0:01

And when it was all over, I said

0:03

to myself.

0:06

That all there is.

0:09

In nineteen seventy, Peggy Lee

0:12

won a Grammy for Is That

0:14

All There Is? A

0:18

song many heard as an anthem

0:20

of on we, but not Peggy.

0:24

She saw it as absolutely

0:27

life affirming and hopeful that bad

0:29

things are going to happen and that

0:31

you can rise above them.

0:34

Greg got the boom, stand

0:38

back.

0:38

And have a ball, celebrate

0:41

life in spite of all

0:43

of this that's happening.

0:48

And Peggy Lee had a lot to celebrate.

0:52

At fifty, she was already a legend,

0:55

an artist of astonishing versatility,

1:02

a heartbreaker, anoles

1:07

spring, a

1:10

trailblazer, and

1:18

a master of cool.

1:21

When you put your arms around me,

1:24

I get a fever. That's a hard

1:26

began a fever.

1:30

Musically, how many different Peggy

1:32

Lees over there? God dozens?

1:36

Watch that bringency?

1:38

How it's blooded.

1:39

When there's platin sugar, there's

1:42

blues things I swinging,

1:45

there's jazz, there's

1:49

pop.

1:51

Creatively, she seemed utterly unafraid.

1:54

Oh, you want me to do the folks who live on the hill, so

1:57

you'll weep. I can do that. You want me to do black

1:59

coffee, so you think it's like, oh, I'm hanging out

2:01

with junkies at a kitchen table.

2:03

I can do that.

2:04

Personally, she was more conflicted.

2:07

I never wanted to be a star.

2:09

Yeah, I wanted to sing around the house

2:12

and the paint and write

2:15

and raised babies and

2:18

those kinds of things.

2:19

She would say that all the time.

2:21

Do you think that was what she wanted?

2:22

I think it was on some level what she wanted,

2:25

But.

2:25

That compulsion to create, she.

2:28

Couldn't tamp it down.

2:30

There was nobody like her.

2:32

Andre Previn, who was a jazz pianist

2:35

and played with all of them, he

2:37

told me that he thought she was the best

2:39

of them all.

2:40

Does she get the respect she deserves today?

2:42

You know?

2:44

And when Sir Andre Previn says to me, she's

2:46

better than Ella, because Ella could only do

2:48

certain things at which she was the best,

2:51

but Peggy could do everything.

2:52

That was the curse From

2:54

CBS Sunday Morning and iHeart

2:57

I'm Morocca and this is

3:00

Mobituaries This

3:09

moment Peggy Lee, January

3:12

twenty first, twenty oh two. The

3:15

death of cool I

3:41

came to Peggy Lee relatively late

3:43

in life. You know how kids

3:45

are drawn to big, bold colors,

3:47

Well, growing up, I was drawn

3:49

to big, bold voices like

3:52

bat Banatar, running with

3:54

the Side, or

3:58

Broadways, Lori beach Me belting

4:01

it out in Annie and Why,

4:08

and of course Barbara always

4:11

Barbara.

4:19

Last Lee.

4:23

But Peggy Lee she

4:25

was more my father's generation of music.

4:28

Wasn't she that woman who sang about the doggie

4:30

in the window?

4:31

How much is that dog

4:34

in the window?

4:38

Sorry? That was Patty Page? And no

4:40

disrespect to Patty Page. Her Tennessee

4:42

Waltz undos me every time.

4:45

The first time I really paid any attention to

4:47

Peggy Lee was well, naturally,

4:49

in nineteen ninety seven, when comedian

4:51

Ellen DeGeneres came out to ABC's

4:54

Diane Sawyer and forty million

4:56

other people in a nationally televised

4:58

interview.

4:59

Did you have sexual relations with men?

5:01

I slept with.

5:05

Two men.

5:06

Yes.

5:09

Didn't like it. Didn't

5:11

like it.

5:13

That Peggy Lee song Is that all there is?

5:15

That was going over and over my head the first time.

5:18

Just kept singing, is that all there

5:20

is? My dear?

5:21

Then let's keep dancing, that's

5:24

what's going I thought, Am I crazy?

5:25

Because I shouldn't be hearing Peggy Lee right now?

5:28

Of course, when I profiled Ellen in twenty

5:30

eleven for CBS Sunday Morning. I

5:33

had to ask about that. I've always wanted

5:35

to know after the interview, when you

5:37

came out, did Peggy Lee get in contact

5:40

with you?

5:40

No, No, she didn't.

5:43

That's a good question, though, But

5:46

I bet I'm not the only person who

5:49

had sex and for the first

5:51

time and had that Peggy Lee song.

5:53

Is that all there is in their head? She

5:55

did? Is that all there is?

5:56

And you give me fever?

5:57

So something must have changed. She must have switched partners,

6:00

right, It's probably true.

6:02

Good. It was then that I started

6:04

to give Peggy Lee a real listen, and

6:06

I came to appreciate the shades

6:09

of gray in her voice. She

6:11

could swing with the best of them, but she

6:13

was more likely to hold back, like

6:16

she was keeping a secret.

6:22

Johnnia, who

6:24

was this woman? Where did she come from?

6:31

And that wind, it's like a rumbling.

6:33

It's powerful, feels

6:36

like I could blow this house down.

6:41

I met Peggy Lee's granddaughter, Holly

6:44

Foster Wells, on the second floor

6:46

of an old train depot in the

6:48

tiny town of Wimbledon, North Dakota.

6:51

There's no other way to put it. This

6:53

place is in the middle of nowhere.

6:56

Thirty miles from the big city

6:59

of Jamestown, North Dakota, where

7:01

Peggy was born in nineteen twenty. Today,

7:04

this train depot is the Peggy

7:06

Lee Museum. It's also where

7:08

Peggy lived when she was a teenager

7:11

or standing in her bedroom.

7:13

The first time I came here, and I walked upstairs

7:16

and I stood in front of this window, I

7:19

burst into tears.

7:20

By the way, Holly really looks like her

7:22

grandmother, blonde hair, saying,

7:24

big bright eyes.

7:26

Even today when we've been

7:28

talking here, it's like I feel I

7:30

feel her here.

7:34

Peggy was still Norma Dolores

7:36

Eggstrom when she lived here.

7:39

She wouldn't have been Peggy Lee without

7:41

Norma. She wouldn't have been Peggy Lee without

7:44

this heartache.

7:46

And the heartache started early.

7:48

Her mother passed away when she was four.

7:51

It was a traumatic event

7:53

that I think that

7:56

was kind of the beginning of her

7:59

search, her search for healing.

8:03

Norma adored her father, who

8:05

was the town's railroad depot manager,

8:08

but he was an alcoholic.

8:10

She helped run the depot when her

8:12

dad wasn't in a good place.

8:16

Even worse, the woman her father remarried

8:18

was abusive. Peggy later

8:21

claimed her stepmother once beat

8:23

her over the head with a cast iron

8:25

skillet.

8:26

So I went through all that and I learned

8:28

a great deal from that.

8:30

That's Peggy talking to CBS much

8:33

later in nineteen eighty six.

8:35

I learned how I run real that

8:39

few other things like that.

8:48

She said she would look out at the railroad

8:50

tracks and just imagine where they

8:52

led. And she said, one

8:55

day, I'm gonna leave this place as soon as I know

8:57

where those train tracks lead. And

8:59

it was a it was a way out. And of course

9:01

her other way out was music.

9:04

Now, radio was still a relatively

9:07

new technology around the time Norma

9:09

entered high school in the early nineteen thirties.

9:12

Tuning the dials of her Atwater Kent

9:14

five tube radio receiver, she

9:16

fell in love with the voices of Maxine

9:20

Sullivan.

9:21

Oh you take the high road, Now

9:23

take the low road, alb and scottlanderfio.

9:27

A young Louis Armstrong.

9:30

I'm so happy, asking me when

9:33

this wing that music from?

9:37

And Billie Holiday. Yes,

9:44

this white girl from the tundra, who had

9:46

only ever sung hymns at her Lutheran

9:48

church is listening mostly to

9:51

black artists. But that's

9:53

the music that spoke to her.

9:55

At seventeen, Norma was invited

9:57

to audition for the biggest radio

10:00

station in North Dakota. This is

10:02

Wday Fargo, W

10:04

Day Fargo. That's

10:07

when program director Ken Kennedy

10:09

made a fateful decision. As she later

10:11

recalled in a nineteen seventy five interview,

10:15

the.

10:15

Name Norma Egstrom didn't

10:17

sound right.

10:19

He said, let's see, you.

10:20

Look like a you look like a Peggy

10:25

Maggy?

10:26

What Beggy?

10:26

What you need?

10:28

Tried a few names and came up with Lee and it

10:30

was That was really how it started.

10:33

She had the Peggy Lee name. The

10:35

Peggy Lee sound came two years

10:38

later, after she made her way to California.

10:41

Still unknown, she was singing at

10:43

the Dollhouse Restaurant in Palm Springs

10:46

before a raucous crowd celebrating

10:48

comedian Jack Benny's birthday. Biographer

10:52

Peter Richmond, author of Fever,

10:54

The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee,

10:57

describes the scene.

10:58

People are just laughing, and so

11:00

she's getting pissed off. And she's only like nineteen,

11:03

and she's singing in a good club in front of celebrities.

11:06

She's pissed. And that's when Peggy

11:09

decided if she couldn't sing over

11:11

them, she'd sing under

11:13

them.

11:14

So she starts singing softer

11:17

and softer, until

11:20

people start getting quiet because they can't hear

11:22

her singing. And now they're listening,

11:24

and now they're captured. That's

11:27

when she understood volume wasn't

11:29

going to be the thing. Nuance was

11:31

going to be the thing.

11:32

Moms like this make

11:36

me through, though,

11:39

And.

11:39

Though now there's

11:42

no recording from that evening, but

11:44

here she is decades later, casting

11:46

a similar spell over the crowd at

11:48

Manhattan's Basin Street East

11:51

Club.

11:52

She knew that the more she could get

11:54

the room silent, the more she's

11:56

got them.

11:57

No, she

12:05

said, the challenges to leave

12:07

out all but the essentials.

12:09

Peggy would cultivate a style that

12:12

was as minimalist as the landscape

12:14

she'd grown up in, cool

12:17

but never cold. While

12:19

singing in Chicago in nineteen forty

12:21

one, Peggy was discovered by

12:24

the king of swing, Benny Goodman,

12:26

one of the era's biggest bandleaders.

12:33

Now, Goodman didn't much respect

12:35

his so called girl singers, and

12:38

Peggy was intimidated by the famously

12:40

perfectionist Goodman. But when

12:42

he noticed the twenty one year old Peggy

12:45

carrying around a prized possession

12:47

a record of blues singer Lil Green's

12:50

why Don't You Do Right? He

12:52

was intrigued you.

12:53

Had many money. In nineteen.

12:58

Goodman decided to let Peggy record

13:00

her own version, and it became

13:02

her first hit.

13:04

Lea the Wama make a who

13:06

Love You? Why don't You Do Right?

13:09

She doesn't even have to worry about finding the

13:11

rhythm from the drummer or the bass player

13:14

or Benny.

13:15

They're following her rhythm.

13:17

Get out of here and get

13:19

me.

13:20

The money too.

13:24

It was while touring with Benny Goodman that

13:26

Peggy, often the only woman on

13:28

the bus, met guitarist Dave

13:31

Barber and the two struck

13:33

up a romance that didn't

13:35

go over well with Goodman, though, and

13:37

Barbara was fired from the band for quote

13:40

unquote fraternizing with the girl

13:42

singer. But Peggy liked

13:44

Dave, I mean, she really liked

13:46

him, and so she quit. She

13:49

married Dave Barber and gave birth

13:51

to their daughter, Nikki later that year.

13:54

They had such chemistry together

13:56

that was the love of her life.

14:01

There's this duet they wrote and recorded together

14:03

called I Don't Know Enough About You. They

14:06

filmed the performance sort of an early

14:08

music video.

14:10

I know a little bit about

14:13

a lot.

14:14

Of things,

14:16

but I don't know enough about.

14:18

Peggy is playing a teacher, sitting

14:20

at a desk, fiddling with a pair of glasses.

14:23

She looks so healthy, happy and

14:25

gorgeous. Dave Barber sits

14:28

off to the side, strumming his guitar.

14:31

These are two people so at ease with

14:33

each other that the picture of contentment.

14:36

You get me in a fish

14:38

Oh.

14:39

A new arman.

14:41

I don't know, but Dave,

14:44

like Peggy's father, had a drinking problem,

14:47

and as Peggy's star rose, Dave's

14:49

drinking only got worse and

14:51

it.

14:52

Broke her heart. But just

14:54

as she always has done, it fueled

14:57

her music.

14:58

Gazza, don't

15:02

enough of that.

15:05

After eight years of marriage, Dave Barber

15:07

and Peggy Lee filed for divorce.

15:11

Coming up personally, Peggy takes

15:13

on the nineteen fifties as a single mother.

15:17

Artistically, she ends up owning

15:19

the decade.

15:34

Person two Persons with

15:37

Charles Collingwood.

15:41

In nineteen sixty, cameras from

15:43

the CBS TV interview series

15:45

Person to Person visited Peggy

15:48

Lee at her sprawling Beverly Hills

15:50

mansion, also known as the

15:52

Peach Palace.

15:53

Well, now you've achieved quite a few goals up

15:56

and now what was your main goal as

15:58

a youngster in Jamestown, North Dakota.

16:01

Well, Charles, I had two

16:03

goals really.

16:05

One was to be a successful

16:07

singer, and the

16:09

other was to have

16:12

a family. And I've

16:14

been very happy about having

16:17

some success, and I have a wonderful daughter.

16:20

And of course as I have gone

16:23

along, I picked up a few more goals.

16:26

I think it's good to have a goal, don't you, Charles.

16:28

I think it is now.

16:30

When Peggy says she'd had some success,

16:34

that's an understatement. In just

16:36

the previous decade, she had achieved

16:38

more than most artists could hope to

16:40

in a lifetime. In this act,

16:43

we're going to talk about what made Peggy Lee

16:45

one of the most important musical artists

16:48

of the nineteen fifties.

16:50

Yeah, it's a good day

16:53

far sanging a song, and it's a good.

16:56

Day for

16:59

one thing. She was a prolific singer

17:01

songwriter, a rarity for women

17:03

back then. She co wrote It's a Good

17:06

Day with Dave Barber. Peggy

17:08

was always writing back in North

17:10

Dakota. She wrote poetry and

17:13

ultimately she had credits on more

17:15

than two hundred and fifty songs,

17:20

sad songs.

17:22

Was then and

17:26

no no.

17:29

Happy Songs.

17:30

I Dance by Fred

17:32

Astaire and Brando's

17:34

Eyes.

17:36

You're Runner's Hair, but

17:38

I think to tell you is only there that

17:42

I love it with you?

17:46

And a certain Disney classic,

17:49

What a Dog.

17:52

As a kid?

17:52

Was it really cool for you that your

17:55

grandmother was part of Lady in the Tramp.

17:58

So that's how my friend knew

18:00

of her.

18:01

That's Peggy's granddaughter, Holly foster

18:03

Wells. Again, Peggy co wrote

18:06

the score to Lady in the Tramp. But

18:08

that's not all she did on the movie.

18:10

She's the voice of the Siamese Cats.

18:12

She's Darling the Mother, She's Peg

18:14

in the Dog Pound.

18:15

He's a child.

18:18

I love him, Yes,

18:20

he love have got it pretty

18:23

bad. My grandmother had

18:25

a film projector in her house and

18:28

she would take out that film every year

18:30

and we would watch it in the living room

18:34

sidebar.

18:34

That same year, nineteen fifty five, Peggy

18:37

scored an OSCAR nomination playing

18:39

an alcoholic saloon singer in the film

18:42

Pete Kelly's Blues. This is

18:44

a sidebar because well, we don't have time

18:46

to get into all the things that Peggy did in the

18:48

nineteen fifties, blame her for being

18:50

so productive now.

18:53

In addition to all the songs Peggy wrote,

18:56

they are the ones she all but rewrote.

18:58

Peggy covered a lot of popular songs,

19:01

often breathing new life into them.

19:04

She took the song Heart from the

19:06

Broadway show Damn Yankees.

19:09

You Gotta Have.

19:12

All, and

19:15

gave it a Latin beat, You Gotta.

19:23

She took the song lover a Waltz

19:25

from the Rogers and Heart musical Love

19:27

Me Tonight, Speak

19:35

My Name, and

19:38

well listen to what she did to that. She

19:47

takes that and turns it into something kind

19:50

of wild.

19:51

Her final notes have been likened to an

19:53

orgasm.

20:03

And in nineteen fifty eight, she took the song

20:05

Fever, originally recorded by

20:08

R and B singer Little Willie John.

20:11

You never know how much love, never

20:15

know how much I care.

20:18

And gave it a new, stripped down

20:20

arrangement, just bass drums

20:23

and finger snaps.

20:26

Never know how much I love you.

20:29

She's keeping so much in If this

20:32

is the only thing to signal what you're singing

20:35

about, that's powerful.

20:37

When you put your arms around me,

20:40

I gave a fever.

20:41

That's a hard thing you give.

20:43

Me It became the biggest hit of

20:46

her career. That

20:48

sequence in the middle that sounds almost like

20:51

beat poetry.

20:52

Roam me O loved Julia.

20:55

Peggy wrote that.

20:59

When he rounder,

21:02

he said, Julivy, you my

21:04

fame.

21:04

Now give us fever.

21:07

Also listen to the way she delivers

21:09

those lines. Peggy had been

21:11

blurring the line between talking and

21:13

singing as far back as her Benny

21:15

Goodman days. Here she is on

21:18

Coal Porters, Let's do It back

21:20

in nineteen forty one.

21:21

Up Leland, little lapts,

21:24

do it well, Let's do

21:26

it, Let's fall

21:28

in.

21:30

The way she just tosses off the words

21:33

let's do it. Peggy came up

21:35

with that. Now. Fever may

21:37

have been Peggy's biggest commercial success,

21:40

but her artistic apex came

21:42

with the release of the album Black

21:45

Coffee.

21:49

You can really feel her coming

21:51

into the kitchen after

21:53

a long night and just

21:55

looking at the coffee and saying, Wow, it

21:57

was worth it last night, but I gotta have that

22:00

now.

22:01

Here She is on the album's title

22:03

track.

22:04

Black Coffee Loves

22:10

a hand Mawnbreu.

22:13

Black Coffee was one of the very first

22:16

concept albums ever recorded.

22:18

It's about a woman's lonesome experience

22:21

being in love with a man she can't trust.

22:24

The Milestone record is now considered

22:27

one of the best vocal albums in

22:29

jazz history.

22:30

She becomes Cool in that album.

22:33

Black Coffee also cemented Lee's

22:35

status as the high priestess

22:38

of pop jazz, acclaimed

22:40

by critics and the masses

22:42

alike. Could Peggy Lee

22:44

have only happened at the time

22:46

that she did.

22:47

Yes.

22:48

Biographer Peter Richmond says

22:50

Peggy was peaking just as

22:53

black and white musical traditions were

22:55

intermingling in the mainstream.

22:57

Peggy was able to incorporate so many

22:59

different rhythms and emotions.

23:02

And she was, and I really think

23:04

I can say this, she was unique.

23:07

There was nobody like her.

23:08

Later in her career, Peggy told one

23:11

writer quote, I'm not really a white

23:13

singer. I sing black. I always

23:15

have.

23:17

Now.

23:17

When Peggy made that comment in nineteen

23:19

seventy four, it had to have rankled

23:21

many, just as it certainly would today.

23:24

There's a terrific essay about Peggy Lee

23:27

written by culture critic Gerald Early.

23:30

He's a professor of English and African

23:32

American studies at Washington University

23:34

in Saint Louis. Early

23:36

writes about the profoundly uneasy

23:39

history of white performers emulating

23:42

a black sound, from Louis Prima

23:44

to Elvis to eminem. Peggy,

23:47

he points out, didn't just emulate

23:49

black singers. She literally and

23:52

famously would imitate Billie

23:54

Holliday.

23:57

I love you first time.

23:59

I love to them.

24:03

You got a certain and acute way of

24:05

friendly.

24:09

So what was that about? Was she a big fan

24:11

of Billie Holidays. She was a huge

24:14

fan of Billy Holidays. She absolutely

24:17

loved her music. And I

24:19

heard that Billie

24:21

Holiday. Well, wasn't

24:24

so crazy about my

24:26

grandmother because I heard

24:28

that she felt like, not just my

24:30

grandmother, but other people too copied her.

24:32

But as my grandmother's voice

24:35

matured in her career developed, you

24:37

don't hear anybody but Peggy Lee.

24:40

Gerald early in that essay seems

24:42

to agree that Peggy was an original.

24:45

He writes that she invented the

24:48

hip white female vocalist. He

24:50

describes Peggy's imitation of Billy

24:52

Holliday as more than quote

24:55

some sort of lame white girl imitation

24:58

of the great black jazz singer. It

25:00

was an expression of how accomplished Lee

25:02

was as a jazz singer and how much she

25:05

respected holiday end quote.

25:08

Peggy Lee had deep bonds with black

25:10

artists throughout her career. She

25:13

was an early champion and friend of

25:15

Ray Charles. When one of her childhood

25:17

idols, Louis Armstrong, died

25:20

in nineteen seventy one, it was

25:22

Peggy Lee who was invited to

25:24

sing the Lord's Prayer at his funeral,

25:27

for.

25:28

That is

25:30

the King and

25:34

the Poe and

25:38

the Blood.

25:40

And when CBS aired a star studded

25:43

tribute to Duke Ellington produced

25:45

by Quincy Jones, Peggy Lee

25:47

was the only white solo artist featured,

25:50

alongside Sarah Vaughan, ROBERTA.

25:53

Flack, and Aretha Franklin. If

25:55

I'm the Duke Ellington once said, Peggy

25:58

Lee is Queen. Peggy

26:03

had earned that title in the nineteen

26:05

fifties. She was no longer

26:07

just a big band singer Benny Goodman's

26:10

Canary. Critically

26:12

and commercially, she was an artist

26:14

of the highest order, on a par with

26:17

Frank Sinatra. But

26:19

for all the hit songs she'd recorded,

26:21

the one that was closest to her heart

26:24

wasn't one she'd written or radically

26:26

reimagined.

26:28

Someday We'll

26:31

build a home on

26:34

a hill top.

26:38

You and I.

26:41

Shine so the folks

26:44

who live on the hill.

26:44

That's her very favorite song, and

26:47

I think it just paints this picture

26:49

of an idyllic relationship

26:52

and growing old together and always

26:55

having that soulmate by her side.

26:57

Peggy recorded it in nineteen fifty

26:59

seven. The song was written by Jerome

27:02

Kern and Oscar Hammerstein twenty

27:04

years earlier as a romantic reverie.

27:07

We will Whiz because.

27:11

But Peggy's version is different. She's

27:14

singing about something that was never

27:16

to be on that

27:20

trumpet.

27:21

It's just so plaintive, the

27:24

mournfulness of wishing a house

27:27

on the hill that will never be yours and

27:29

really doesn't exist.

27:30

And that's what she really wanted. So she

27:32

hoped to have with my grandfather.

27:35

And she married three more times after

27:37

that, But it was not those

27:40

were she called those costume parties. Actually,

27:44

well, I think she didn't think they were real.

27:47

They weren't real love affairs. She certainly

27:49

fell in love with many people throughout

27:52

the years. I

27:54

just think maybe it was

27:56

too much for these men to be mister Peggy

27:59

Lee. And and I don't know that

28:01

any man could have really given

28:04

her the love that she wanted. The

28:07

closest she got to getting that love, I

28:09

think was from the audience.

28:14

On the other side of the break. Miss

28:16

Peggy Lee the icon.

28:39

Well, I can scoop up a great, big difference

28:41

full of lag from the dripping skin and

28:45

look in the skill, go out and do my shopping

28:47

and be back to forth.

28:53

By the nineteen seventies, Peggy

28:55

Lee had become Miss Peggy

28:57

Lee, a bona fide icon,

29:00

even inspired the Muppets character Miss

29:02

Piggy, originally named Miss

29:05

Piggy Lee, the.

29:06

Baby greased the car and pot of my face

29:08

all at the same time.

29:10

She thought that was pretty fantastic.

29:13

I mean that pig is glamorous.

29:15

Miss Peggy is the is the paragon

29:17

of glamour.

29:18

Right, and she's a diva. And

29:20

my grandma was a diva.

29:22

So growing

29:24

up in that era, Holly Foster Wells

29:26

spent summers touring with her grandmother,

29:29

beginning when she was just six, and

29:32

frankly, I'm kind of jealous.

29:35

So you would go on the road with her, Yeah,

29:37

tell me about that. She would take me all

29:40

over the world.

29:41

I would dress up in her gowns and we would

29:44

have breakfast in bed. We'd watch

29:46

soap operas, and then it would be time

29:48

to get ready for the show. Then

29:50

we had to get serious because that was a process

29:53

of becoming miss Peggy

29:55

Lee.

29:56

Yeah, it was. It was like a

29:58

four hour process. And she starts first

30:00

with a bubble bath, and then the

30:02

makeup, and then the hair and the

30:04

gowns.

30:05

There's a great story about a fan meeting

30:07

her grandmother in an elevator on the day

30:10

of one of her shows.

30:11

She had a scarf and she had

30:14

curlers and sunglasses and someone looked at

30:16

her and said, are you Peggy Lee?

30:18

And she said not yet.

30:21

Now, we've talked plenty about Peggy as

30:23

a recording artist, but we haven't

30:25

really touched on her as a live performer.

30:28

I would just be in awe of what

30:31

she could do.

30:32

And I would see grown men

30:34

crying, and I would see couples holding hands

30:36

and people. You could hear a pin drop

30:39

and this was really mesmerizing.

30:43

See sid.

30:49

See what there's a

30:51

tape of her singing CC Rider.

30:54

Oh yeah, it's a hypnotic.

30:57

I know exactly what performance that is.

30:59

And she early moves

31:01

like she just moves a little shoulder

31:05

and just her face and it's

31:07

so sexy.

31:09

That performance was at Bason Street

31:11

East. We mentioned it earlier, a

31:14

legendary Manhattan nightclub that

31:16

no longer exists. Now,

31:18

I can tell you that if I could

31:20

get in a time machine and go back

31:22

and near her live, I would choose

31:24

to go back to Basin

31:27

Street East, the club in New York City

31:29

where she really triumphed.

31:31

Right, absolutely, And if I could go back

31:33

into time machine, that's when I would go back.

31:35

Because you're my plus one or I'm your plus one

31:37

exactly. We don't have a time machine.

31:40

But luckily Peggy recorded everything

31:42

on real to reel tapes from

31:44

sessions with her musicians.

31:47

Because one thing isn't very.

31:49

Clear, to

31:56

sessions with her psychic how many.

31:58

Times have you been married?

32:00

Well, married once and

32:03

sort of married three times, so.

32:05

It's four, right and

32:07

lucky us. Holly has agreed to

32:09

play some of those recordings, including

32:12

a behind the scenes moment with Peggy

32:14

and one of her favorite artists.

32:17

Well, my grandmother loved the

32:19

music of Ray Charles. He

32:21

pitched to her a song he'd written called tell

32:23

all the World about You.

32:26

You're so fun and you're so sweet.

32:30

How's going on?

32:32

You're so sweet, You're so fun?

32:36

Oh my goodness, I can't even remember my own thing I

32:39

gotta do.

32:42

And then she actually went in and recorded it.

32:44

She put her own spin on it.

32:46

You're so fun and you're so

32:48

sweet, you can love

32:51

Anuskin.

32:54

Talk about.

33:01

Peggy's home recordings also capture

33:03

her goofing around with family.

33:06

So my grandmother was rehearsing at

33:08

home, and my dad and my mom and my

33:10

brother were watching her rehearsal,

33:13

and then in the middle of it, she just decides

33:15

to bring out balloons and start

33:17

sucking helium.

33:19

Ya lasa

33:25

One'm from a lasa, Run for maball,

33:28

run for a little living and lung.

33:31

Yes, that's Peggy Lee singing

33:33

on helium.

33:34

Ba bay every well,

33:37

Yes, yeah, yese hey

33:40

begs.

33:43

By the early nineteen eighties, Peggy

33:46

was thinking seriously about legacy.

33:49

In nineteen eighty one, the great Lena

33:51

Horn had had a smash hit with her

33:53

own one woman Broadway show. Now

33:57

it was Peggy's turn, as the

33:59

sixty three year old discussed with NBC's

34:02

Gene Shallett in nineteen eighty three, Peggy.

34:04

You've got a new show coming on Broadway

34:07

called Peg, Right, so I want

34:09

to know about that. Well, it's called

34:11

Peg because it's about my life,

34:14

and.

34:16

I wrote it, and.

34:20

I started writing this for someone

34:22

else to play. I mean, there was going

34:24

to be a show about you, but someone else would play

34:27

your life?

34:28

Yes, that chance? I mean,

34:30

who else was going to play Peggy Peg

34:33

was a musical, of course, with original

34:35

songs, mostly co written by

34:37

Peggy. It opened on

34:39

December fourteenth, nineteen eighty

34:42

three. It closed three

34:44

days later.

34:45

It was one of I would

34:48

say, her greatest failures

34:50

actually in her career. She was really,

34:52

really just devastated. It felt like a

34:54

rejection of her life.

34:56

Because the show was autobiographical,

34:58

it was a better life.

34:59

But and quite frankly, some

35:01

people felt it was too depressing.

35:03

There was one song about Peggy's stepmother

35:06

beating her. It was an up

35:08

tempo song.

35:09

For eleven years, there was

35:11

at least one

35:14

beating a day, one

35:17

leading a they.

35:20

For eleven years.

35:22

There was at least one beating a day,

35:27

so.

35:27

Many do you remember how the audience

35:30

in the Broadway theater reacted to that?

35:32

That was an awkward moment in the show

35:34

because people didn't know if they should

35:36

laugh or cry. It was confusing.

35:41

In The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote,

35:43

for those who respect Peggy Lee as a vocalist,

35:46

but who don't worship her as a public personality.

35:49

Peg may seem bizarre, and

35:52

that was one of the nicer things written about it.

35:54

And I can imagine that the reaction to

35:56

that probably really shook

35:58

her and made her think, have I just lost my touch?

36:01

I remember her being

36:04

defensive, like, this is my life,

36:06

Like wait, I'm so sorry if this is sad

36:08

for you or hard for you, but this is my life, Like

36:10

I'm just telling you what I went through. And if

36:12

it's hard for you to hear about, think about

36:14

how it was to live it.

36:15

And away from Broadway, Peggy Lee's

36:18

live performances weren't hitting

36:20

like they used.

36:21

To, so she aged, but these

36:23

songs didn't age with her,

36:25

so she sometimes

36:28

would approach them in a campy way.

36:31

And I don't know that that how

36:33

that resonated with audiences, if they liked it

36:35

or not.

36:36

With her oversized sunglasses

36:38

and outlandish wigs and kaftans,

36:42

Peggy was becoming a punchline.

36:44

I would be backstage with her and during intermission

36:48

she would want me to give her honest

36:50

feedback about what people were thinking

36:52

in the audience, and she'd go

36:55

on stage. I'd run out watch the show,

36:57

and I'd even go and listen in the

36:59

ladies room what people were saying. And

37:02

there came a time when I

37:05

didn't want to tell her those comments anymore

37:07

because people were really critical,

37:09

like, oh, she sounds good, but she doesn't

37:11

have the voice that she used to have, or while

37:13

she's gained weight, or wow, or

37:16

you know, people are really they

37:18

come in with their own expectations.

37:19

There were things that were hard for you to hear and

37:22

write, and hard to report back.

37:24

Right and things. So I didn't want to tell

37:26

her, you know, it

37:29

was hard.

37:34

By this point, Peggy's health was failing,

37:37

in part due to exhaustion.

37:40

She really never took a vacation. She

37:42

would write about places like Paris,

37:44

but she wouldn't go there. She didn't go there

37:47

and slow down.

37:48

After a bad case of pneumonia, she

37:50

became dependent on an oxygen tank.

37:53

By the nineteen nineties, she was using a

37:55

wheelchair and suffering complications

37:58

due to her diabetes, and

38:00

spending more and more time at

38:02

home in bed. And how long

38:04

would she be in bed?

38:05

Sometimes she could just be in bed until the next

38:07

time she went on the road, which could be months.

38:11

Yes, and she's learned to do

38:15

everything from her bed, from her

38:17

bedroom, so it was like an office. She would

38:20

write songs in her bed. There's one I

38:22

want to play for you. That's so beautiful,

38:27

haven to.

38:32

Lonely more

38:37

too long

38:44

and too.

38:55

So gorgeous, so much longing.

38:58

That's why we're all drawn to her songs though.

39:00

It's that longing that we all have, and then

39:02

she just puts it into words

39:04

and song for us.

39:11

Cut up here.

39:16

I guess I wouldn't know read

39:20

for me because

39:23

I haven't long

39:33

too long.

39:37

Were there times when you'd see her in bed and

39:39

think, now, I wonder if

39:41

she could get up and walk

39:43

out of here?

39:45

She absolutely could, and

39:47

I know that because well she would

39:49

have dinner parties where she would at least go from

39:51

the bedroom to the dining room. But there

39:53

was also a time when I got

39:56

in a car accident. Someone

39:58

t boned men intersection and

40:01

really badly destroyed my car.

40:03

I was okay, thank goodness, but I

40:05

called her and she was there

40:08

in like ten minutes, with

40:10

her turbanon and her sunglasses, looking very

40:13

glamorous. But she was there in ten

40:15

minutes.

40:17

In nineteen ninety five, a seventy

40:19

five year old Peggy Lee performed

40:22

from a wheelchair at the Hollywood

40:24

Bowl. After the show

40:26

that night, Holly told her grandmother

40:29

that it was time.

40:31

I just said, it just seems like it's

40:33

getting harder for you. She didn't

40:35

ever want to be thought of as

40:37

a joke. She wanted to go out on a

40:40

high, and that was the end. That was

40:42

the last performance.

40:43

Holly says, Peggy remained a romantic

40:46

until the very end.

40:48

One of the ways I know that is when I

40:50

fell in love with my husband and

40:54

told her, oh, Mama, I've met a boy,

40:56

and she wanted to know

40:59

everything. It was like she was reading a romance

41:01

novel. She just ate it up. She at

41:04

that point was beyond romance

41:06

for herself. But she loved watching

41:09

me have a romance. And I'm

41:11

so grateful that she was able to be at

41:13

our wedding. We got married

41:16

in June

41:18

of nineteen ninety eight, and she had

41:20

her stroke in October.

41:24

Peggy Lee died of a heart attack

41:26

on January twenty first, twenty

41:29

oh two, at the age of eighty

41:31

one. There's

41:33

a PBS documentary on Peggy

41:35

that was made in nineteen sixty nine, the

41:38

year before she released Is that all There? Is

41:41

Peggy is wry and sophisticated.

41:43

Here an artist who knows what

41:45

she wants.

41:47

I choose a material that lets me tell

41:49

a story.

41:50

You know, it's a nice way.

41:51

To make a living. I wants talk to a musician

41:53

who said, your voice is one of the greatest musical instruments

41:56

ever ever created.

41:58

Whoever that was, I love it.

42:01

And yet there's something about the way she's

42:03

wearing her hair. Here you

42:05

can see her artistry, but she's

42:07

also she's wearing her hair and pigtails,

42:10

so there's something also kind of girlish at

42:12

the same time.

42:13

Yes, yes, there's

42:15

I always said there was a little girl

42:18

in her.

42:19

Sometimes I would see that childlike.

42:21

Quality, and I think it was she was

42:23

always looking for our

42:26

mom. She was a powerful

42:28

woman with a powerful career, but there

42:30

was that little girl there

42:33

always.

42:34

What do you think she was trying to do

42:36

with her voice?

42:37

She had to get out of the childhood physically

42:41

as well as metaphorically.

42:43

That's biographer Peter Richmond.

42:44

Again, she had to leave behind the thing

42:47

she was leaving, and she's

42:49

doing it with one tool, the

42:51

voice and the rhythm and

42:53

the perfect pitch and the talent she had

42:55

in writing lyrics that others couldn't. That

42:59

was her way of feeling a

43:01

psychic wound.

43:03

She said she wanted to leave a legacy,

43:05

and she really did.

43:07

One final note today, Holly

43:09

Foster Wells manages the Peggy

43:12

Lee estate, which includes

43:14

all those songs her grandmother wrote.

43:17

Despite offers, Peggy never

43:19

sold the rights to her written work. Just

43:22

like Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell,

43:24

Taylor Swift, great singer songwriters

43:27

who came after her. Peggy

43:29

Lee understood the value of

43:31

what she had created.

43:35

And it's a good day. Ah,

43:38

shine in your shoes and.

43:39

It's a good day.

43:49

I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary.

43:53

May I ask you to please rate and review our

43:55

podcast. You can also follow Mobituaries

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44:00

you can follow me on the social media

44:02

platform formerly known as Twitter

44:04

at morocca. Hear all

44:06

new episodes of Mobituaries every

44:09

Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts,

44:12

and check out Mobituaries Great

44:14

Lives Worth Reliving, the New York

44:16

Times best selling book, now available

44:18

in paperback and audiobook. It

44:21

includes plenty of stories not in

44:23

the podcast. This

44:28

episode of Mobituaries was produced

44:30

by Aaron Shrank Our team

44:32

of producers also includes Hazel

44:35

Brian and me Morocca, with

44:37

engineering by Josh Han. Our

44:39

theme music is written by Daniel Hart.

44:42

Our archival producer is Jamie

44:44

Benson. Mobituary's production

44:46

company is Neon Hum Media. The

44:49

original television version of this story

44:51

was produced for CBS Sunday Morning by

44:54

John Demilio and edited by

44:56

Steven Tyler. Indispensable

44:59

support from Alan Pang, Reggie

45:01

Bazil and everyone at CBS

45:04

News Radio Special thanks

45:06

to Holly Foster Wells and the Estate

45:08

of Peggy Lee, Steve Razies,

45:11

Rand Morrison, Craig Swaggler, Mike

45:13

Hernandez, Alberto Robina and

45:16

Francisco Robina. Executive

45:19

producers for Mobituaries include

45:21

Megan Marcus, Jonathan Hirsch, and

45:24

Mo Roca. The series is created

45:26

by Yours Truly