One last story. For tours, Peggy would spend a great deal of time deciding what kind of show she wanted to do and what songs she wanted to perform. Her music library at her home had every arrangement for her recordings. She would choose a song, tell me if there was something she didn’t like about that particular arrangement, and we would try different ways to change it. Peggy was an excellent musician. She knew what she wanted to hear. After all, she spent her entire career working with the best writers and musicians. After choosing the songs, she would sequence the show. Then we would rehearse the show, usually at her home in Bel Air. Extreme detail and work went into planning and preparing her shows. That’s what I love about Tish’s book, the detail.
On a personal note, Tish and I have a special friendship. We have worked a lot of gigs as a duo. You really need to trust that other person in a duo. There’s no one else. The way to earn that trust is by having your fundamentals together and then making good musical choices. The key word is musical. Tish and I always come ready to play. We know the music and have all the details down. But above that, we recognize in each other the same intent to make the music great, not only our own part. Because we have all this together, we can be spontaneous in our performance. Joyful.
Tish has written a great book. She has detailed the creative genius of one of our national treasures, Peggy Lee. Because of my close association with Peggy on many fronts (guitarist, band member, arranger for her quintet, co-writer of her songs, musical director on tours, co-producer, and friend), I can confirm that what Tish wrote about the creativity of Peggy Lee is what I knew about Peggy. I can say, without reservation, that if you want to know who Peggy Lee really was, you should read this book.
Tish has a vast knowledge and understanding of her subject and passes this on to the reader in an easy style that compels you to keep reading. The detail is amazing. You experience Peggy Lee’s life through the lens of her creativity: every song, every show, every win, and every loss. This book is an excellent read for anyone and a special delight for Peggy Lee aficionados.
Introduction
The International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel reverberated with tumultuous applause when Peggy Lee was introduced on May 9, 1994. That evening the Society of Singers awarded Lee an “Ella” Lifetime Achievement Award at their gala tribute event in Beverly Hills. When a microphone was brought to her table, Lee briefly addressed the audience from her wheelchair before launching into a tear-jerking rendition of her original song “Here’s To You,” a musical toast dedicated to those in attendance. The singer bid all within earshot her sincerest best wishes in several languages, ending with her favorite blessing, “angels on your pillows.” The peerless timing, poignant phrasing, and gentle musical delivery that marked thousands of her performances quietly transformed into one of the last musical moments this remarkable artist would share with her adoring public.
During the course of her long and successful career, Lee grew into a globally beloved singer, composer, lyricist, voiceover artist, actress, and entertainer. The spectacularly diverse six-decade catalog of music she created represents one of the greatest artistic contributions by anyone to American music. Lee’s remarkable work in big band swing, pop, jazz, blues, the “cool” school, radio, television, film, and theatrical music permanently changed the landscape of American popular music as well as the role and society’s expectations of the female pop singer. Hailing from rural North Dakota, Norma Delores Egstrom would carve her own path as a force to be reckoned with in twentieth-century American popular music.
Lee’s unmistakable contributions and genius among her peers in the recording and performing industries have heretofore been inadequately documented. Intending to correct this shortfall, I set out to write not a biography, but a book about Lee’s music. While biographers relate surveys of an artist’s life, times, and their best-known works of art, few dive deeply into the entire oeuvre of an artist as prolific as Peggy Lee. The lack of documentation of Lee’s total creative work begs a volume dedicated to her music alone.
Lee’s musical contributions included several hit songs, a wide, varied palette of albums, success in several genres, fourteen films, an autobiographical Broadway show, scores of radio and television performances including those she herself hosted, and thousands of outstanding live performances. She also contributed her own signature style of understated singing, impeccable phrasing, meticulous attention to pitch and rhythm, stagecraft, poise, and a level of preparation uneclipsed by her peers. Somehow, in previous books about Lee, these innovations and accomplishments received only cursory glances. While vastly different biographical accounts of Lee’s life, marriages, successes, and personal failures have already been published, the facts pertaining to the artist’s incredible musical productivity and accomplishments have remained largely understated. Interviews with collaborative musicians, composers, and colleagues of Lee have reflected on the artist’s musical contributions, shedding new light on her motivation and unconquerable drive toward musical excellence.
Some questions arise when pulling the broad view of Lee’s life into a purely musical focus. How did her voice and musicianship evolve over the course of her six-decade career? What did she leave in regard to musical posterity for fans and others who would follow in her footsteps? How did Lee interpret the Great American Songbook, jazz, blues, ever-changing popular music, easy listening, and theatrical music? What was Lee’s significance as a lyricist of more than 270 songs? How did Lee continue to roll with the changing musical landscape as she aged? How did she somehow ensure ongoing posthumous success with a catalog of recordings still treasured by young audiences, television writers, and film music supervisors, now eighteen years since her death? Lee’s centennial birthday is an appropriate occasion at which to address these questions and grant the artist due credit for her phenomenal contributions to American music. This book focuses exclusively on Lee’s musical footprint and artistic legacy, beginning with an exploration of the true genius of the girl from rural North Dakota who would give us A Century of Song.
Chapter 1
A Voice for the Big City
In May 1920, just three short years after the first jazz record was made by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, a little girl who would forever change the development of jazz singing and American popular music was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, to Marvin and Selma Anderson Egstrom. Raised on a farm in the Midwest with no clear alternate pathway provided for her, Norma Delores Egstrom dreamed of becoming a professional singer like those she admired on the radio. Years later she shared in a personal interview that Maxine Sullivan, the African American singer who recorded the Scottish folksong “Loch Lomond” for Claude Thornhill’s band, exerted a strong early influence upon Norma, albeit merely over radio waves: “She sang very lightly, like a painter using very light brush strokes. She communicated so well that you really got the point right away.”[1]
Norma’s mother sang beautifully, played the family piano, and encouraged her children to make music together at home. A classmate of the Egstroms commented that Norma’s older sisters Della and Marianne had also possessed lovely singing voices but lacked the motivation to pursue music as a career.[2] Without any formal musical training, early in her teens Norma sought opportunities to sing in public. These community gatherings and talent shows eventually yielded her an opportunity to perform as a soloist on live radio close to her home in Jamestown. Introduced by a friend to Ken Kennedy, the music director at WDAY in Fargo, Norma was scheduled to perform live on his show, but Kennedy insisted she change her name first. Moments before she began her song, he nicknamed her “Peggy Lee” and the name stuck.
Lee sang at school throughout her teen years and picked up a job working as a waitress at the Powers Hotel Coffee Shop in Fargo. She was soon performing