WEBVTT - Peggy Lee: Death of Cool 0:00:01.639 --> 0:00:04.760 And when it was all over, I said to myself. 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:06.720 That all there is. 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:14.160 In nineteen seventy, Peggy Lee won a Grammy for Is 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:20.040 That All There Is? A song many heard as an 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.160 anthem of on we, but not Peggy. 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:29.240 She saw it as absolutely life affirming and hopeful that 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:32.279 bad things are going to happen and that you can 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:33.519 rise above them. 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:38.639 Greg got the boom, stand back. 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:43.680 And have a ball, celebrate life in spite of all 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:48.160 of this that's happening. 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:52.680 And Peggy Lee had a lot to celebrate. At fifty, 0:00:52.920 --> 0:01:00.120 she was already a legend, an artist of astonishing versatility, 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:19.640 a heartbreaker, anoles spring, a trailblazer, and a master of cool. 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:25.080 When you put your arms around me, I get a fever. 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:27.800 That's a hard began a fever. 0:01:30.520 --> 0:01:36.040 Musically, how many different Peggy Lees over there? God dozens? 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:38.119 Watch that bringency? 0:01:38.400 --> 0:01:39.119 How it's blooded. 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:46.240 When there's platin sugar, there's blues things I swinging, there's jazz, 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:50.360 there's pop. 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.000 Creatively, she seemed utterly unafraid. 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:56.080 Oh, you want me to do the folks who live 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:58.600 on the hill, so you'll weep. I can do that. 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:00.480 You want me to do black coffee, so you think 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:02.240 it's like, oh, I'm hanging out with junkies at a 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:03.000 kitchen table. 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:03.680 I can do that. 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:06.560 Personally, she was more conflicted. 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:09.000 I never wanted to be a star. 0:02:09.600 --> 0:02:13.880 Yeah, I wanted to sing around the house and the 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:18.960 paint and write and raised babies and those kinds of things. 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:20.920 She would say that all the time. 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:22.680 Do you think that was what she wanted? 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:25.280 I think it was on some level what she wanted, But. 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:28.120 That compulsion to create, she. 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:29.120 Couldn't tamp it down. 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:31.799 There was nobody like her. 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.680 Andre Previn, who was a jazz pianist and played with 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:38.640 all of them, he told me that he thought she 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:40.080 was the best of them all. 0:02:40.560 --> 0:02:42.639 Does she get the respect she deserves today? 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:43.080 You know? 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:46.600 And when Sir Andre Previn says to me, she's better 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:49.880 than Ella, because Ella could only do certain things at 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.360 which she was the best, but Peggy could do everything. 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:57.160 That was the curse From CBS Sunday Morning and iHeart 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:10.680 I'm Morocca and this is Mobituaries This moment Peggy Lee, 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:17.200 January twenty first, twenty oh two. The death of cool 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:44.640 I came to Peggy Lee relatively late in life. You 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:48.160 know how kids are drawn to big, bold colors, Well, 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:52.280 growing up, I was drawn to big, bold voices like 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:59.920 bat Banatar, running with the Side, or Broadways, Lori beach 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:08.920 Me belting it out in Annie and Why, and of 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:24.120 course Barbara always Barbara. 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:20.359 Last Lee. 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:27.640 But Peggy Lee she was more my father's generation of music. 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:30.440 Wasn't she that woman who sang about the doggie in 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:30.920 the window? 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.720 How much is that dog in the window? 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:41.680 Sorry? That was Patty Page? And no disrespect to Patty Page. 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.680 Her Tennessee Waltz undos me every time. The first time 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:49.200 I really paid any attention to Peggy Lee was well, naturally, 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:53.159 in nineteen ninety seven, when comedian Ellen DeGeneres came out 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:57.000 to ABC's Diane Sawyer and forty million other people in 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.640 a nationally televised interview. 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:01.480 Did you have sexual relations with men? 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:03.240 I slept with. 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:05.600 Two men. 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:07.240 Yes. 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.200 Didn't like it. Didn't like it. 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:14.880 That Peggy Lee song Is that all there is? 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:17.200 That was going over and over my head the first time. 0:05:18.040 --> 0:05:21.200 Just kept singing, is that all there is? My dear? 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.120 Then let's keep dancing, that's what's going I thought, Am 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:25.760 I crazy? 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:27.800 Because I shouldn't be hearing Peggy Lee right now? 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:31.359 Of course, when I profiled Ellen in twenty eleven for 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:34.880 CBS Sunday Morning. I had to ask about that. I've 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:38.160 always wanted to know after the interview, when you came out, 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:40.719 did Peggy Lee get in contact with you? 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:43.040 No, No, she didn't. 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:46.599 That's a good question, though, But I bet I'm not 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:51.200 the only person who had sex and for the first 0:05:51.200 --> 0:05:53.080 time and had that Peggy Lee song. 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:55.400 Is that all there is in their head? She did? 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:56.280 Is that all there is? 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:57.200 And you give me fever? 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.640 So something must have changed. She must have switched partners, right, 0:06:00.880 --> 0:06:01.919 It's probably true. 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.000 Good. It was then that I started to give Peggy 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:08.520 Lee a real listen, and I came to appreciate the 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:12.120 shades of gray in her voice. She could swing with 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:14.440 the best of them, but she was more likely to 0:06:14.560 --> 0:06:24.680 hold back, like she was keeping a secret. Johnnia, who 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:31.800 was this woman? Where did she come from? And that wind, 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:34.160 it's like a rumbling. 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:37.839 It's powerful, feels like I could blow this house down. 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.600 I met Peggy Lee's granddaughter, Holly Foster Wells, on the 0:06:45.640 --> 0:06:48.919 second floor of an old train depot in the tiny 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.800 town of Wimbledon, North Dakota. There's no other way to 0:06:52.800 --> 0:06:56.159 put it. This place is in the middle of nowhere. 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.680 Thirty miles from the big city of Jamestown, North Dakota, 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.720 where Peggy was born in nineteen twenty. Today, this train 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.880 depot is the Peggy Lee Museum. It's also where Peggy 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:12.960 lived when she was a teenager or standing in her bedroom. 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:16.160 The first time I came here, and I walked upstairs 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:19.320 and I stood in front of this window, I burst 0:07:19.360 --> 0:07:19.960 into tears. 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:24.440 By the way, Holly really looks like her grandmother, blonde hair, saying, 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:25.520 big bright eyes. 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:29.520 Even today when we've been talking here, it's like I 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:31.520 feel I feel her here. 0:07:34.440 --> 0:07:38.320 Peggy was still Norma Dolores Eggstrom when she lived here. 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:42.640 She wouldn't have been Peggy Lee without Norma. She wouldn't 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:45.560 have been Peggy Lee without this heartache. 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:48.000 And the heartache started early. 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:50.640 Her mother passed away when she was four. 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:56.600 It was a traumatic event that I think that was 0:07:56.680 --> 0:08:01.920 kind of the beginning of her search, her search for healing. 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:07.640 Norma adored her father, who was the town's railroad depot manager, 0:08:08.000 --> 0:08:09.280 but he was an alcoholic. 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:13.600 She helped run the depot when her dad wasn't in 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:14.320 a good place. 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:20.800 Even worse, the woman her father remarried was abusive. Peggy 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.239 later claimed her stepmother once beat her over the head 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:26.120 with a cast iron skillet. 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:28.880 So I went through all that and I learned a 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:30.760 great deal from that. 0:08:30.760 --> 0:08:34.720 That's Peggy talking to CBS much later in nineteen eighty six. 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:40.679 I learned how I run real that few other things 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:40.920 like that. 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:50.880 She said she would look out at the railroad tracks 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:55.120 and just imagine where they led. And she said, one day, 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:57.120 I'm gonna leave this place as soon as I know 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.160 where those train tracks lead. And it was a it 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.320 was a way out. And of course her other way 0:09:02.320 --> 0:09:03.680 out was music. 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.760 Now, radio was still a relatively new technology around the 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.600 time Norma entered high school in the early nineteen thirties. 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:16.120 Tuning the dials of her Atwater Kent five tube radio receiver, 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:21.480 she fell in love with the voices of Maxine Sullivan. 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.520 Oh you take the high road, Now take the low road, 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:28.040 alb and scottlanderfio. 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.080 A young Louis Armstrong. 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:37.199 I'm so happy, asking me when this wing that music from? 0:09:37.320 --> 0:09:46.319 And Billie Holiday. Yes, this white girl from the tundra, 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:49.240 who had only ever sung hymns at her Lutheran church 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:53.680 is listening mostly to black artists. But that's the music 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:57.920 that spoke to her. At seventeen, Norma was invited to 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.840 audition for the biggest radio station in North Dakota. This 0:10:02.000 --> 0:10:08.280 is Wday Fargo, W Day Fargo. That's when program director 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:12.400 Ken Kennedy made a fateful decision. As she later recalled 0:10:12.440 --> 0:10:15.760 in a nineteen seventy five interview, the. 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:18.439 Name Norma Egstrom didn't sound right. 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:20.880 He said, let's see, you. 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:26.040 Look like a you look like a Peggy Maggy? 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:26.720 What Beggy? 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:28.480 What you need? 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:30.440 Tried a few names and came up with Lee and 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:32.440 it was That was really how it started. 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:36.880 She had the Peggy Lee name. The Peggy Lee sound 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:40.840 came two years later, after she made her way to California. 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:45.000 Still unknown, she was singing at the Dollhouse Restaurant in 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:50.600 Palm Springs before a raucous crowd celebrating comedian Jack Benny's birthday. 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:55.560 Biographer Peter Richmond, author of Fever, The Life and Music 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:58.440 of Miss Peggy Lee, describes the scene. 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:01.720 People are just laughing, and so she's getting pissed off. 0:11:01.760 --> 0:11:04.160 And she's only like nineteen, and she's singing in a 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:05.760 good club in front of celebrities. 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.760 She's pissed. And that's when Peggy decided if she couldn't 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.800 sing over them, she'd sing under them. 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:20.839 So she starts singing softer and softer, until people start 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:23.840 getting quiet because they can't hear her singing. And now 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:28.079 they're listening, and now they're captured. That's when she understood 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.320 volume wasn't going to be the thing. Nuance was going 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:31.920 to be the thing. 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:39.640 Moms like this make me through, though, And. 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:44.520 Though now there's no recording from that evening, but here 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:48.360 she is decades later, casting a similar spell over the 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:51.480 crowd at Manhattan's Basin Street East Club. 0:11:52.400 --> 0:11:55.319 She knew that the more she could get the room silent, 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:57.280 the more she's got them. 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:08.160 No, she said, the challenges to leave out all but 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:09.040 the essentials. 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:13.880 Peggy would cultivate a style that was as minimalist as 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:18.480 the landscape she'd grown up in, cool but never cold. 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:23.120 While singing in Chicago in nineteen forty one, Peggy was 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:26.959 discovered by the king of swing, Benny Goodman, one of 0:12:27.000 --> 0:12:35.840 the era's biggest bandleaders. Now, Goodman didn't much respect his 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:40.000 so called girl singers, and Peggy was intimidated by the 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:44.240 famously perfectionist Goodman. But when he noticed the twenty one 0:12:44.280 --> 0:12:48.480 year old Peggy carrying around a prized possession a record 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.360 of blues singer Lil Green's why Don't You Do Right? 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:53.719 He was intrigued you. 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:57.200 Had many money. In nineteen. 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:02.120 Goodman decided to let Peggy record her own version, and 0:13:02.160 --> 0:13:04.040 it became her first hit. 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:08.120 Lea the Wama make a who Love You? Why don't 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:08.880 You Do Right? 0:13:09.520 --> 0:13:12.000 She doesn't even have to worry about finding the rhythm 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:14.880 from the drummer or the bass player or Benny. 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:17.439 They're following her rhythm. 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:19.920 Get out of here and get me. 0:13:20.120 --> 0:13:21.199 The money too. 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:27.760 It was while touring with Benny Goodman that Peggy, often 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:31.640 the only woman on the bus, met guitarist Dave Barber 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:35.480 and the two struck up a romance that didn't go 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.839 over well with Goodman, though, and Barbara was fired from 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:42.680 the band for quote unquote fraternizing with the girl singer. 0:13:43.520 --> 0:13:47.079 But Peggy liked Dave, I mean, she really liked him, 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:51.040 and so she quit. She married Dave Barber and gave 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:53.480 birth to their daughter, Nikki later that year. 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:58.040 They had such chemistry together that was the love of 0:13:58.080 --> 0:13:59.679 her life. 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.240 There's this duet they wrote and recorded together called I 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:07.480 Don't Know Enough About You. They filmed the performance sort 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:09.319 of an early music video. 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.200 I know a little bit about a lot. 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:18.640 Of things, but I don't know enough about. 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:21.760 Peggy is playing a teacher, sitting at a desk, fiddling 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:25.360 with a pair of glasses. She looks so healthy, happy 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:29.920 and gorgeous. Dave Barber sits off to the side, strumming 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:33.280 his guitar. These are two people so at ease with 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:36.200 each other that the picture of contentment. 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.520 You get me in a fish Oh. 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:40.440 A new arman. 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.480 I don't know, but Dave, like Peggy's father, had a 0:14:45.560 --> 0:14:50.600 drinking problem, and as Peggy's star rose, Dave's drinking only 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:52.080 got worse and it. 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:56.120 Broke her heart. But just as she always has done, 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:57.720 it fueled her music. 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:02.920 Gazza, don't enough of that. 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:08.320 After eight years of marriage, Dave Barber and Peggy Lee 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:14.040 filed for divorce. Coming up personally, Peggy takes on the 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:18.760 nineteen fifties as a single mother. Artistically, she ends up 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:43.880 owning the decade. 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:38.440 Person two Persons with Charles Collingwood. 0:15:41.400 --> 0:15:45.600 In nineteen sixty, cameras from the CBS TV interview series 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:50.080 Person to Person visited Peggy Lee at her sprawling Beverly 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:53.520 Hills mansion, also known as the Peach Palace. 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:56.040 Well, now you've achieved quite a few goals up and 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.720 now what was your main goal as a youngster in Jamestown, 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:00.440 North Dakota. 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.680 Well, Charles, I had two goals really. 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:10.080 One was to be a successful singer, and the other 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:15.800 was to have a family. And I've been very happy 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:19.600 about having some success, and I have a wonderful daughter. 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.920 And of course as I have gone along, I picked 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:27.040 up a few more goals. I think it's good to 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:28.320 have a goal, don't you, Charles. 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.960 I think it is now. When Peggy says she'd had 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:37.560 some success, that's an understatement. In just the previous decade, 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:40.600 she had achieved more than most artists could hope to 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:43.800 in a lifetime. In this act, we're going to talk 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:47.000 about what made Peggy Lee one of the most important 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.440 musical artists of the nineteen fifties. 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:55.360 Yeah, it's a good day far sanging a song, and 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:56.160 it's a good. 0:16:56.080 --> 0:17:02.160 Day for one thing. She was a prolific singer songwriter, 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:05.720 a rarity for women back then. She co wrote It's 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:09.760 a Good Day with Dave Barber. Peggy was always writing 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.919 back in North Dakota. She wrote poetry and ultimately she 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:20.080 had credits on more than two hundred and fifty songs, 0:17:20.119 --> 0:17:21.440 sad songs. 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:27.720 Was then and no no. 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:30.360 Happy Songs. 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:35.200 I Dance by Fred Astaire and Brando's Eyes. 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:40.159 You're Runner's Hair, but I think to tell you is 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:44.720 only there that I love it with you? 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:51.720 And a certain Disney classic, What a Dog. 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:52.800 As a kid? 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:56.159 Was it really cool for you that your grandmother was 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:57.320 part of Lady in the Tramp. 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.040 So that's how my friend knew of her. 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:06.000 That's Peggy's granddaughter, Holly foster Wells. Again, Peggy co wrote 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:08.439 the score to Lady in the Tramp. But that's not 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:09.840 all she did on the movie. 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:13.760 She's the voice of the Siamese Cats. She's Darling the Mother, 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:15.520 She's Peg in the Dog Pound. 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:16.600 He's a child. 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:23.520 I love him, Yes, he love have got it pretty bad. 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:28.040 My grandmother had a film projector in her house and 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:30.879 she would take out that film every year and we 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:34.680 would watch it in the living room sidebar. 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.360 That same year, nineteen fifty five, Peggy scored an OSCAR 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:42.280 nomination playing an alcoholic saloon singer in the film Pete 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.800 Kelly's Blues. This is a sidebar because well, we don't 0:18:45.840 --> 0:18:47.879 have time to get into all the things that Peggy 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.720 did in the nineteen fifties, blame her for being so 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:55.960 productive now. In addition to all the songs Peggy wrote, 0:18:56.160 --> 0:18:59.639 they are the ones she all but rewrote. Peggy covered 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:03.840 a lot of popular songs, often breathing new life into them. 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:09.159 She took the song Heart from the Broadway show Damn Yankees. 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:10.840 You Gotta Have. 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:23.320 All, and gave it a Latin beat, You Gotta. She 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:26.359 took the song lover a Waltz from the Rogers and 0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:38.959 Heart musical Love Me Tonight, Speak My Name, and well 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:48.040 listen to what she did to that. She takes that 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:50.760 and turns it into something kind of wild. 0:19:51.320 --> 0:20:12.639 Her final notes have been likened to an orgasm. 0:20:03.280 --> 0:20:06.040 And in nineteen fifty eight, she took the song Fever, 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:10.200 originally recorded by R and B singer Little Willie John. 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:16.080 You never know how much love, never know how much 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:17.240 I care. 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:22.360 And gave it a new, stripped down arrangement, just bass 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:25.439 drums and finger snaps. 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:28.800 Never know how much I love you. 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:33.320 She's keeping so much in If this is the only 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:37.119 thing to signal what you're singing about, that's powerful. 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:41.680 When you put your arms around me, I gave a fever. 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:43.879 That's a hard thing you give. 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:48.520 Me It became the biggest hit of her career. That 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:52.760 sequence in the middle that sounds almost like beat poetry. 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:55.280 Roam me O loved Julia. 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:56.520 Peggy wrote that. 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:04.639 When he rounder, he said, Julivy, you my fame. 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:05.800 Now give us fever. 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:11.080 Also listen to the way she delivers those lines. Peggy 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:14.680 had been blurring the line between talking and singing as 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:17.879 far back as her Benny Goodman days. Here she is 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.400 on Coal Porters, Let's do It back in nineteen forty one. 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:26.600 Up Leland, little lapts, do it well, Let's do it, 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:28.919 Let's fall in. 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:33.840 The way she just tosses off the words let's do it. 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:37.760 Peggy came up with that. Now. Fever may have been 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:42.840 Peggy's biggest commercial success, but her artistic apex came with 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:47.359 the release of the album Black Coffee. 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:53.520 You can really feel her coming into the kitchen after 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:57.359 a long night and just looking at the coffee and saying, Wow, 0:21:57.520 --> 0:21:59.600 it was worth it last night, but I gotta have 0:21:59.720 --> 0:22:00.880 that now. 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:04.080 Here She is on the album's title track. 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:11.840 Black Coffee Loves a hand Mawnbreu. 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:17.440 Black Coffee was one of the very first concept albums 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:21.959 ever recorded. It's about a woman's lonesome experience being in 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:25.679 love with a man she can't trust. The Milestone record 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:29.239 is now considered one of the best vocal albums in 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:30.280 jazz history. 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:33.240 She becomes Cool in that album. 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:38.120 Black Coffee also cemented Lee's status as the high priestess 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:42.800 of pop jazz, acclaimed by critics and the masses alike. 0:22:43.400 --> 0:22:46.840 Could Peggy Lee have only happened at the time that 0:22:46.920 --> 0:22:47.399 she did. 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:48.080 Yes. 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:53.399 Biographer Peter Richmond says Peggy was peaking just as black 0:22:53.440 --> 0:22:57.240 and white musical traditions were intermingling in the mainstream. 0:22:57.400 --> 0:23:02.080 Peggy was able to incorporate so many different rhythms and emotions. 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:05.640 And she was, and I really think I can say this, 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:08.120 she was unique. There was nobody like her. 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:12.440 Later in her career, Peggy told one writer quote, I'm 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:15.920 not really a white singer. I sing black. I always have. 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:17.600 Now. 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:20.600 When Peggy made that comment in nineteen seventy four, it 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:23.960 had to have rankled many, just as it certainly would today. 0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:28.200 There's a terrific essay about Peggy Lee written by culture 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:32.160 critic Gerald Early. He's a professor of English and African 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:37.080 American studies at Washington University in Saint Louis. Early writes 0:23:37.119 --> 0:23:42.199 about the profoundly uneasy history of white performers emulating a 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:47.560 black sound, from Louis Prima to Elvis to eminem. Peggy, 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:51.920 he points out, didn't just emulate black singers. She literally 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:54.879 and famously would imitate Billie Holliday. 0:23:57.320 --> 0:24:03.399 I love you first time. I love to them. You 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:06.000 got a certain and acute way of friendly. 0:24:09.359 --> 0:24:11.560 So what was that about? Was she a big fan 0:24:11.640 --> 0:24:15.400 of Billie Holidays. She was a huge fan of Billy Holidays. 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:23.159 She absolutely loved her music. And I heard that Billie Holiday. Well, 0:24:23.680 --> 0:24:28.439 wasn't so crazy about my grandmother because I heard that 0:24:28.520 --> 0:24:31.480 she felt like, not just my grandmother, but other people 0:24:31.520 --> 0:24:35.679 too copied her. But as my grandmother's voice matured in 0:24:35.720 --> 0:24:39.800 her career developed, you don't hear anybody but Peggy Lee. 0:24:40.320 --> 0:24:44.000 Gerald early in that essay seems to agree that Peggy 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:48.320 was an original. He writes that she invented the hip 0:24:48.400 --> 0:24:53.440 white female vocalist. He describes Peggy's imitation of Billy Holliday 0:24:53.800 --> 0:24:57.200 as more than quote some sort of lame white girl 0:24:57.280 --> 0:25:00.639 imitation of the great black jazz singer. It was an 0:25:00.680 --> 0:25:03.919 expression of how accomplished Lee was as a jazz singer 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:08.800 and how much she respected holiday end quote. Peggy Lee 0:25:08.880 --> 0:25:13.080 had deep bonds with black artists throughout her career. She 0:25:13.200 --> 0:25:16.720 was an early champion and friend of Ray Charles. When 0:25:16.800 --> 0:25:20.800 one of her childhood idols, Louis Armstrong, died in nineteen 0:25:20.840 --> 0:25:24.639 seventy one, it was Peggy Lee who was invited to 0:25:24.680 --> 0:25:27.760 sing the Lord's Prayer at his funeral, for. 0:25:28.040 --> 0:25:38.680 That is the King and the Poe and the Blood. 0:25:40.560 --> 0:25:44.240 And when CBS aired a star studded tribute to Duke 0:25:44.280 --> 0:25:48.560 Ellington produced by Quincy Jones, Peggy Lee was the only 0:25:48.640 --> 0:25:53.639 white solo artist featured, alongside Sarah Vaughan, ROBERTA. Flack, and 0:25:53.680 --> 0:25:58.360 Aretha Franklin. If I'm the Duke Ellington once said, Peggy 0:25:58.440 --> 0:26:04.920 Lee is Queen. Peggy had earned that title in the 0:26:05.040 --> 0:26:08.879 nineteen fifties. She was no longer just a big band 0:26:08.920 --> 0:26:14.280 singer Benny Goodman's Canary. Critically and commercially, she was an 0:26:14.359 --> 0:26:17.800 artist of the highest order, on a par with Frank Sinatra. 0:26:18.920 --> 0:26:22.040 But for all the hit songs she'd recorded, the one 0:26:22.080 --> 0:26:25.560 that was closest to her heart wasn't one she'd written 0:26:25.960 --> 0:26:27.440 or radically reimagined. 0:26:28.040 --> 0:26:36.159 Someday We'll build a home on a hill top. 0:26:38.600 --> 0:26:39.400 You and I. 0:26:41.880 --> 0:26:44.760 Shine so the folks who live on the hill. 0:26:44.840 --> 0:26:48.119 That's her very favorite song, and I think it just 0:26:48.320 --> 0:26:53.640 paints this picture of an idyllic relationship and growing old 0:26:53.640 --> 0:26:57.320