Peggy Lee album-by-album thread

We've had all-purpose threads about Peggy Lee's work on Decca (1953-57) and Capitol, and her post-Capitol years, but as far as I can tell, no album-by-album. As there are some real gems in her long career that have been lost in the shuffle in those other threads, as the woman herself once said, "Let's Do It!"

I'm going to break with tradition a bit and start with a non-canonical album, covering her absolutely essential early work with Benny Goodman.



The Complete Recordings 1941 - 1947 (released 1999) doesn't quite live up to its title, as there are some surviving alternate takes of some of these songs that aren't included here. But it is the most complete collection available and the sound quality is the best I know of. All but three of the songs date from 1941-42 (the musicians' strike and Lee's marriage to Dave Barbour put her recording career on hold for a few years); the three 1947 sides are from after she had signed to Capitol and sound like it (i.e. he wasn't her boss at this point). I rarely listen to those; to me, they don't really fit with the others.

This is literally a desert island disc for me: when I moved overseas in 2004, it was one of only about a dozen CDs I allowed myself to pack (or technically it was two of the dozen ). I never regretted that decision! It's also the first of her recordings I ever bought, except for a various-artists compilation that included "Fever". It marks a great start to a brilliant career, and it's a great place for new fans to start as well!

1. Elmer’s Tune (August 1941)
2. I See a Million People (But All I Can See Is You) (August 1941)
3. That's the Way It Goes (September 1941)
4. I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good) (October 1941)
5. My Old Flame (August 1941)
6. How Deep Is the Ocean? (September 1941)
7. Shady Lady Bird (October 1941)
8. Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love) (September 1941)
9. Somebody Else Is Taking My Place (November 1941)
10. Somebody Nobody Loves (November 1941)
11. How Long Has This Been Going On? (November 1941)
12. That Did It, Marie (November 1941)
13. Winter Weather (November 1941)
14. Ev'rything I Love (November 1941)
15. Not Mine (December 1941)
16. Not a Care in the World (December 1941)
17. My Old Flame (October 1941)
18. How Deep Is the Ocean? (October 1941 – a hit single in 1945)
19. Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love) (October 1941)
20. Blues in the Night (December 1941)
21. Where or When (December 1941)
22. On the Sunny Side of the Street (December 1941)
23. The Lamp of Memory (Incertidumbre) (January 1942)
24. If You Build a Better Mousetrap (January 1942)
25. When the Roses Bloom Again (January 1942)
26. My Little Cousin (February 1942)
27. The Way You Look Tonight (March 1942)
28. I Threw a Kiss in the Ocean (March 1942)
29. We'll Meet Again (March 1942)
30. Full Moon (Noche de Luna) (March 1942)
31. There Won't Be a Shortage of Love (March 1942)
32. You're Easy to Dance With (May 1942)
33. All I Need Is You (May 1942)
34. Why Don't You Do Right? (July 1942)
35. Let's Say a Prayer (July 1942)
36. The Freedom Train (September 1947)
37. Keep Me in Mind (December 1947)
38. For Every Man There's a Woman (December 1947)

“Elmer’s Tune” is often held up by critics as an example of how Lee hadn’t quite found her voice yet, and Lee herself reportedly disliked it, in part because the band played it in Helen Forrest’s key (Lee had just been hired to replace Forrest, literally only days before her first session with Goodman). In any event, I blame the poor song choice more than I blame Lee for her relatively weak performance on that one. “My Old Flame,” recorded less than a week later, shows she knew even then how to wrench all sort of emotion out of a decent song.

"Somebody Else Is Taking My Place" was her first #1 hit, and several of the others were more minor hits. My favorites are "Not Mine," "The Way You Look Tonight," "I Threw A Kiss In the Ocean," and "The Lamp of Memory"...but there's no shortage of gems here!

 

Incidentally, some of these sides were reissued as early as 1952 on a Columbia EP, and then in 1957 as an album on the Harmony label (which I've otherwise never heard of - from the LP logo in the corner it looks like a Columbia subsidiary?) In any event, that collection is far from complete.

 

Bump!

Come on, there has to be people interested in this out there! I think the problem is not many people have these early recordings. I don't, but from Black Coffee onwards I have most of the albums up to the late 60s. Sadly these early recordings appear to be heading towards being almost forgotten.

 

OK, I'll play. I have a decent number of Peggy Lee albums, though I am not a completist.

I have the Harmony LP pictured above. As far as I'm concerned, this is a different singer who happens to be named Peggy Lee. The Peggy Lee that I know and love would emerge several years later. The album is good on its own terms but IMO nothing special.

I should add that I have similar feelings about Frank Sinatra. Frank is born with "I've Got the World on a String" on Capitol. He is not the same singer prior.

What LP will be next, Rendezvous?

 

I do have Rendezvous. I have a lot of Peggy Lee LPs but I've got them all in a relatively short space of time. A lot to get into.

I'm hoping this thread takes off as I plan to listen to each LP as it appears in here.

 

Wow, the Goodman-era recordings are among my favorites. I never would have guessed they'd inspire so little interest here. In any event, I do encourage anyone who hasn't heard the Complete Recordings to give it a spin.

Okay, on to the first Capitol era, later today, I promise!

 

I remember both my wife and i being surprised by how much we liked this collection of early Peggy Lee material when we first listened to it a couple of years ago. Lately i've been digging the music from her late period, which i think is very underappreciated ''i think ''Mirrors'' is brilliant'' but that's for another day. Anyway in honor of this thread, and seeing how i haven't played it in so long, i think i'll put on this CD later on tonight when all is quite.

 

Before we go on to Capitol, there's one fairly mysterious collaboration with bandleader Bob Crosby, probably recorded in June 1944:



Almost nothing is known for certain about this record, which wasn't a hit and which came out while Lee was otherwise retired and busy with her newborn daughter. Neither Peter Richmond's biography nor James Gavin's mention it at all, and Lee herself is only known to have mentioned it once, in a 1970s interview where context made it clear that she didn't remember much of anything about it either.

In any event, it is definitely her on both sides of the record (which was later reissued with "It's Anybody's Spring" replaced with an instrumental by a different act altogether). Bob Crosby - Bing's brother - was a bandleader with a popular radio show in the 30s and 40s, which went on hiatus late in World War II when he joined the Marines. This record is believed to have been recorded immediately before he joined up. Some sources say Lee was a singer on his show "for several seasons," but there is only conclusive proof that she appeared on his show once, on June 25, 1944. Curiously, she didn't sing "Atchison..." or "It's Anybody's Spring" on that show.

"Atchson, Topeka & Santa Fe" was from the Judy Garland movie The Harvey Girls, which was still a year in the future when this version came out. "It's Anybody's Spring" was also from a movie, Road to Utopia. Bing Crosby recorded both songs around the same time Lee did.


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It's Anybody's Spring »

 

That must be one incredibly scarce record.

 

Peggy Lee's first album-proper, back in the days when they literally were albums (i.e. collections of singles sold in album format), was Rendezvous with Peggy Lee (1948).


After quitting Benny Goodman's band in protest when Goodman fired Dave Barbour (his crime, of course, was marrying Lee), she quit music to have a family. She always said in interviews that it was Barbour who dragged her back into the studio, but I wonder if she just realized full-time motherhood wasn't where it's at for someone with a talent like hers? In any event, Capitol Records had been pursuing her for a couple of years when she joined up in 1945, and in no time she was a mainstay in the top 20. Some of the songs that eventually appeared on Rendezvous with Peggy Lee were hit singles as early as 1946, and they were interspersed with a number of non-album singles (which I'll cover separately).

Rendezvous appeared in a number of different formats and varieties. The original March 29, 1948 release was a set of three 78s with the following six tracks, all recorded in late 1947:
1. Stormy Weather
2. I Can't Give You Anything But Love
3. Why Don't You Do Right
4. Them There Eyes
5. 'Deed I Do
6. Don't Smoke in Bed

This version was also issued on a set of 45s early on. It's not clear how early. Some sources say it was simultaneous with the 78 issue, but I find that hard to believe given that the 45 format was literally brand new in 1948. In any event, the lineup of songs was exactly the same on the 45 version. Already, we're seeing examples of her propensity for re-recording her favorites: "Why Don't You Do Right" is a rerecording of her Benny Goodman-era hit, and she would re-record "Don't Smoke in Bed" in 1969. More of that to come very shortly.

The first LP configuration of Rendezvous was issued on a 10" in June 1952. It added two songs: "While We're Young" (recorded around the same time as the original six) and "I Don't Know Enough About You" (recorded about two years earlier, in 1945, and a hit single in its own right long before the album ever came out). This version was also reportedly released as a set of 45s, probably two EPs. Both formats have an identical cover to the original 1948 album, which means the front cover lists only the original six songs.

Incidentally, there is an alternate take of "I Don't Know Enough About You" that appears on Sentimental Journey: Capitol's Great Ladies of Song Vol 2. To my ear it's from around the same time, and that's definitely Dave's guitar (more prominent on this version), but it's also definitely a different take.

Last but, well, most, a 12" version was released on April 1, 1955, with four more songs added: "Hold Me," "It's a Good Day" (the 1946 version), "Mañana (Is Good Enough for Me)", and "Golden Earrings". All except "It's A Good Day" were recorded around the same time as the original six. This time, they did update the cover to show all the songs:


The final, twelve-song version has been issued on CD in various countries in the '80s and '90s.

Most of her non-album Capitol singles from the 40s were collected on various other albums later on. I'll do an overview of those next.

 

Right, I'll be playing Rendezvous in the next couple of days...

 

One thing I’ve learned from trying to get this thread off the ground is that there’s a gaping hole in Peggy Lee’s catalog when it comes to this stage of her career. She recorded somewhere around 40-50 singles for Capitol from 1945-1952, the vast majority of which were never on any canonical album and a few of which have still never been reissued. To get exact numbers would take longer than I’m able to spend on the project.

In any event, the Singles Collection box set is the best single source for this era (it also includes the Bob Crosby single discussed above). I don’t own a copy of it and can’t comment on the sound quality, but if you’re just after having a copy of everything, that’s the place to start. That, along with The Lost 40s and 50s Capitol Masters, the Capitol Collectors Series Vol 1: The Early Years, and Vol 2: Rare Gems and Hidden Treasures will net almost everything. That will likely include a lot you don’t really want, as she did record some real duds in those days, but it will probably also get you everything you do want.

Big hits and highlights among the non-album singles (in my opinion they are often not one and the same) include “Waitin’ For the Train to Come In” (top 5 in 1945, when a lot of young women could probably identify), “Linger in My Arms A Little Longer, Baby” “It’s All Over Now” and – surprisingly to me – her version of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” (her second-biggest solo hit ever in terms of chart performance, reaching #2). They’re all available on the Early Years set. After 1949 her chart fortunes declined, with only one top twenty hit before leaving for Decca, “When I Dance With You I Get Ideas” (included on The Singles Collection).

Her biggest hit – in this period and any other – was “Mañana (Is Good Enough For Me)” (#1 for nine weeks), which as noted is on some versions of Rendezvous with Peggy Lee. Like a lot of songs that were considered funny in their own time, today…not so much. Those of you who aren’t familiar with it, listen and decide for yourselves. I have my own opinions but I don’t wish to run afoul of the no politics rule on my own thread. (I will say this: there’s a concert from 1984 on Youtube where someone requests “Mañana”, and she does sing one verse of it but then cuts it short. I like to think that means our heroine came to realize that song belonged on the scrap heap of history.) The version included on The Early Years is worth hearing because it breaks down ala “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” and there’s some studio chatter following. But the song itself? Yeah, no thanks.

Chronologically, The Lost 40s and 50s Capitol Masters, Rare Gems and Hidden Treasures and The Singles Collection all reach well beyond the era covered here, but I’m including them here because they serve as the best (in many cases only) source for some fantastic songs. Rare Gems and Hidden Treasures is an especially good place for a newish fan to start, in my experience at least because it is where I got my start on this era. I remember rushing out to buy it when it first came out after reading a glowing review of it somewhere, and it did not disappoint. (The only thing that did disappoint was that the CD cover proclaimed in big letters that the liner notes included an appreciation by Paul McCartney, and of course that appreciation turned out to be little more than “She’s beautiful, she’s talented, she’s Peggy Lee, shut up!” But what would you expect?)

Of particular interest from the era we’re covering here is “Eight, Nine and Ten”, a reunion with Benny Goodman (who was also on Capitol by then, and recorded another version with himself on lead vocals), although that’s not among my favorites. “Ain’t Doin’ Bad Doin’ Nothin’”, recorded with Dave Barbour and his band in 1947, is brilliant and deserved to be a hit; as far as I know it was never released before this collection. The exotic “Similau” (1949) was a hit and is also among my favorites. Despite their cutesy titles, "Bubble Loo, Bubble Loo" and “Laroo Laroo Lili Bolero” are both lovely, were both hit singles in 1948 and deserve to be better remembered today. “I Love the Way You’re Breaking My Heart” (1951, otherwise unreleased) is definitely in my top ten for her entire catalog – don’t you dare miss that one! Why it wasn’t released as a single (at a time when most of her records that did get released weren’t doing very well) is absolutely beyond me.

Things get at least a little less muddled from here on in!

 

I agree. I was really surprised at the way her voice sounded the first time I heard the Benny Goodman recordings. So young.

I have most of her albums, the most recent acquisition being 2 Shows Nightly, and I'll definitely have something to say about it if the thread ever gets that far.

 

Outstanding and informative!

 

The first track on disc two, and now my my favorite version of my favorite happy song.

 

Next up is Lover (recorded 1952, released 1964)





In 1952, Peggy Lee left Capitol for Decca. This period was also marked by her divorce from Dave Barbour (thanks in large part to both of their struggles with alcohol) and her declining chart fortunes: only two of her last 22 Capitol singles made the charts. But neither of those was the direct reason why she switched labels.

What did happen was that she wanted to record “Lover”, a Rogers and Hart song from the 1932 movie Love Me Tonight. Lee’s inspiration for her updated arrangement of the song came from the 1935 French movie La Bandera. The song doesn’t actually appear in that movie, but as Lee wrote in her autobiography: “As [the protagonist’s] regiment was riding out into the desert he waved a banner to change the gait of the horses. It struck me as I was watching that it could be the change of a musical key: Raising the key would have the effect of seeming to go faster. Then the rest of the idea came: The gait of the horses resembled Latin rhythms. Then I thought, “All I need is a song that goes with that rhythm.”

Exactly how she decided that song was “Lover” is unknown. (It isn’t even known if she ever watched Love Me Tonight – probably not on its initial release, when she was only 12.) In any event, she added the song to her live set and got a fantastic reaction from the audiences…but Capitol refused to let her record it, possibly because they’d already had a hit with it by Les Paul and Mary Ford a couple of years before. Despite her declining chart fortunes, Capitol apparently intended to re-sign Lee when her contract expired, and perhaps for the same reason they didn’t appear to feel the need to make any concessions to her. That proved to be a big mistake, as a Decca exec caught her live show in New York and offered to sign her. She asked if she could record “Lover,” he said yes, and the rest is history - or was for the next five years at least.

It proved to be a good move for Lee: her first Decca single, “Be Anything (But Be Mine),” was her first chart single in eight tries, reaching #21 even though there were three competing versions of that song also on the charts at the time (hers was the second most successful, after Eddy Howard’s version which reached #7). Next up was “Lover,” which soared to #3, her biggest hit in three years. A commonly-found error (of which Lee herself appears to be the root source) is that “Lover” was her first Decca single, but “Be Anything” definitely came first. That might be because she had some trouble recording “Lover”: the unorthodox rhythms made it tricky for her to stay on the beat. They got around that problem by having her use an isolation booth for the first time, an innovation that obviously paid off well.



All but two of the songs on Lover (“That’s Him Over There” and “Go Where You Go”) were released on singles in 1952-53, and all feature orchestral arrangements by Gordon Jenkins, lending the album a sense of cohesiveness even though it wasn’t released as such until a decade later. For better or worse, they’re all very much a product of their time (with the partial exception of “Lover” in my opinion), a bit over the top on the lush and sweet production. Swing was dead, rock was a few years off yet, and it shows even with artists like Peggy Lee who didn’t really belong in either camp.

For all that, there are strong points. “I Hear the Music Now” makes good use of its very lush orchestration. “That’s Him Over There” hints at the brilliance of Black Coffee that was just around the corner, though it isn’t quite as good as most of that album (the spare piano solo is very promising, in any event). “Sans Souci” is my second-favorite song on the album. It’s not the Johnny Mercer song; Lee co-wrote this one herself with Sonny Burke, who had recommended her to the Decca brass in the first place. It sounds like it was intended for a musical (to the point where I went looking for information on which musical it was from at first!), but any information about that is lacking.

Lover was released in mono and "hi-fi stereophonic" (which I think is Decca's word for fake stereo). I don't think it ever came out on CD in the US, but it did in Japan.

Yeah, I know, I’m in a hurry to get to Black Coffee too. That’s next!

ETA: I forgot to add a track list. Here it is:
1 Lover
2 Forgive Me
3 I Hear the Music Now
4 You Go to My Head
5 That's Him Over There
6 River River
7 I'm Glad There Is You
8 San Souci
9 Be Anything
10 Just One of Those Things
11 Go Where You Go
12 This Is a Very Special Day

 

The only record of early Peggy Lee recordings I own is Trav'lin' Light, a 15 song compilation of tracks recorded with then-husband Dave Barbour from 1946-1949. The songs escape the big band vibe by using only a quintet (2 guitars, bass, drums, piano) and keeping an intimate jazz-club vibe throughout. I love this stuff!

 

I have (and like) that one too and was thinking of including it here, but I figured it doesn't really pass muster as a canonical album. We could certainly discuss it if you want, though. Nice collection.

 

I've never heard of this one! The Peggy Lee discography seems never ending. When Black Coffee appears I'll start playing the albums along with when they are on this thread. I have most of them since then through to Is That All There Is?

 

I know this was released in 2000, and obviously isn't part of Peggy Lee's regular canon. I just thought I'd mention it, since it's the only music from Ms. Lee's early period that I own. And, because of this quote from AllMusic (italics are mine): "The supposed impermanence of these recordings (they were designed to be used only once or twice as bumpers for radio stations) belies the fact that these songs are among the best she ever recorded, and though the sound quality is a shade inferior to her studio sessions, Trav'lin Light is of inestimable historical value."

I love the sparse arrangements. Superior music.

 

I agree. They've held up better than a lot of her studio recordings from that time. The liner notes feature some of my favorite pictures of her, too. The only "shortcoming" to Trav'lin Light in my opinion is that I happened to buy it at the same time as Rare Gems and Hidden Treasures and it was that collection that caught on with me first. Excellent album, in any event.

 

Lover is a great record overall. I don't have it, never heard it, so I listened to a number of the tracks via youtube. She's in fine voice here.

I'd prefer different arrangements, as I don't care for the style of the strings, and the background singers, like on "Forgive Me", I could do without.

But the title track, "Lover" is such an odd nut, with her singing over the frantic percussion...I love it!

 

If that means you don't have Norma Deloris Egstrom from Jamestown, North Dakota (which came three years after Is That All There Is), then you owe it to yourself to get it! It's an absolutely brilliant album from a stage in her career when no one would have expected as much. I'm really looking forward to discussing that...but it's months off at the rate we're going, so there's plenty of time for you to get to know it!

 

Next up: the incomparable Black Coffee (1953/1956) (Officially Black Coffee with Peggy Lee)



Track Listing on 1953 10” LP:

1. Black Coffee

2. I’ve Got You Under My Skin

3. Easy Living

4. My Heart Belongs to Daddy

5. A Woman Alone with the Blues

6. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was

7. (Ah, the Apple Trees) When the World was Young

8. Love Me or Leave Me




Track Listing on 1956 12” LP:

1. Black Coffee

2. I’ve Got You Under My Skin

3. Easy Living

4. My Heart Belongs to Daddy

5. It Ain’t Necessarily So

6. Gee Baby Ain’t I Good to You?

7. A Woman Alone with the Blues

8. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was

9. (Ah, the Apple Trees) When the World was Young

10. Love Me or Leave Me

11. You’re My Thrill

12. There’s a Small Hotel


Peggy Lee’s first Decca album is, in my opinion, also her first real album in the modern sense of the term (since Rendezvous with Peggy Lee consisted primarily of previously-released singles). Of course, that sense of the term didn’t exist yet in 1953, but Black Coffee was among the albums that helped create that meaning in the first place. I’ve also been known to argue that it deserves the title of “first concept album”. (Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, released two years later, almost always gets the nod for that one.) On revisiting it for this thread, I have to admit that it doesn’t really pass muster as a concept album. It veers too far back and forth between sad love songs and happy love songs, and then ends on “Love Me or Leave Me,” which doesn’t quite fit in either of those categories.

But if it’s not a concept album, it is definitely a very cohesive set of songs that fit together just about perfectly (even though four of them were recorded three years later than the rest and with different personnel except for Lee herself), and are clearly intended to be listened to in one sitting. That in itself was a very progressive idea in 1953, when the LP format was only five years old and was still mostly used for classical music, Broadway soundtracks, and singles compilations like Rendezvous with Peggy Lee. It is also a major departure from her previous lush, orchestral style: the 1953 recordings feature only piano, trumpet, bass and drums while the 1956 sides add only guitar (no, not Dave) and harp to the mix.

For that reason along with its top-notch musicianship and distinct style, Black Coffee won tremendous respect among critics at the time and decades worth of fans since. Later stars like Joni Mitchell and Petula Clark, and more recently k.d. lang, have cited it as a favorite. Clark later recorded the title track, but expressed regret for doing so, feeling she hadn’t done Peggy Lee justice. Natalie Wood was a huge fan, and reportedly sometimes delayed filming scenes of Rebel Without a Cause because she wouldn’t come out of her trailer until she’d finished the record. Down Beat ranked Lee second on their “Female Singer of the Year” list for 1953 (after Ella Fitzgerald), when she had failed to make the list at all in the previous several years. But like a lot of records that have since been recognized as masterpieces, it wasn’t a hit at the time. Neither the album nor its lone single, “My Heart Belongs to Daddy”, made the charts. Nevertheless, it was also reportedly among Peggy Lee’s own favorites among her works.

Surprisingly little is known about how she came to such an abrupt departure from her previous style. One theory is that she was trying to capture the sound of her live shows, which were getting better reviews than her records at that point. Several of the songs on Black Coffee were indeed in her live repertoire, and we do know there was a conscious effort to avoid letting the music overwhelm her vocals (as did sometimes happen on her earlier work). Jimmy Rowles, who played piano on the 1953 songs, wrote the arrangements with input from Lee. In Peter Richmond’s biography Fever, he is quoted as telling Lee, “We don’t want a contest between the piano and you. You’re the star. And they don’t want to hear me fiddle around all the time. You’re singing.” Producer Milt Gabler, by all accounts, largely sat back and let the musicians do their job.

The spare, intimate style definitely reflects as much. Mostly recorded late at night in Decca’s New York studio, with Lee reportedly drunk on cognac much of the time, it’s as up-close-and-personal as she ever got. If the tone varies wildly from the bleak despair of the title track to the joy of “Easy Living”, this is the very epitome of fifties cool from start to finish. Peggy Lee is usually referred to as a pop-jazz artist, but there’s nothing poppy about this album. It’s straight up jazz.

The 1956 version was done at Decca’s request (rather surprisingly, given that the original wasn’t a big hit), as they were phasing out the 10” LP format and wanted to expand it to a full 12-song album. The four additional songs do sound different if you remember to listen for the differences, but I think they blend in remarkably well. There were two additional songs from the 1956 sessions that didn’t make the album: “Guess I’ll Go Back Home This Summer” and “Do I Love You?” Both were eventually released on different compilation albums in the ‘60s, but no reissue of Black Coffee has ever included them. (Perhaps just as well that they’re not tacked on as bonus tracks at this point – to me, that would be just as hazardous as trying to slip “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” into Sgt. Pepper somewhere.) She rerecorded “Do I Love You?” twice: in 1959 for Beauty and the Beat, and in 1992 for her last album, Moments Like This.

 

I have the 2-record Black Coffee EP, which I think has the same 8 songs as the 10 " LP.