The song “Is That All There Is?” is closely associated with Peggy Lee, but a far better comment on her extraordinary life and talent would be “Who Could Ask for Anything More?” One of America’s most popular and capable singers from the 1940s to the 1960s, Lee continued performing into the 1990s, blending satiny sexiness with subtle sass. And she capped this combination with a rare intelligence that also found an outlet in her Academy Award-nominated acting and her writing of several pop standards, as well as the 1995 autobiography Miss Peggy Lee—a title referring to the deservedly respectful way she is always introduced.
Raised on a farm near Jamestown, North Dakota, where she was born on May 26, 1920, as Norma Dolores Engstrom, Lee knew by the time she was a teenager that she had a knack for singing. She also knew that she wanted to see California, described as paradise in letters from a girlfriend. To her surprise, in 1936 her father, a railroad employee, gave her not only permission but a train pass as well. “He wasn’t trying to get rid of me,” the singer explained in a 1984 interview, “he just had faith in me.” Eventually, Lee joined the Jack Wardlow band, but her big break came in 1941, when Benny GOODMAN hired her to replace Helen Forrest in his orchestra. In 1942, Lee was successful with “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” and the No. 4 hit “Why Don’t You Do Right?” Despite this success, she retired the next year after marrying Goodman’s guitarist, Dave Barbour.
She was soon lured back into the music world by Dave Dexter of Capitol Records, and a string of hits followed her return to recording in 1945, among them “It’s a Good Day” (1947) and the No. 1 1948 hit “sMañana,” one of many songs she co-wrote with Barbour. When Capitol refused to let her record her own, dramatically driving arrangement of “Lover,” she switched to Decca. In 1952, that song became the first of many hits for that label, where she honed her skills as a jazz singer with superb numbers like “Black Coffee” (1953), and as a master of melancholy in recordings such as “Where Can I G o Without You?” She also sang in rhythm-and-blues style (R&B) in “Fever” (1958) and “Hallelujah I Love Him So” (1959).
Her ability to get inside the character of a song subject also found expression in the tragic character she etched in the 1955 film Pete Kelly’s Blues, for which she was nominated for an Oscar. Other film appearances were in The Jazz Singer (1953), a remake of the 1927 Al JOLSON film and in Mr. Music (1950) with Bing CROSBY. The same year, she contributed two songs, “He’s a Tramp” and “The Siamese Cat Song” to Disney’s animated classic Lady and the Tramp.
Lee’s songwriting abilities covered a variety of styles, from blues to showtime, and she collaborated with, among others, Quincy JONES, Cy COLEMAN, and Duke ELLINGTON. Lee’s way with a wistful mood, at its finest in her last big hit, “Is That All There Is?” (1969), must have been largely shaped by events in her own l i f e—especially health problems and a 1952 divorce from the alcoholic Barbour. Though plagued by diabetes, heart disease, and other problems (including the failure of her Broadway show Peg), Lee emerged triumphant with a well-received 1989 autobiography, the winning of more than a million dollars in a 1990s lawsuit against Disney over revenue from Lady and the Tramp, the homage of singers ranging from Julie London to MADONNA, and a high place in the history of popular music. Calling Peggy Lee “one of the greatest singers in the English language” in a 1987 appraisal, music critic Gene Lees wrote that her singing has “a deep sense of the life behind it and emotion within it, creating the illusion of intimate, unpremeditated self-revealment.”
Terry Atkinson
SEE ALSO:
JAZZ; POPULAR MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Lee, Peggy. Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography (London: Bloomsbury, 1991);
Towe, Ronald. Here’s to You: The Complete Bio-discography of Miss Peggy Lee (San Francisco, CA: R. Towe Music, 1986).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Black Coffee; Peggy Lee, Vol. 1 —The Early Years.