Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 464 pages
• Published by: Henry Holt and Co.
• Edition: 1st Edition March 21, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0805073833
• ASIN: B000S9HW9K
• Book Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.7 x 1.6 inches
• Weighs: 1.7 pounds

From Publishers Weekly
Miss Peggy Lee," as show marquees always billed her, is for Richmond a vocal genius on the level of Armstrong, Sinatra or Crosby, but one whose reputation has become overshadowed by time. The GQ reporter aims to restore Lee's luster by retelling the story of Norma Egstrom's (1920–2002) journey from listening to jazz on the radio in North Dakota to taking the stage alongside Benny Goodman's band as Peggy Lee, then moving on to even more astounding success in her solo career. Richmond is reverential toward Lee's interpretations of the "Great American Songbook" (though dismissive of attempts to incorporate contemporary tunes into her 1970s performances) and equally respectful toward her turbulent personal life. Although he acknowledges widespread testimony of her drinking, he defers to Lee's refusal to describe herself as an alcoholic. He is similarly circumspect in addressing her intimate relationships with stars like Sinatra and Quincy Jones. Although some readers will want more backstage details, Richmond would rather focus on the music, and it's in describing Lee's performances that his portrait most vibrantly comes to life: "When she sang 'Good mornin', sun—good mornin', sun!' her voice was so happy, it was as if she was swinging open the door and announcing the arrival of the postwar sunshine." Photos. (Apr. 5)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
In the early 1970s, Capitol Records released an album titled "Norma Deloris Egstrom from Jamestown, North Dakota." These were the roots of the singer who, broadcasting over WDAY in Fargo in 1937, borrowed the first name of neighbor Peggy Grant and the middle name of one of Grant's young sons to rename herself Peggy Lee. She and Norma pose an interesting pair, and the duel between the two is a major theme of Peter Richmond's biography of the celebrated singer.

Richmond perches Lee on a Mount Rushmore of popular jazz singers, along with Armstrong, Crosby and Sinatra. Richmond's assertion seems a slight stretch and baits a distracting and unhelpful debate. Lee placed her brand on certain songs, as did Armstrong; she was certainly as instinctual a jazz singer as Crosby, and she made you suspect, as did Sinatra, that a darker side lurked. But she could not be rated as influential and penetrating as the other three. Armstrong brought jazz out of its swaddling clothes. Though not the first, Crosby was certainly the quintessential crooner, eclipsing his predecessors and raising the bar for all who followed. Among them was Sinatra, who followed Crosby but established his own brand, a singer whose rendering of lyrics came out of the full experience of life, both bitter and sweet. Lee was more a stylist than a style maker, original to be sure, but not groundbreaking. But there's no debating that she should be included among the great interpreters of American popular song, or that an evening at home listening to Peggy Lee records is an exquisite pleasure.

During the 1940s, Lee carved out a singing style that many would describe as minimalist; she performed without the broad gestures and outstretched arms that were most singers' stock in trade. This compelled listeners, Andre Previn once observed, to focus on the song itself. Previn echoed the opinion of other musicians, that Lee had "the best sense of time" and was, he said, "right in the pocket." Music historians and critics often struggle to classify someone as either a pop or a jazz singer. In Lee's case, her affinity for the blues as well as pop and jazz made versatility her pigeonhole.

Benny Goodman, whose band Lee joined in 1941, brought her to nationwide recognition and did himself no harm in the process. Lee was drawn to black singer Lil Green's recording of "Why Don't You Do Right?" Goodman had it arranged for Lee, and the record enjoyed awesome sales.

When Goodman brought guitarist Dave Barbour into the band, Lee fell in love with his musicianship and, rapidly, with Barbour himself. The two married in 1943 and left the band in Los Angeles. Lee resisted entreaties to return to music, adamantly choosing to make a home, especially after the birth of her daughter, Nicki. In 1951, Barbour, an alcoholic, asked for a divorce to protect his daughter from seeing him at his worst. Although Lee granted it, she seems to have loved Barbour all her life.

In the early years of their marriage, Lee was often at the kitchen table writing songs. The very fact that she fell in love with a musician all but ensured that she would return to music, and Barbour was unreservedly insistent that she do so. She was soon recording for Capitol, often accompanied by Barbour, and the couple wrote a series of bankable hits, including bluesy tunes such as "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "You Was Right, Baby," as well as the unabashedly upbeat "It's A Good Day." Years later, Lee teamed with lyricist Sonny Burke to write the "Siamese Cat Song" and the others in Disney's "Lady and the Tramp," and Lee voiced the sultry dog named (what else?) Peg.

She was an unremitting perfectionist, carefully ordering the songs in her sets for pace and presentation of a range of moods. Though she earned phenomenal sums for her live appearances, she spent much of the take on the musicians, musical arrangements and clothes that enhanced the singer and her show.

Richmond's book, the first substantial Lee biography, is loaded with worthwhile detail. Wisely, Richmond cites Lee's own autobiography selectively, for her point of view and not as a source of gospel fact. However, easily avoidable errors crop up -- several details of a 1933 recording date led by Benny Goodman are amiss, Joe McCoy was no trumpeter but a guitarist, and the 1943 motion picture "The Powers Girl," while perhaps not in circulation, is hardly "lost." In the first portion of the book, Richmond seems overly taken with the idea of a young girl's destiny and is given occasionally to fanciful metaphors, but as he moves into the better documented years of Lee's life, the account settles down to one of exceptional interest, owing to the extent of Richmond's interviews with her associates and friends.

One thing he makes clear is that Lee was never afraid to be adventurous, and that it usually worked to her advantage. Her visions for the staging of her hit recordings of "Lover" and "Fever" were counterintuitive. "Fever" invited bombast, but Peggy and arranger Jack Marshall lent it a hip coffeehouse sound with the sparest of accompaniment from string bass, drums and finger snapping. For Rodgers and Hart's waltz, Peggy hired eight percussionists and treated "Lover" as if it were "Bolero," intensifying with every chorus. Lee's faith in the darkly comic Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller song "Is That All There Is?" had little support from her label and the tastemakers in the record industry. Capitol gave the record negligible promotion but found itself with a hit anyway.

But Lee sometimes missed the mark. Richmond writes perceptively about Lee's various albums, never afraid to comment frankly on what worked and what did not, and notes the periods when Lee, anxious to remain relevant to the music scene, instead lost her way. His account of her return to her roots on her last albums in the early 1990s is especially poignant.

Lee gave people any number of reasons to shorten their professional and personal associations with her. Her behavior could lose its moorings, even be a little bizarre, such as the occasion when she went into a near-hallucinatory ramble before French President Georges Pompidou at a White House state dinner in 1970. She was demanding of her musicians on the job and wanted them to party with her after hours. A club manager branded her a "high maintenance" attraction. As the years passed, she was plagued by a spate of maladies and accidents -- pneumonia, faints and falls. There was a succession of relationships with men, some strictly spiritual or intellectual, carried out in long distance calls that often came in the middle of the night. An accompanist and conductor who rejected a romantic advance from her recalled that "she would devour people like me." But many others stuck with her. Was it for the gratification of being in the inner circle of celebrity, or for the entertainment value of her unpredictability? No, they remained for the music, and because they recognized Lee's extraordinary if unconventional intellect and empathized with her desperate quest for some sort of inner peace. Performers, she once remarked, "dream of -- and seek -- reality."

Her associates frequently remark on the distinction Lee drew between the stage persona ("I don't want to talk about her") and Norma Egstrom. Richmond seems to accept and embrace this notion as a window into Lee's psyche. Dualities of this sort are frequently a little glib, especially in Lee's case, where there is such chaos that it's difficult to really know at any particular moment which one of her was in charge. However, neither of them failed the music, nor did the music fail her.

Reviewed by Rob Bamberger
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee (Hardcover) Richmond eloquently makes the case for Peggy Lee as one of most important interpreters of the "Great American Songbook," and some overstatement is probably in order for an artist remembered by many as little more than a sexy, breathy and sultry pop singer. But a reader might question whether the author really serves his subject well by insisting on her pre-emininent place among all female jazz singers. It would seem he could do Peggy more justice by arguing that she deserves a place close to if not alongside Ella, Sarah, and Lady Day (not to mention Carmen McRae, Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington, Anita O'Day, Rosemary Clooney). The author doesn't pretend to be a music critic, but his training as a sports writer is occasionally limiting. For example, concerning "The Shining Sea," a recording that some Lee fans (including this one) consider her own most luminescent moment, Richmond tells the story behind the song's composition and production but doesn't attempt to account for the sublimity of the performance itself or for the loss of that magic "cushion" of breathiness that eluded the singer when she reprised these songs on her last recordings. The musical coverage can be frustratingly uneven, making no mention of Peggy's own gem (covered by Nat Cole), "Where Can I Go Without You?" or her very last recording (better than "There'll Be Another Spring"). And what about her decision to keep singing "Manana" when PC policing was in full force? Nevertheless, Richmond's study demonstrates that Peggy Lee was not only a strong-willed, alluring, needful and complex woman with an inimitable personal sound but a complete musician and composer, sensitive interpreter of lyrics, and immensely gifted vocalist, whether singing big band swing, torchy ballads, introspective lyrics, or bracing proclamations. But she was also, especially when it came to her art, a relentless if unforgiving perfectionist. In fact, her need to be in "control" may have been a double-edged sword, accounting for much of her achievement but also serving to limit it. In jazz, the most noteworthy performances--those extemporaneous moments bearing what Whitney Balliett called "the sound of surprise"--have come from the performers whose talents frequently allowed them to throw caution to the winds and simply avail themselves of a serendipitous muse. Peggy's was a far more obedient, refined muse and, though distinctively original, rarely falling below or rising above expectations. (Her inspired session for Decca--"Black Coffee"--is certainly a felicitous exception. For Sinatra, Ella and Sarah, on the other hand, such "exceptions" were the rule.) Richmond offers no small amount of armchair psychoanalyzing, and most of it's admittedly tantalizing, though the emphasis on her "hypochondria" seems overdone (doggone it, some people are just chronically ill). But the focus on her Norma Egstrom/Peggy Lee split is highly provocative. The evidence would suggest that--like Dietrich, Mae West, Monroe--she remained trapped in the Lee totem. A chilling anecdote by an admirer about her response to his "daring" to excuse himself from the presence of that royal persona as well as her own request to be maintained on life support attest to a quasi-megalomania about one identity and deep insecurity about the other. Perhaps understandably so--would the admirer have even been attracted to Norma Egstrom? Would we? There's no denying that this is a fascinating read if not a page-turner. Most importantly, it will have you going back to Lee's old recordings and scouting out new ones, very likely making some discoveries not mentioned by the author. At that level, the book is five big stars. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)