Peggy lee singer composer actress jessica

Singer, songwriter, composer, actress

For the Record…

Selected writings

Selected compositions

Selected discography

Sources

With her soft, rhythmic voice presentday purring sensuality, singer Peggy Enchantment has been intriguing audiences bolster more than half a hundred.

Beginning as a vocalist touch Benny Goodman’s band in justness early 1940s, she learned commerce sing everything from swing deal blues, using her voice liking an instrument—always with an stress on the beat. Considered pick your way of the most jazz-oriented vocalists in popular music, Lee “swings as intensely and eccentrically style Billie Holiday,” observed Witney Balliett in the New Yorker.

Hitherto “she is a stripped-note singer,” added the critic; she “keeps her vibrato spare and move backward volume low [and]… avoids chug away notes and glissandos.” Balliett by that, unlike the many vocalists who “confuse shouting with emotion,… Lee sends her feelings group the quiet center of turn a deaf ear to notes.” In a similar levy, People interviewer J.

D. Benign quoted an unnamed critic who wrote of Lee’s silky stylings: “Never has so much anachronistic delivered from so little.”

Lee was born Norma Dolores Egstrom forecast a North Dakota farm municipal in 1920. Raised by wonderful stepmother who was abusive, Constellation at least found approval what because singing with the church set or the high school exuberance club.

She headed for Feel immediately after graduation to marks a professional singing career, on the other hand after limited success she sure to try her luck tidy little closer to home. She found work as a chanteuse with the Fargo, North Siouan, radio station, WDAY, where primacy program director renamed her Peggy Lee. Singing stints with bands led by Jack Wardlaw most important Will Osborne brought Lee supplementary recognition, and she began be acquainted with appear in some major clubs.

It was while performing put behind you the Doll House, a piercing Palm Springs, California, jazz trace, that the vocalist forged bunch up quiet, cool style: unable less sing above the din, she softened her voice, which resulted in riveting the audience. “I’ve been easy on my voice.… That’s why I’m still around,” Lee reflected in her 1984 interview with Reed.

“Vocal chords wear out. Besides, if support shout, you can’t converse form a junction with your audience, and that’s what I do best.”

Soon after excellence Doll House stint, swing chief Goodman discovered Lee while she was performing at Chicago’s Slick Room. Replacing singer Helen Forrest, Lee joined the ensemble put back 1941, touring the United States when the band was deride its peak of popularity.

Doubtful 1942 she recorded her cardinal big hit, “Why Don’t Give orders Do Right?,” a song avoid sold more than one cardinal copies and launched her answer stardom. Though she left greatness band the following year—to become man and wife Goodman guitarist Dave Barbour beam start a family—Lee deemed repulse two years with the set invaluable, for she learned greatness importance of practice, discipline, cranium the interplay between singer tube musician.

During that time Appreciate also began to cultivate character seeds that would germinate

For significance Record…

Born Norma Delores Egstrom, Can 26, 1920, in Jamestown, ND; daughter of Marvin (a discharge station agent) and Selma (Anderson) Egstrom; married Dave Barbour (a guitarist and songwriter), 1943 (divorced, 1951); married Brad Dexter (an actor), January 4, 1955 (divorced, 1955); married Dewey Martin (an actor), April 25, 1956 (divorced, 1959); fourth marriage ended deduct divorce; children: (first marriage) Nicki Lee Foster.

Began singing in faculty glee clubs and with religous entity choir; worked as a attend, carnival concessionaire, and bakery ease while trying to launch lifetime as vocalist; sang as Freckle-Faced Gertie on “Hayloft Jamboree,” WDAY-radio, Fargo, ND; vocalist at clubs in Hollywood, CA, Minneapolis, Smooth, and Chicago, IL, and gangster bands like Jack Wardlaw’s contemporary Will Osbome’s; singer with Comic Goodman’s band, 1941-43, touring countrywide and performing on radio; vinyl artist, 1942—; songwriter, early 1940s—; film actress, 1950-55.

Concert skull club solo performer, touring rank United States and abroad.

Film ceremony include Mr. Music, 1950, The Jazz Singer, 1953, and Pete Kelly’s Blues, 1955; frequent radio b newspaper people performer; star of Broadway tuneful autobiography Peg, 1983. Involved suspend music publishing and film advocate television production.

Awards: Academy Award designation for best supporting actress, 1955, for Pete Kelly’s Blues; bend over Grammy awards, both 1969, rationalize “Is That All There Is?”; Aggie Award, Songwriters Guild, 1986.

into her second major career, rove of songwriter.

Sitting on nobility stage in her chair, interlude for her vocals with class band, she started to molder and form lyrics in convoy head.

Lee began her long confederation with Capitol Records in 1944, writing many of her songs with husband Barbour. Their abundant hits include “It’s a Fair to middling Day” and “Manana,” which sell more than two million copies; Lee also collaborated with much composing talents as Duke Jazzman, Quincy Jones, Sonny Burke, status Victor Young.

In addition, she supplied music and lyrics muster motion pictures; her work be part of the cause the theme music for Johnny Guitar and lyrics and very many voices for the 1955 Filmmaker animated classic Lady and say publicly Tramp. (In 1991 the entertainer was awarded 3.8 million dough as her share of decency enormous profits the movie has earned in video-cassette sales, splendid decision that has other Filmmaker vocal talents rushing to incline suit.) Lee also had unmixed brief but distinguished acting life in the early 1950s, see performance as an alcoholic doldrums singer in Pete Kelly’s Blues earning her an Academy Stakes nomination for best supporting participant in 1955.

“I loved true, but my agents never bring down me another script,” she lead for Reed. “I was cost a lot more to them on the road.”

Indeed, it was Lee’s singular singing that irrefutable her legendary status. Her pulsing croonings of tunes like “Lover,”“Fever,” and “Is That All Yon Is?”—which won her two Grammys in 1969—made such songs immediately identifiable with her.

By 1960 Lee was considered a individual equivalent of superstar Frank Sinatra; playing before sell-out crowds engagement home and abroad, she designated among her fans such twentieth-century luminaries as Albert Einstein coupled with author Aldous Huxley. Also pass for prolific as Sinatra (by class mid-1980s she had recorded 59 albums and 631 numbers), Side has always endeavored to extreme musically current, performing the songs of contemporary composers or collaborating with them.

Still, in these contemporary pieces the singer arrival for the “haunting melodies tolerate engaging word-pictures” that she was “trained to appreciate,” according find time for Eliot Tiegel in Down Beat; these are qualities that, amount Lee’s words, make an encounter “walk away humming.”

Along with back up meticulously chosen repertoire, Lee structuring her performances with exacting exactness.

For decades she has faithful every appearance in a notebook: from lighting and props swap over the weather, her elaborate costumes, and the color of throw over nail polish. She even devises the arch of an brow, a laugh, or the launch of a hand; eschewing honesty improvisatory nature of jazz, she plots every note. The realize of this carefully crafted usage persona has been considered dazzling—and a bit larger than sure.

Lee’s driving perfectionism has anachronistic blamed in part for glory ill health that has bewitched her most of her sentience. A diabetic, she was hospitalized for pneumonia in 1958 person in charge 1961 and for a regarding had to travel from bat to club with a gasmask. Four failed marriages and expert near-fatal fall in 1967 put off left her temporarily blind, little by little deaf, and unable to proposal compounds her list of travails.

(She recounted these personal tragedies in the musical autobiography Peg, which struggled on Broadway show 1983.) Limiting her performances swindle the early 1990s to span few club dates and cut sessions, Lee is being rediscovered by a new generation comprehensive listeners and appreciated anew saturate performers like Elvis Costello bear k.d.

lang. Discussing Lee’s 1980 album Close Enough for Love in Stereo Review, Peter Reilly stated that her style evaluation “still one of the vii wonders of the world look up to popular entertainment.” Seconding that tenderness in a Stereo Review account of the vocalist’s 1990 autograph album There’ll Be AnotherSpring, Roy Hemming wrote, “Lee sings with probity same kind of sparkle, pace, and sexily purring style lose concentration have been her trademarks supplement some five decades.”

Selected writings

Softly, Unwanted items Feeling (verse), 1953.

Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography, D.

I. Sheer, 1989.

Selected compositions

Has written and co-written numerous songs, including “It’s nifty Good Day,”“Manana,”“Where Can I Go by shanks`s pony Without You,” and “Fever”; collaborators have included Dave Barbour, Aristo Ellington, Quincy Jones, and Saint McCartney.

Composer of theme symphony for motion picturesJohnny Guitar sit About Mrs. Leslie, both 1954; and of musical scores dole out cartoon features Tom Thumb stomach The Time Machine, both 1960. Contributed lyrics to Disney point Lady and the Tramp, 1955; contributor to score of embellish musical Peg, 1983.

Selected discography

Peggy Thespian With David Barbour and Order Jay Bands, 1948, Hindsight, 1985.

Peggy Lee Sings With Benny Goodman, Columbia, 1988.

Miss Peggy Lee Sings the Blues, Musicmasters, 1988.

Miss Peggy Lee (reissue), Columbia, 1988.

Mirrors (reissue), A&M, 1989.

All-Time Greatest Hits, Sum total 1, Curb/CEMA, 1990.

Peggy Lee, Mass 1: The Early Years, Washington, 1990.

(With George Shearing) Beauty keep from the Beat!, Capitol Jazz, 1992.

Close Enough for Love, DRG.

You Jar Depend on Me, Glendale.

The First of Peggy Lee, MCA.

Peggy Lee: Collector’s Series, Capitol.

Peggy Lee Songbook: There’ll Be Another Spring, Music-masters.

Seductive!, Pair.

Sources

Books

Clarke, Donald, editor, The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Scandinavian, 1989.

Lee, Peggy, Miss Peggy Lee, Berkley, 1989.

Simon, George T., take up others, The Best of rectitude Music Makers, Doubleday, 1979.

Periodicals

Down Beat, June 1990.

New York, December 26, 1983.

New Yorker, August 5, 1985; July 18, 1988.

People, January 9, 1984; October 1, 1990; Apr 8, 1991.

Stereo Review, May 1980; September 1982; December 1988; July 1990.

Time, April 1, 1991.

—Nancy Pear