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Speaker 1: And when it was all over, I said to myself.

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Speaker 2: That all there is.

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Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy, Peggy Lee won a Grammy for Is

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Speaker 3: That All There Is? A song many heard as an

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Speaker 3: anthem of on we, but not Peggy.

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Speaker 1: She saw it as absolutely life affirming and hopeful that

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Speaker 1: bad things are going to happen and that you can

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Speaker 1: rise above them.

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Speaker 4: Greg got the boom, stand back.

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Speaker 1: And have a ball, celebrate life in spite of all

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Speaker 1: of this that's happening.

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Speaker 3: And Peggy Lee had a lot to celebrate. At fifty,

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Speaker 3: she was already a legend, an artist of astonishing versatility,

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Speaker 3: a heartbreaker, anoles spring, a trailblazer, and a master of cool.

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Speaker 5: When you put your arms around me, I get a fever.

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Speaker 5: That's a hard began a fever.

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Speaker 3: Musically, how many different Peggy Lees over there? God dozens?

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Speaker 4: Watch that bringency?

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Speaker 2: How it's blooded.

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Speaker 6: When there's platin sugar, there's blues things I swinging, there's jazz,

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Speaker 6: there's pop.

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Speaker 3: Creatively, she seemed utterly unafraid.

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Speaker 7: Oh, you want me to do the folks who live

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Speaker 7: on the hill, so you'll weep. I can do that.

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Speaker 7: You want me to do black coffee, so you think

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Speaker 7: it's like, oh, I'm hanging out with junkies at a

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Speaker 7: kitchen table.

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Speaker 1: I can do that.

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Speaker 3: Personally, she was more conflicted.

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Speaker 4: I never wanted to be a star.

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Speaker 8: Yeah, I wanted to sing around the house and the

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Speaker 8: paint and write and raised babies and those kinds of things.

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Speaker 1: She would say that all the time.

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Speaker 3: Do you think that was what she wanted?

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Speaker 1: I think it was on some level what she wanted, But.

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Speaker 3: That compulsion to create, she.

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Speaker 1: Couldn't tamp it down.

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Speaker 9: There was nobody like her.

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Speaker 7: Andre Previn, who was a jazz pianist and played with

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Speaker 7: all of them, he told me that he thought she

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Speaker 7: was the best of them all.

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Speaker 3: Does she get the respect she deserves today?

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Speaker 4: You know?

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Speaker 7: And when Sir Andre Previn says to me, she's better

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Speaker 7: than Ella, because Ella could only do certain things at

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Speaker 7: which she was the best, but Peggy could do everything.

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Speaker 3: That was the curse From CBS Sunday Morning and iHeart

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Speaker 3: I'm Morocca and this is Mobituaries This moment Peggy Lee,

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Speaker 3: January twenty first, twenty oh two. The death of cool

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Speaker 3: I came to Peggy Lee relatively late in life. You

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Speaker 3: know how kids are drawn to big, bold colors, Well,

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Speaker 3: growing up, I was drawn to big, bold voices like

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Speaker 3: bat Banatar, running with the Side, or Broadways, Lori beach

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Speaker 3: Me belting it out in Annie and Why, and of

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Speaker 3: course Barbara always Barbara.

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Speaker 2: Last Lee.

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Speaker 3: But Peggy Lee she was more my father's generation of music.

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Speaker 3: Wasn't she that woman who sang about the doggie in

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Speaker 3: the window?

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Speaker 4: How much is that dog in the window?

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Speaker 3: Sorry? That was Patty Page? And no disrespect to Patty Page.

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Speaker 3: Her Tennessee Waltz undos me every time. The first time

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Speaker 3: I really paid any attention to Peggy Lee was well, naturally,

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Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety seven, when comedian Ellen DeGeneres came out

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Speaker 3: to ABC's Diane Sawyer and forty million other people in

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Speaker 3: a nationally televised interview.

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Speaker 9: Did you have sexual relations with men?

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Speaker 1: I slept with.

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Speaker 3: Two men.

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Speaker 10: Yes.

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Speaker 1: Didn't like it. Didn't like it.

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Speaker 4: That Peggy Lee song Is that all there is?

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Speaker 8: That was going over and over my head the first time.

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Speaker 4: Just kept singing, is that all there is? My dear?

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Speaker 11: Then let's keep dancing, that's what's going I thought, Am

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Speaker 11: I crazy?

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Speaker 8: Because I shouldn't be hearing Peggy Lee right now?

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Speaker 3: Of course, when I profiled Ellen in twenty eleven for

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Speaker 3: CBS Sunday Morning. I had to ask about that. I've

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Speaker 3: always wanted to know after the interview, when you came out,

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Speaker 3: did Peggy Lee get in contact with you?

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Speaker 5: No, No, she didn't.

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Speaker 7: That's a good question, though, But I bet I'm not

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Speaker 7: the only person who had sex and for the first

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Speaker 7: time and had that Peggy Lee song.

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Speaker 9: Is that all there is in their head? She did?

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Speaker 9: Is that all there is?

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Speaker 3: And you give me fever?

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Speaker 9: So something must have changed. She must have switched partners, right,

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Speaker 9: It's probably true.

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Speaker 3: Good. It was then that I started to give Peggy

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Speaker 3: Lee a real listen, and I came to appreciate the

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Speaker 3: shades of gray in her voice. She could swing with

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Speaker 3: the best of them, but she was more likely to

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Speaker 3: hold back, like she was keeping a secret. Johnnia, who

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Speaker 3: was this woman? Where did she come from? And that wind,

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Speaker 3: it's like a rumbling.

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Speaker 9: It's powerful, feels like I could blow this house down.

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Speaker 3: I met Peggy Lee's granddaughter, Holly Foster Wells, on the

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Speaker 3: second floor of an old train depot in the tiny

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Speaker 3: town of Wimbledon, North Dakota. There's no other way to

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Speaker 3: put it. This place is in the middle of nowhere.

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Speaker 3: Thirty miles from the big city of Jamestown, North Dakota,

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Speaker 3: where Peggy was born in nineteen twenty. Today, this train

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Speaker 3: depot is the Peggy Lee Museum. It's also where Peggy

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Speaker 3: lived when she was a teenager or standing in her bedroom.

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Speaker 1: The first time I came here, and I walked upstairs

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Speaker 1: and I stood in front of this window, I burst

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Speaker 1: into tears.

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Speaker 3: By the way, Holly really looks like her grandmother, blonde hair, saying,

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Speaker 3: big bright eyes.

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Speaker 1: Even today when we've been talking here, it's like I

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Speaker 1: feel I feel her here.

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Speaker 3: Peggy was still Norma Dolores Eggstrom when she lived here.

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Speaker 1: She wouldn't have been Peggy Lee without Norma. She wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have been Peggy Lee without this heartache.

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Speaker 3: And the heartache started early.

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Speaker 9: Her mother passed away when she was four.

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Speaker 1: It was a traumatic event that I think that was

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Speaker 1: kind of the beginning of her search, her search for healing.

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Speaker 3: Norma adored her father, who was the town's railroad depot manager,

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Speaker 3: but he was an alcoholic.

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Speaker 9: She helped run the depot when her dad wasn't in

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Speaker 9: a good place.

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Speaker 3: Even worse, the woman her father remarried was abusive. Peggy

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Speaker 3: later claimed her stepmother once beat her over the head

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Speaker 3: with a cast iron skillet.

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Speaker 8: So I went through all that and I learned a

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Speaker 8: great deal from that.

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Speaker 3: That's Peggy talking to CBS much later in nineteen eighty six.

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Speaker 10: I learned how I run real that few other things

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Speaker 10: like that.

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Speaker 1: She said she would look out at the railroad tracks

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Speaker 1: and just imagine where they led. And she said, one day,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave this place as soon as I know

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Speaker 1: where those train tracks lead. And it was a it

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Speaker 1: was a way out. And of course her other way

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Speaker 1: out was music.

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Speaker 3: Now, radio was still a relatively new technology around the

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Speaker 3: time Norma entered high school in the early nineteen thirties.

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Speaker 3: Tuning the dials of her Atwater Kent five tube radio receiver,

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Speaker 3: she fell in love with the voices of Maxine Sullivan.

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Speaker 5: Oh you take the high road, Now take the low road,

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Speaker 5: alb and scottlanderfio.

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Speaker 3: A young Louis Armstrong.

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Speaker 6: I'm so happy, asking me when this wing that music from?

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Speaker 3: And Billie Holiday. Yes, this white girl from the tundra,

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Speaker 3: who had only ever sung hymns at her Lutheran church

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Speaker 3: is listening mostly to black artists. But that's the music

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Speaker 3: that spoke to her. At seventeen, Norma was invited to

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Speaker 3: audition for the biggest radio station in North Dakota. This

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Speaker 3: is Wday Fargo, W Day Fargo. That's when program director

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Speaker 3: Ken Kennedy made a fateful decision. As she later recalled

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Speaker 3: in a nineteen seventy five interview, the.

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Speaker 9: Name Norma Egstrom didn't sound right.

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Speaker 4: He said, let's see, you.

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Speaker 2: Look like a you look like a Peggy Maggy?

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Speaker 9: What Beggy?

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Speaker 4: What you need?

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Speaker 10: Tried a few names and came up with Lee and

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Speaker 10: it was That was really how it started.

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Speaker 3: She had the Peggy Lee name. The Peggy Lee sound

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Speaker 3: came two years later, after she made her way to California.

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Speaker 3: Still unknown, she was singing at the Dollhouse Restaurant in

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Speaker 3: Palm Springs before a raucous crowd celebrating comedian Jack Benny's birthday.

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Speaker 3: Biographer Peter Richmond, author of Fever, The Life and Music

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Speaker 3: of Miss Peggy Lee, describes the scene.

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Speaker 7: People are just laughing, and so she's getting pissed off.

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Speaker 7: And she's only like nineteen, and she's singing in a

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Speaker 7: good club in front of celebrities.

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Speaker 3: She's pissed. And that's when Peggy decided if she couldn't

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Speaker 3: sing over them, she'd sing under them.

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Speaker 7: So she starts singing softer and softer, until people start

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Speaker 7: getting quiet because they can't hear her singing. And now

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Speaker 7: they're listening, and now they're captured. That's when she understood

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Speaker 7: volume wasn't going to be the thing. Nuance was going

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Speaker 7: to be the thing.

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Speaker 2: Moms like this make me through, though, And.

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Speaker 3: Though now there's no recording from that evening, but here

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Speaker 3: she is decades later, casting a similar spell over the

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Speaker 3: crowd at Manhattan's Basin Street East Club.

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Speaker 7: She knew that the more she could get the room silent,

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Speaker 7: the more she's got them.

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Speaker 1: No, she said, the challenges to leave out all but

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Speaker 1: the essentials.

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Speaker 3: Peggy would cultivate a style that was as minimalist as

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Speaker 3: the landscape she'd grown up in, cool but never cold.

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Speaker 3: While singing in Chicago in nineteen forty one, Peggy was

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Speaker 3: discovered by the king of swing, Benny Goodman, one of

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Speaker 3: the era's biggest bandleaders. Now, Goodman didn't much respect his

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Speaker 3: so called girl singers, and Peggy was intimidated by the

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Speaker 3: famously perfectionist Goodman. But when he noticed the twenty one

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Speaker 3: year old Peggy carrying around a prized possession a record

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Speaker 3: of blues singer Lil Green's why Don't You Do Right?

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Speaker 3: He was intrigued you.

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Speaker 2: Had many money. In nineteen.

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Speaker 3: Goodman decided to let Peggy record her own version, and

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Speaker 3: it became her first hit.

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Speaker 4: Lea the Wama make a who Love You? Why don't

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Speaker 4: You Do Right?

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Speaker 7: She doesn't even have to worry about finding the rhythm

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Speaker 7: from the drummer or the bass player or Benny.

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Speaker 3: They're following her rhythm.

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Speaker 5: Get out of here and get me.

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Speaker 4: The money too.

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Speaker 3: It was while touring with Benny Goodman that Peggy, often

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Speaker 3: the only woman on the bus, met guitarist Dave Barber

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Speaker 3: and the two struck up a romance that didn't go

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Speaker 3: over well with Goodman, though, and Barbara was fired from

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Speaker 3: the band for quote unquote fraternizing with the girl singer.

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Speaker 3: But Peggy liked Dave, I mean, she really liked him,

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Speaker 3: and so she quit. She married Dave Barber and gave

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Speaker 3: birth to their daughter, Nikki later that year.

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Speaker 1: They had such chemistry together that was the love of

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Speaker 1: her life.

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Speaker 3: There's this duet they wrote and recorded together called I

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Speaker 3: Don't Know Enough About You. They filmed the performance sort

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Speaker 3: of an early music video.

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Speaker 4: I know a little bit about a lot.

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Speaker 5: Of things, but I don't know enough about.

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Speaker 3: Peggy is playing a teacher, sitting at a desk, fiddling

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Speaker 3: with a pair of glasses. She looks so healthy, happy

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Speaker 3: and gorgeous. Dave Barber sits off to the side, strumming

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Speaker 3: his guitar. These are two people so at ease with

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Speaker 3: each other that the picture of contentment.

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Speaker 5: You get me in a fish Oh.

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Speaker 1: A new arman.

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Speaker 3: I don't know, but Dave, like Peggy's father, had a

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Speaker 3: drinking problem, and as Peggy's star rose, Dave's drinking only

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Speaker 3: got worse and it.

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Speaker 1: Broke her heart. But just as she always has done,

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Speaker 1: it fueled her music.

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Speaker 5: Gazza, don't enough of that.

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Speaker 3: After eight years of marriage, Dave Barber and Peggy Lee

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Speaker 3: filed for divorce. Coming up personally, Peggy takes on the

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Speaker 3: nineteen fifties as a single mother. Artistically, she ends up

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Speaker 3: owning the decade.

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Speaker 7: Person two Persons with Charles Collingwood.

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Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty, cameras from the CBS TV interview series

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Speaker 3: Person to Person visited Peggy Lee at her sprawling Beverly

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Speaker 3: Hills mansion, also known as the Peach Palace.

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Speaker 12: Well, now you've achieved quite a few goals up and

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Speaker 12: now what was your main goal as a youngster in Jamestown,

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Speaker 12: North Dakota.

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Speaker 9: Well, Charles, I had two goals really.

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Speaker 10: One was to be a successful singer, and the other

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Speaker 10: was to have a family. And I've been very happy

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Speaker 10: about having some success, and I have a wonderful daughter.

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Speaker 10: And of course as I have gone along, I picked

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Speaker 10: up a few more goals. I think it's good to

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Speaker 10: have a goal, don't you, Charles.

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Speaker 3: I think it is now. When Peggy says she'd had

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Speaker 3: some success, that's an understatement. In just the previous decade,

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Speaker 3: she had achieved more than most artists could hope to

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Speaker 3: in a lifetime. In this act, we're going to talk

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Speaker 3: about what made Peggy Lee one of the most important

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Speaker 3: musical artists of the nineteen fifties.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a good day far sanging a song, and

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Speaker 5: it's a good.

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Speaker 3: Day for one thing. She was a prolific singer songwriter,

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Speaker 3: a rarity for women back then. She co wrote It's

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Speaker 3: a Good Day with Dave Barber. Peggy was always writing

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Speaker 3: back in North Dakota. She wrote poetry and ultimately she

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Speaker 3: had credits on more than two hundred and fifty songs,

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Speaker 3: sad songs.

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Speaker 2: Was then and no no.

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Speaker 3: Happy Songs.

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Speaker 4: I Dance by Fred Astaire and Brando's Eyes.

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Speaker 5: You're Runner's Hair, but I think to tell you is

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Speaker 5: only there that I love it with you?

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Speaker 3: And a certain Disney classic, What a Dog.

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Speaker 9: As a kid?

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Speaker 3: Was it really cool for you that your grandmother was

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Speaker 3: part of Lady in the Tramp.

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Speaker 9: So that's how my friend knew of her.

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Speaker 3: That's Peggy's granddaughter, Holly foster Wells. Again, Peggy co wrote

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Speaker 3: the score to Lady in the Tramp. But that's not

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Speaker 3: all she did on the movie.

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Speaker 1: She's the voice of the Siamese Cats. She's Darling the Mother,

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Speaker 1: She's Peg in the Dog Pound.

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Speaker 2: He's a child.

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Speaker 1: I love him, Yes, he love have got it pretty bad.

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Speaker 1: My grandmother had a film projector in her house and

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Speaker 1: she would take out that film every year and we

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Speaker 1: would watch it in the living room sidebar.

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Speaker 3: That same year, nineteen fifty five, Peggy scored an OSCAR

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Speaker 3: nomination playing an alcoholic saloon singer in the film Pete

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Speaker 3: Kelly's Blues. This is a sidebar because well, we don't

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Speaker 3: have time to get into all the things that Peggy

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Speaker 3: did in the nineteen fifties, blame her for being so

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Speaker 3: productive now. In addition to all the songs Peggy wrote,

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Speaker 3: they are the ones she all but rewrote. Peggy covered

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00:18:59,680 --> 00:19:03,840
Speaker 3: a lot of popular songs, often breathing new life into them.

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Speaker 3: She took the song Heart from the Broadway show Damn Yankees.

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Speaker 2: You Gotta Have.

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Speaker 3: All, and gave it a Latin beat, You Gotta. She

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Speaker 3: took the song lover a Waltz from the Rogers and

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Speaker 3: Heart musical Love Me Tonight, Speak My Name, and well

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Speaker 3: listen to what she did to that. She takes that

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Speaker 3: and turns it into something kind of wild.

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Speaker 7: Her final notes have been likened to an orgasm.

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Speaker 3: And in nineteen fifty eight, she took the song Fever,

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Speaker 3: originally recorded by R and B singer Little Willie John.

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Speaker 8: You never know how much love, never know how much

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Speaker 8: I care.

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Speaker 3: And gave it a new, stripped down arrangement, just bass

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Speaker 3: drums and finger snaps.

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Speaker 4: Never know how much I love you.

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Speaker 7: She's keeping so much in If this is the only

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Speaker 7: thing to signal what you're singing about, that's powerful.

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Speaker 5: When you put your arms around me, I gave a fever.

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Speaker 4: That's a hard thing you give.

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Speaker 3: Me It became the biggest hit of her career. That

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Speaker 3: sequence in the middle that sounds almost like beat poetry.

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Speaker 4: Roam me O loved Julia.

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Speaker 3: Peggy wrote that.

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Speaker 5: When he rounder, he said, Julivy, you my fame.

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Speaker 4: Now give us fever.

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Speaker 3: Also listen to the way she delivers those lines. Peggy

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Speaker 3: had been blurring the line between talking and singing as

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Speaker 3: far back as her Benny Goodman days. Here she is

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Speaker 3: on Coal Porters, Let's do It back in nineteen forty one.

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Speaker 5: Up Leland, little lapts, do it well, Let's do it,

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Speaker 5: Let's fall in.

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Speaker 3: The way she just tosses off the words let's do it.

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Speaker 3: Peggy came up with that. Now. Fever may have been

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Speaker 3: Peggy's biggest commercial success, but her artistic apex came with

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Speaker 3: the release of the album Black Coffee.

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Speaker 7: You can really feel her coming into the kitchen after

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Speaker 7: a long night and just looking at the coffee and saying, Wow,

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Speaker 7: it was worth it last night, but I gotta have

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Speaker 7: that now.

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Speaker 3: Here She is on the album's title track.

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Speaker 4: Black Coffee Loves a hand Mawnbreu.

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Speaker 3: Black Coffee was one of the very first concept albums

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Speaker 3: ever recorded. It's about a woman's lonesome experience being in

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Speaker 3: love with a man she can't trust. The Milestone record

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00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:29,239
Speaker 3: is now considered one of the best vocal albums in

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Speaker 3: jazz history.

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Speaker 7: She becomes Cool in that album.

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Speaker 3: Black Coffee also cemented Lee's status as the high priestess

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Speaker 3: of pop jazz, acclaimed by critics and the masses alike.

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Speaker 3: Could Peggy Lee have only happened at the time that

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Speaker 3: she did.

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Speaker 9: Yes.

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Speaker 3: Biographer Peter Richmond says Peggy was peaking just as black

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Speaker 3: and white musical traditions were intermingling in the mainstream.

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Speaker 7: Peggy was able to incorporate so many different rhythms and emotions.

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Speaker 7: And she was, and I really think I can say this,

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Speaker 7: she was unique. There was nobody like her.

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Speaker 3: Later in her career, Peggy told one writer quote, I'm

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Speaker 3: not really a white singer. I sing black. I always have.

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Speaker 9: Now.

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Speaker 3: When Peggy made that comment in nineteen seventy four, it

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Speaker 3: had to have rankled many, just as it certainly would today.

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Speaker 3: There's a terrific essay about Peggy Lee written by culture

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Speaker 3: critic Gerald Early. He's a professor of English and African

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Speaker 3: American studies at Washington University in Saint Louis. Early writes

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Speaker 3: about the profoundly uneasy history of white performers emulating a

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Speaker 3: black sound, from Louis Prima to Elvis to eminem. Peggy,

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Speaker 3: he points out, didn't just emulate black singers. She literally

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Speaker 3: and famously would imitate Billie Holliday.

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Speaker 4: I love you first time. I love to them. You

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Speaker 4: got a certain and acute way of friendly.

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Speaker 8: So what was that about? Was she a big fan

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Speaker 8: of Billie Holidays. She was a huge fan of Billy Holidays.

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Speaker 8: She absolutely loved her music. And I heard that Billie Holiday. Well,

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Speaker 8: wasn't so crazy about my grandmother because I heard that

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Speaker 8: she felt like, not just my grandmother, but other people

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Speaker 8: too copied her. But as my grandmother's voice matured in

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Speaker 8: her career developed, you don't hear anybody but Peggy Lee.

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Speaker 3: Gerald early in that essay seems to agree that Peggy

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Speaker 3: was an original. He writes that she invented the hip

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Speaker 3: white female vocalist. He describes Peggy's imitation of Billy Holliday

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Speaker 3: as more than quote some sort of lame white girl

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Speaker 3: imitation of the great black jazz singer. It was an

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Speaker 3: expression of how accomplished Lee was as a jazz singer

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Speaker 3: and how much she respected holiday end quote. Peggy Lee

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00:25:08,880 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 3: had deep bonds with black artists throughout her career. She

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00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 3: was an early champion and friend of Ray Charles. When

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00:25:16,800 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 3: one of her childhood idols, Louis Armstrong, died in nineteen

382
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Speaker 3: seventy one, it was Peggy Lee who was invited to

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Speaker 3: sing the Lord's Prayer at his funeral, for.

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Speaker 2: That is the King and the Poe and the Blood.

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Speaker 3: And when CBS aired a star studded tribute to Duke

386
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Speaker 3: Ellington produced by Quincy Jones, Peggy Lee was the only

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Speaker 3: white solo artist featured, alongside Sarah Vaughan, ROBERTA. Flack, and

388
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Speaker 3: Aretha Franklin. If I'm the Duke Ellington once said, Peggy

389
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Speaker 3: Lee is Queen. Peggy had earned that title in the

390
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Speaker 3: nineteen fifties. She was no longer just a big band

391
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 3: singer Benny Goodman's Canary. Critically and commercially, she was an

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Speaker 3: artist of the highest order, on a par with Frank Sinatra.

393
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:22,040
Speaker 3: But for all the hit songs she'd recorded, the one

394
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:25,560
Speaker 3: that was closest to her heart wasn't one she'd written

395
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Speaker 3: or radically reimagined.

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Speaker 5: Someday We'll build a home on a hill top.

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Speaker 11: You and I.

398
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Speaker 9: Shine so the folks who live on the hill.

399
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Speaker 1: That's her very favorite song, and I think it just

400
00:26:48,320 --> 00:26:53,640
Speaker 1: paints this picture of an idyllic relationship and growing old

401
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: together and always having that soulmate by her side.

402
00:26:57,480 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 3: Peggy recorded it in nineteen fifty seven. The song was

403
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:05,240
Speaker 3: written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein twenty years earlier

404
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:07,440
Speaker 3: as a romantic reverie.

405
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 4: We will Whiz because.

406
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:16,000
Speaker 3: But Peggy's version is different. She's singing about something that

407
00:27:16,119 --> 00:27:21,080
Speaker 3: was never to be on that trumpet.

408
00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 7: It's just so plaintive, the mournfulness of wishing a house

409
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:29,480
Speaker 7: on the hill that will never be yours and really

410
00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:30,360
Speaker 7: doesn't exist.

411
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Speaker 1: And that's what she really wanted. So she hoped to

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00:27:33,400 --> 00:27:37,280
Speaker 1: have with my grandfather. And she married three more times

413
00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:40,720
Speaker 1: after that, But it was not those were she called

414
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:45,920
Speaker 1: those costume parties. Actually, well, I think she didn't think

415
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:49,480
Speaker 1: they were real. They weren't real love affairs. She certainly

416
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:54,439
Speaker 1: fell in love with many people throughout the years. I

417
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:58,000
Speaker 1: just think maybe it was too much for these men

418
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:01,119
Speaker 1: to be mister Peggy Lee. And and I don't know

419
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:05,400
Speaker 1: that any man could have really given her the love

420
00:28:05,440 --> 00:28:08,920
Speaker 1: that she wanted. The closest she got to getting that love,

421
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:10,960
Speaker 1: I think was from the audience.

422
00:28:14,240 --> 00:28:16,960
Speaker 3: On the other side of the break. Miss Peggy Lee

423
00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 3: the icon.

424
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,960
Speaker 11: Well, I can scoop up a great, big difference full

425
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:45,640
Speaker 11: of lag from the dripping skin and look in the skill,

426
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 11: go out and do my shopping and be back to forth.

427
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:57,440
Speaker 3: By the nineteen seventies, Peggy Lee had become Miss Peggy Lee,

428
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:03,040
Speaker 3: a bona fide icon, even inspired the Muppets character Miss Piggy,

429
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 3: originally named Miss Piggy Lee, the.

430
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 11: Baby greased the car and pot of my face all

431
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 11: at the same time.

432
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: She thought that was pretty fantastic. I mean that pig

433
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 1: is glamorous.

434
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 3: Miss Peggy is the is the paragon of glamour.

435
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 9: Right, and she's a diva. And my grandma was a diva.

436
00:29:22,440 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 3: So growing up in that era, Holly Foster Wells spent

437
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 3: summers touring with her grandmother, beginning when she was just six,

438
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 3: and frankly, I'm kind of jealous.

439
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:37,840
Speaker 9: So you would go on the road with her, Yeah,

440
00:29:37,920 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 9: tell me about that. She would take me all over

441
00:29:40,920 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 9: the world.

442
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 1: I would dress up in her gowns and we would

443
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: have breakfast in bed. We'd watch soap operas, and then

444
00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: it would be time to get ready for the show.

445
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 1: Then we had to get serious because that was a

446
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:55,680
Speaker 1: process of becoming miss Peggy Lee.

447
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,320
Speaker 9: Yeah, it was. It was like a four hour process.

448
00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:02,160
Speaker 9: And she starts first with a bubble bath, and then

449
00:30:02,280 --> 00:30:05,240
Speaker 9: the makeup, and then the hair and the gowns.

450
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,680
Speaker 3: There's a great story about a fan meeting her grandmother

451
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:11,480
Speaker 3: in an elevator on the day of one of her shows.

452
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:15,760
Speaker 1: She had a scarf and she had curlers and sunglasses

453
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:18,239
Speaker 1: and someone looked at her and said, are you Peggy Lee?

454
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:20,560
Speaker 9: And she said not yet.

455
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 3: Now, we've talked plenty about Peggy as a recording artist,

456
00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:27,920
Speaker 3: but we haven't really touched on her as a live performer.

457
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:32,120
Speaker 9: I would just be in awe of what she could do.

458
00:30:32,240 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 1: And I would see grown men crying, and I would

459
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 1: see couples holding hands and people. You could hear a

460
00:30:38,360 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: pin drop and this was really mesmerizing.

461
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 2: See sid.

462
00:30:49,280 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 3: See what there's a tape of her singing CC Rider.

463
00:30:54,320 --> 00:30:56,480
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a hypnotic.

464
00:30:57,400 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 9: I know exactly what performance that is.

465
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: And she early moves like she just moves a little

466
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 1: shoulder and just her face and it's so sexy.

467
00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 3: That performance was at Bason Street East. We mentioned it earlier,

468
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:18,479
Speaker 3: a legendary Manhattan nightclub that no longer exists. Now, I

469
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 3: can tell you that if I could get in a

470
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 3: time machine and go back and near her live, I

471
00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:28,040
Speaker 3: would choose to go back to Basin Street East, the

472
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 3: club in New York City where she really triumphed.

473
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, And if I could go back into time machine,

474
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:34,920
Speaker 1: that's when I would go back.

475
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 3: Because you're my plus one or I'm your plus one exactly.

476
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:41,760
Speaker 3: We don't have a time machine. But luckily Peggy recorded

477
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:46,960
Speaker 3: everything on real to reel tapes from sessions with her musicians.

478
00:31:47,240 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 4: Because one thing isn't very.

479
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 3: Clear, to sessions with her psychic how many.

480
00:31:58,240 --> 00:31:59,280
Speaker 1: Times have you been married?

481
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:05,280
Speaker 8: Well, married once and sort of married three times, so.

482
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 3: It's four, right and lucky us. Holly has agreed to

483
00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:13,360
Speaker 3: play some of those recordings, including a behind the scenes

484
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 3: moment with Peggy and one of her favorite artists.

485
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 1: Well, my grandmother loved the music of Ray Charles. He

486
00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:23,840
Speaker 1: pitched to her a song he'd written called tell all

487
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:24,960
Speaker 1: the World about You.

488
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:28,440
Speaker 2: You're so fun and you're so sweet.

489
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 5: How's going on?

490
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:35,040
Speaker 2: You're so sweet, You're so fun?

491
00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness, I can't even remember my own thing

492
00:32:39,120 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 5: I gotta do.

493
00:32:42,120 --> 00:32:44,320
Speaker 1: And then she actually went in and recorded it. She

494
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:46,160
Speaker 1: put her own spin on it.

495
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 5: You're so fun and you're so sweet, you can love Anuskin.

496
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 4: Talk about.

497
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 3: Peggy's home recordings also capture her goofing around with family.

498
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: So my grandmother was rehearsing at home, and my dad

499
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:13,040
Speaker 1: and my mom and my brother were watching her rehearsal,

500
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: and then in the middle of it, she just decides

501
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 1: to bring out balloons and start sucking helium.

502
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 12: Ya lasa One'm from a lasa, Run for maball, run

503
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:30,440
Speaker 12: for a little living and lung.

504
00:33:31,320 --> 00:33:34,960
Speaker 3: Yes, that's Peggy Lee singing on helium.

505
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:40,560
Speaker 12: Ba bay every well, Yes, yeah, yese hey begs.

506
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 3: By the early nineteen eighties, Peggy was thinking seriously about legacy.

507
00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty one, the great Lena Horn had had

508
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 3: a smash hit with her own one woman Broadway show.

509
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 3: Now it was Peggy's turn, as the sixty three year

510
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:05,160
Speaker 3: old discussed with NBC's Gene Shallett in nineteen eighty three, Peggy.

511
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:09,040
Speaker 10: You've got a new show coming on Broadway called Peg, Right,

512
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 10: so I want to know about that. Well, it's called

513
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 10: Peg because it's about my life, and.

514
00:34:16,680 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 1: I wrote it, and.

515
00:34:20,160 --> 00:34:24,319
Speaker 10: I started writing this for someone else to play. I mean,

516
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:25,840
Speaker 10: there was going to be a show about you, but

517
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:28,000
Speaker 10: someone else would play your life?

518
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:31,239
Speaker 3: Yes, that chance? I mean, who else was going to

519
00:34:31,280 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 3: play Peggy Peg was a musical, of course, with original songs,

520
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 3: mostly co written by Peggy. It opened on December fourteenth,

521
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:45,320
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three. It closed three days later.

522
00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: It was one of I would say, her greatest failures

523
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 1: actually in her career. She was really, really just devastated.

524
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: It felt like a rejection of her life.

525
00:34:56,239 --> 00:34:59,719
Speaker 3: Because the show was autobiographical, it was a better life.

526
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:03,160
Speaker 1: But and quite frankly, some people felt it was too depressing.

527
00:35:03,880 --> 00:35:08,080
Speaker 3: There was one song about Peggy's stepmother beating her. It

528
00:35:08,200 --> 00:35:09,479
Speaker 3: was an up tempo song.

529
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:15,040
Speaker 5: For eleven years, there was at least one beating a day,

530
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:18,440
Speaker 5: one leading a they.

531
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:22,600
Speaker 2: For eleven years.

532
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:27,799
Speaker 4: There was at least one beating a day, so.

533
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 3: Many do you remember how the audience in the Broadway

534
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:32,240
Speaker 3: theater reacted to that?

535
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: That was an awkward moment in the show because people

536
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 1: didn't know if they should laugh or cry. It was confusing.

537
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,960
Speaker 3: In The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, for those

538
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:47,160
Speaker 3: who respect Peggy Lee as a vocalist, but who don't

539
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 3: worship her as a public personality. Peg may seem bizarre,

540
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:54,080
Speaker 3: and that was one of the nicer things written about it.

541
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 3: And I can imagine that the reaction to that probably

542
00:35:58,200 --> 00:35:59,920
Speaker 3: really shook her and made her think, have I just

543
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:01,120
Speaker 3: lost my touch?

544
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 1: I remember her being defensive, like, this is my life,

545
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,279
Speaker 1: Like wait, I'm so sorry if this is sad for

546
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 1: you or hard for you, but this is my life,

547
00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: Like I'm just telling you what I went through. And

548
00:36:12,120 --> 00:36:14,359
Speaker 1: if it's hard for you to hear about, think about

549
00:36:14,440 --> 00:36:15,440
Speaker 1: how it was to live it.

550
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:20,360
Speaker 3: And away from Broadway, Peggy Lee's live performances weren't hitting

551
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:21,320
Speaker 3: like they used.

552
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: To, so she aged, but these songs didn't age with her,

553
00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 1: so she sometimes would approach them in a campy way.

554
00:36:31,600 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 1: And I don't know that that how that resonated with audiences,

555
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:36,160
Speaker 1: if they liked it or not.

556
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:42,440
Speaker 3: With her oversized sunglasses and outlandish wigs and kaftans, Peggy

557
00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:43,920
Speaker 3: was becoming a punchline.

558
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:48,360
Speaker 1: I would be backstage with her and during intermission she

559
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:52,040
Speaker 1: would want me to give her honest feedback about what

560
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:55,400
Speaker 1: people were thinking in the audience, and she'd go on stage.

561
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:58,160
Speaker 1: I'd run out watch the show, and I'd even go

562
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:01,200
Speaker 1: and listen in the ladies room what people were saying.

563
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: And there came a time when I didn't want to

564
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:10,000
Speaker 1: tell her those comments anymore because people were really critical, like, oh,

565
00:37:10,040 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 1: she sounds good, but she doesn't have the voice that

566
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 1: she used to have, or while she's gained weight, or wow,

567
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: or you know, people are really they come in with

568
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:19,800
Speaker 1: their own expectations.

569
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:21,799
Speaker 3: There were things that were hard for you to hear

570
00:37:21,880 --> 00:37:24,240
Speaker 3: and write, and hard to report back.

571
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: Right and things. So I didn't want to tell her,

572
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: you know, it was hard.

573
00:37:34,440 --> 00:37:38,359
Speaker 3: By this point, Peggy's health was failing, in part due

574
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 3: to exhaustion.

575
00:37:40,040 --> 00:37:43,120
Speaker 1: She really never took a vacation. She would write about

576
00:37:43,160 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: places like Paris, but she wouldn't go there. She didn't

577
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:47,880
Speaker 1: go there and slow down.

578
00:37:48,520 --> 00:37:51,680
Speaker 3: After a bad case of pneumonia, she became dependent on

579
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 3: an oxygen tank. By the nineteen nineties, she was using

580
00:37:55,239 --> 00:38:00,319
Speaker 3: a wheelchair and suffering complications due to her diabetes, and

581
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:04,120
Speaker 3: spending more and more time at home in bed. And

582
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:05,439
Speaker 3: how long would she be in bed?

583
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:07,879
Speaker 1: Sometimes she could just be in bed until the next

584
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:11,919
Speaker 1: time she went on the road, which could be months. Yes,

585
00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:16,959
Speaker 1: and she's learned to do everything from her bed, from

586
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:19,320
Speaker 1: her bedroom, so it was like an office. She would

587
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:22,680
Speaker 1: write songs in her bed. There's one I want to

588
00:38:22,680 --> 00:38:28,360
Speaker 1: play for you. That's so beautiful, haven to.

589
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:46,040
Speaker 2: Lonely more too long and too.

590
00:38:55,200 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 3: So gorgeous, so much longing.

591
00:38:58,120 --> 00:39:00,719
Speaker 1: That's why we're all drawn to her songs though. It's

592
00:39:00,760 --> 00:39:03,080
Speaker 1: that longing that we all have, and then she just

593
00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:06,000
Speaker 1: puts it into words and song for us.

594
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 11: Cut up here.

595
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:23,799
Speaker 2: I guess I wouldn't know read for me because I

596
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:34,200
Speaker 2: haven't long too long.

597
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,720
Speaker 3: Were there times when you'd see her in bed and think, now,

598
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 3: I wonder if she could get up and walk out

599
00:39:44,080 --> 00:39:44,399
Speaker 3: of here?

600
00:39:45,160 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 1: She absolutely could, and I know that because well she

601
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:51,279
Speaker 1: would have dinner parties where she would at least go

602
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:53,759
Speaker 1: from the bedroom to the dining room. But there was

603
00:39:53,800 --> 00:39:57,280
Speaker 1: also a time when I got in a car accident.

604
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:03,479
Speaker 1: Someone t boned men intersection and really badly destroyed my car.

605
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,839
Speaker 1: I was okay, thank goodness, but I called her and

606
00:40:06,920 --> 00:40:11,160
Speaker 1: she was there in like ten minutes, with her turbanon

607
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 1: and her sunglasses, looking very glamorous. But she was there

608
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:16,320
Speaker 1: in ten minutes.

609
00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:21,040
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety five, a seventy five year old Peggy

610
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:25,840
Speaker 3: Lee performed from a wheelchair at the Hollywood Bowl. After

611
00:40:25,920 --> 00:40:29,440
Speaker 3: the show that night, Holly told her grandmother that it

612
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 3: was time.

613
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,800
Speaker 1: I just said, it just seems like it's getting harder

614
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:37,560
Speaker 1: for you. She didn't ever want to be thought of

615
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:40,320
Speaker 1: as a joke. She wanted to go out on a high,

616
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:43,080
Speaker 1: and that was the end. That was the last performance.

617
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:47,520
Speaker 3: Holly says, Peggy remained a romantic until the very end.

618
00:40:48,120 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 1: One of the ways I know that is when I

619
00:40:50,760 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 1: fell in love with my husband and told her, oh, Mama,

620
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:59,800
Speaker 1: I've met a boy, and she wanted to know everything.

621
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: It was like she was reading a romance novel. She

622
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:05,440
Speaker 1: just ate it up. She at that point was beyond

623
00:41:05,880 --> 00:41:10,800
Speaker 1: romance for herself. But she loved watching me have a romance.

624
00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful that she was able to be

625
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: at our wedding. We got married in June of nineteen

626
00:41:18,719 --> 00:41:22,120
Speaker 1: ninety eight, and she had her stroke in October.

627
00:41:24,320 --> 00:41:28,480
Speaker 3: Peggy Lee died of a heart attack on January twenty first,

628
00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:33,359
Speaker 3: twenty oh two, at the age of eighty one. There's

629
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:36,800
Speaker 3: a PBS documentary on Peggy that was made in nineteen

630
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:39,919
Speaker 3: sixty nine, the year before she released Is that all There?

631
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 3: Is Peggy is wry and sophisticated. Here an artist who

632
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 3: knows what she wants.

633
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:50,320
Speaker 10: I choose a material that lets me tell a story.

634
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 4: You know, it's a nice way.

635
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:53,800
Speaker 3: To make a living. I wants talk to a musician

636
00:41:53,800 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 3: who said, your voice is one of the greatest musical

637
00:41:55,600 --> 00:41:57,840
Speaker 3: instruments ever ever created.

638
00:41:58,600 --> 00:41:59,840
Speaker 4: Whoever that was, I love it.

639
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,319
Speaker 3: And yet there's something about the way she's wearing her hair.

640
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:08,399
Speaker 3: Here you can see her artistry, but she's also she's

641
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:11,399
Speaker 3: wearing her hair and pigtails, so there's something also kind

642
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:12,919
Speaker 3: of girlish at the same time.

643
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, there's I always said there was a little

644
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 1: girl in her.

645
00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 9: Sometimes I would see that childlike.

646
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:24,720
Speaker 1: Quality, and I think it was she was always looking

647
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:29,360
Speaker 1: for our mom. She was a powerful woman with a

648
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:33,480
Speaker 1: powerful career, but there was that little girl there always.

649
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:36,520
Speaker 3: What do you think she was trying to do with

650
00:42:36,560 --> 00:42:37,360
Speaker 3: her voice?

651
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:41,839
Speaker 7: She had to get out of the childhood physically as

652
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:42,879
Speaker 7: well as metaphorically.

653
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:44,920
Speaker 3: That's biographer Peter Richmond.

654
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:47,680
Speaker 7: Again, she had to leave behind the thing she was leaving,

655
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:52,680
Speaker 7: and she's doing it with one tool, the voice and

656
00:42:52,760 --> 00:42:55,759
Speaker 7: the rhythm and the perfect pitch and the talent she

657
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:59,399
Speaker 7: had in writing lyrics that others couldn't. That was her

658
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,360
Speaker 7: way of feeling a psychic wound.

659
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,279
Speaker 1: She said she wanted to leave a legacy, and she

660
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:06,959
Speaker 1: really did.

661
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 3: One final note today, Holly Foster Wells manages the Peggy

662
00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 3: Lee estate, which includes all those songs her grandmother wrote.

663
00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 3: Despite offers, Peggy never sold the rights to her written work.

664
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:26,520
Speaker 3: Just like Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell, Taylor Swift, great singer

665
00:43:26,600 --> 00:43:31,200
Speaker 3: songwriters who came after her. Peggy Lee understood the value

666
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 3: of what she had created.

667
00:43:35,560 --> 00:43:39,440
Speaker 4: And it's a good day. Ah, shine in your shoes and.

668
00:43:39,480 --> 00:43:43,759
Speaker 2: It's a good day.

669
00:43:49,880 --> 00:43:53,640
Speaker 3: I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary. May I ask

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Speaker 3: you to please rate and review our podcast. You can

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Speaker 3: also follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can

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Speaker 3: follow me on the social media platform formerly known as

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Speaker 3: Twitter at morocca. Hear all new episodes of Mobituaries every

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Speaker 3: Wednesday wherever you get your podcasts, and check out Mobituaries

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Speaker 3: Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best selling book,

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Speaker 3: now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty of

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Speaker 3: stories not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries was

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Speaker 3: produced by Aaron Shrank Our team of producers also includes

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Speaker 3: Hazel Brian and me Morocca, with engineering by Josh Han.

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Speaker 3: Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Our archival

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Speaker 3: producer is Jamie Benson. Mobituary's production company is Neon Hum Media.

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Speaker 3: The original television version of this story was produced for

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Speaker 3: CBS Sunday Morning by John Demilio and edited by Steven Tyler.

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Speaker 3: Indispensable support from Alan Pang, Reggie Bazil and everyone at

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Speaker 3: CBS News Radio Special thanks to Holly Foster Wells and

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Speaker 3: the Estate of Peggy Lee, Steve Razies, Rand Morrison, Craig Swaggler,

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Speaker 3: Mike Hernandez, Alberto Robina and Francisco Robina. Executive producers for

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Speaker 3: Mobituaries include Megan Marcus, Jonathan Hirsch, and Mo Roca. The

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Speaker 3: series is created by Yours Truly