Peggy Lee bio on the way

[ghost of miles]

Posted on Songbirds this evening:

I know that it's another two weeks before it comes out, but what is

> the advance word on "Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee" by

> Peter Richmond?<<

The advance word from both reputable critics and Peggy Lee's family

has been favorable. Everybody's quiet now because they're waiting to

read it for themselves.

[Randy Twizzle]

I wonder if the book covers the Powers Coffee Shop years.

[ghost of miles]

Review:

"Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee" by Peter Richmond

(Holt)

by Benjamin Schwarz

The Atlantic, April 2006

Peggy Lee, of course, was one of the first great singer-songwriters

(she amassed more than 200 composing credits). She was also among

her era's finest recording artists (with her 1956 "Black Coffee,"

which epitomized world-weary sophistication for a generation, she

pioneered the "concept album"). She was, moreover, the greatest

chanteuse of her age (her minimalist and confessional style

perfectly suited the intimacy of the nightclub, and her act at

Ciro's in the 1940s and, above all, her engagement at Basin Street

East in the winter of 1961 remain legendary). She was, as Hoefer

declared, simply "the greatest white female jazz singer since

Mildred Bailey."

To some, this is like being declared the best Jewish player in the

NBA. But in fact Lee interpreted the urbane lyrics of the American

songbook with a knowingness, a resigned wit, a refined intelligence,

a quizzical irony -- conspicuous already in her first recording

triumph, "Why Don't You Do Right?" with the Benny Goodman Band --

that Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Billie Holiday could not

approach. On stage she didn't emote; she arched an eyebrow. The

introspective, slightly New Agey, domestically oriented Lee also led

an unusual life for a female entertainer of her time. Many of her

closest friends were men -- Bing Crosby, Johnny Mercer (her mentor

as a lyricist), Jimmy Durante, Frank Sinatra (only with the last was

she romantically linked). For a good part of her career, she was a

single mother. Her unremarkable 1989 autobiography (which, alas, she

insisted on authoring without the aid of a ghost writer) revealed

little about the nature of those friendships or her experiences

raising her daughter, although it was famously direct, if

understandably opaque, regarding her traumatic childhood on the

plains of North Dakota (Lee's father was an amiable but ineffectual

alcoholic; her stepmother beat her with sadistic regularity). This

book, which perforce draws heavily on Lee's, adds little to that

picture.

Richmond, though, firmly grasps Lee's musicianship, even if his

sound judgments often lack specificity (he doesn't, for instance,

assess precisely the enduring influence of the Goodman Band, for

which she was the canary from 1941 to 1943, on her phrasing and

technique, although he rightly and astutely acknowledges her 1942

recording with the band of "Where or When" -- the loveliest

rendition ever of that supremely lovely song -- as a landmark of

her "maturing style"). But he fails to put Lee -- in many ways as

emblematic of mid-century America's cultural and sexual style as was

Sinatra -- in a broader context, in the way that Gary Giddins

brilliantly did for Bing Crosby. Musicians, for the most part, leave

scant documentary records. So a great biography, like Giddins's,

must be as much a cultural history as a life history. Five singers

warrant that sort of treatment: Armstrong, Holiday, Crosby, Sinatra,

and Lee. Only one has yet received it.

[AllenLowe]

I love her early stuff from Capitol/Decca, but the later stuff (post 1960?) I find terrible - I'm not sure whether it's a matter of voice or arrangements - on the later material she seems buried in the arrangements, a small voice made to seem smaller in contrast - whereas on the earlier recordings her voice is the focus and it's allowed to work it's own magic without obstruction -

[Christiern]

I hope author Peter Richmond has a more realistic and focused grasp on Peggy Lee's life and place in the scheme of things than reviewer Schwartz seems to have. What a shallow review!

[jazzbo]

Where I start to lose interest is "Is that all There Is?" and beyond. . . I still like to spin one of the later albums now and then, but I LOVE the other stuff.

The sound of that voice!

You know, it's really wild how much my mom resembled the fifties/sixties Lee in a brunette way. Sometims I see pictures (for example the cover of Things are Swingin') and do a double take. And my dad strongly resembed Jimmy Giuffre during this time period as well (and my dad used to play clarinet occaisionally as I was growing up as well, played it during his school years).

I've got good jazz image genes I guess.