and producers thought they couldn\u2019t depend on me.”<\/p>\n

Dependability turns out to be her middle name. Two months away from 70, after numerous illnesses and four failed marriages, she keeps right on singing. “It\u2019s always been pointed out to me, \u2018Look what you\u2019ve been through.\u2019 I\u2019ve learned that each time I went through a difficult period, if I kept my wits about me and handled it properly, I\u2019d come out the other end of it stronger. And that\u2019s just the way it has been for me.<\/p>\n

After all, “Ma\u00f1ana” is another day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Harry Haun You don\u2019t go to just anyone to write a song for a Sterling Hayden stalwart, but then Peggy Lee has never been accused of being just anyone. She is \u2013 above and beyond being one of our supreme song stylists \u2013 a songwriter of some note, both[…]<\/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-1297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-library"],"yoast_head":"\nPeggy Springs Eternal-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\/peggy-springs-eternal-lee\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Peggy Springs Eternal-Lee - Peggy Lee\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Harry Haun You don\u2019t go to just anyone to write a song for a Sterling Hayden stalwart, but then Peggy Lee has never been accused of being just anyone. 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