Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee
A Century of Song
Tish Oney
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
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Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Oney, Tish, 1969–, author.
Title: Peggy Lee : a century of song / Tish Oney.
Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “One hundred years after the legendary singer’s birth, this book brings to life the career of an iconic performer whose contributions to the Great American Songbook, jazz, popular music, and film music remain unparalleled. Tish Oney explores Lee’s musical technique, and interviews with family, friends, and colleagues reveal new insights”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020000898 (print) | LCCN 2020000899 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538128473 (cloth) | ISBN 9781538128480 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Lee, Peggy, 1920–2002. | Singers—United States—Biography.
Classification: LCC ML420.L294 O64 2020 (print) | LCC ML420.L294 (ebook) | DDC 782.42164092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000898
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000899
Acknowledgments
With my whole heart I thank God for fostering this vision and for giving me the strength, health, and necessary diligence to complete it. I offer sincerest thanks to John Chiodini for our years of collaborating onstage and off. He remains a joy to perform with and a dear friend, and I am tickled to consider this yet another collaboration we have created together. I sincerely wish to thank Holly Foster-Wells, Nicki Lee Foster, and Peggy Lee Associates, LLC, for their wealth of information, generosity, and encouragement to see this project through. I offer thanks to Mike and Peter Stoller for their time, insights, feedback, and contributions to this book. Iván Santiago-Mercado’s online discography and videography provided a plethora of invaluable facts and details—thank you, Iván. Both Will Friedwald’s and David Torresen’s various writings, including liner notes within Lee’s albums, supplied valuable insights and observations. I warmly thank my editors, Natalie Mandziuk, Michael Tan, and John Cerullo, for their guidance and help transforming this project from a long-incubating set of ideas into a published book. I lovingly thank my mother for introducing me to Peggy Lee’s music when I was particularly impressionable. I extend sincerest thanks to my husband, George, for his support and sustaining encouragement. I thank the hundreds of professional musicians with whom I have worked over the years—thank you for the magic we have co-created and continue to create together! I thank all my teachers—how blessed I have been to have been shaped intellectually and musically by some of the most outstanding minds and talents on the planet. Finally, I thank the thousands of audiences that have enjoyed and supported my music and the many fans who urged me to write this book. This is for you.
Foreword
John Chiodini
Tish called me one day and asked for an interview. I did not know her at the time. She was attending the University of Southern California and writing her doctoral dissertation on the “lyrical genius of Peggy Lee.” She asked if we could talk about my experiences working with Ms. Lee in the studios on recording projects and live performances. Her focus was on Peggy Lee’s creativity as a songwriter. We got together, and that led to the creation of not only the Peggy Lee Project, a touring show that highlights Peggy Lee as a songwriter, but also a wonderful friendship and professional partnership. In the ensuing years, Tish and I have recorded four CDs together and performed for live audiences nationally. The latest album, Tish Oney with the John Chiodini Trio: The Best Part, includes three songs that I co-wrote with Peggy Lee but that were never recorded by Peggy or anyone else.
I started working with Peggy Lee in 1979, recording a few tracks on her DRG Close Enough for Love album. I was subbing for another guitar player who couldn’t make a certain date. I was recommended by Peggy’s longtime friend, bassist Max Bennett. To promote the album on TV, it was sent to The Tonight Show and The Mike Douglas Show, among others, and the producers of those shows chose “It Was Just One of Those Things” as the song they wanted Peggy to perform. I had come up with a funky rhythm lick that Peggy liked, so I was invited to join her band to perform the song on the TV shows. After that, we played an engagement at the Westwood Playhouse. The band was great—Mike Renzi, Grady Tate, Jay Leonhart, and Mark Sherman. It was wonderful to play for Peggy Lee and be a part of that band. I stayed with Peggy for about ten years. There were many tours and three more albums, but the special part was co-writing songs and creating music with Peggy Lee.
Tish could have called this book Anatomy of a Singer. Anatomy, according to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, is “a study or examination of a process in order to understand and explain how it works.” This is what Tish has done in this book, what makes it unique: no gossip, no rumors—just enough personal information to propel the story of how Peggy Lee created her amazing music by connecting one period of her life to the next.
In the midst of studying the anatomy of Peggy Lee’s music, how it was actually created, Tish reveals the recording industry at that particular time, especially how male dominance caused female artists to have a much smaller role. Peggy’s approach would take decades to accomplish, although radio broadcasts helped her craft her skills as a pop diva, jazz singer, and concert and recording producer. Tish shows how Peggy always fought for musical artists and songwriters to receive the proper royalties for their work, from jukeboxes to film. Any one of us who collects royalties from the film industry has to acknowledge Peggy Lee’s commitment and victory.
Tish details Peggy’s sense of adventure. In film, as a singer, actor, composer, lyricist, and voiceover artist (as both a performer and a music creator), she always went her own way. She created her own music videos. She sang and collaborated with the other singers and songwriters of her time—just about everyone you could think of.
This book is like a series of short stories. Sometimes you hear about this or learn that. At other times something historic is happening. There are many surprises in these chapters. Tish’s attention to detail is very compelling, and you want to keep reading.
A couple of my experiences working with Peggy Lee exactly mirror what Tish has written about in this book. For example, I witnessed what Tish describes about Peggy Lee’s belief in visual appearance mattering as much as musical performance. When the lighting for a show was not what she wanted or expected, she would claim to enter a vortex, and nobody wanted to see that. The lighting had to be exact. No improvising.
Before