#Her last words rock professional

Gavin succeeds in provoking valid questions about the path singers of Lee’s generation made when confronted with the commercial risks of staying true to the jazz influenced pop milieu and the artistic risks of staying commercially relevant.

Gavin also excels at placing Lee’s music within the cultural moment, including a lucid reflection on the contrast between “Fever” and ‘50s sexual politics, and a thematic yoking of music industry payola and the quiz show scandals to illustrate the era’s mendacious currents.

#Her last words rock professional

Like his work on Horne he is a skillful storyteller who convinces you through vivid accounts of personal and professional situations and a natural narrative flow. The anecdotes he recounts from jazz singer Mark Murphy about meeting Lee, whom he idolized, as well as her curtness toward him after he rejected her advances are fascinating. He also gets his sources to share what happened literally and emotionally, which can be entertaining. For example, in the opening chapters he provides a more complicated portrait of Lee’s childhood in North Dakota, especially regarding her relationship to her emotionally abusive stepmother. Though Richmond covers all the basics effectively Gavin writes in a more intimate style and seems to have had even greater access to behind-the-scenes stories. Gavin also details her masterfully seductive presence in the television medium. He covers Lee’s music even more authoritatively than Richmond, such as his discussion of her innovative use of Latin percussion on several ‘50s recordings. Gavin is an excellent journalist and biographer who wrote a seminal account of New York cabaret life ( Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret) and the most thorough overview of Lena Horne’s life and career with 2009’s Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne. The real question Is That All There Is raises is does Peggy Lee warrant so much biographical coverage? Arguably, Gavin’s book is so thorough it is definitive, and deserves to be the last word on Lee for awhile.

The greatest reveal of both is not that Lee was complicated-decades of “tell-all” biographies have long exposed gaps between star personae and actual personae the takeaway for me is how fragile the legacies of singers on the pop/jazz axis actually are.

Similarly as its subtitle indicates, Gavin depicts Lee as an eccentric recluse whose insecurity, vanity, and mean streaks made her a difficult person. Notably it reiterates Lee as a gifted singer whose deft musicality was of a piece with her sultry, highly cultivated image and persona. As a book it expands on a lot of what Richmond revealed about Lee. James Gavin’s Is That All There Is? is the second major biography of Peggy Lee in eight years following Peter Richmond’s Fever published in 2006. In the late ‘60s, “Is That All There Is” aside, she began losing her taste and largely recorded rock and R&B songs incongruent with her voice in garish arrangements that clashed. Her recording career (1941-93) is, however, best understood as sporadic. Though she had commercial successes at Columbia Records and hit singles during her first run at Capitol (1945-51) it was at Decca where her distinctive vocal persona blossomed and she became someone of interest to jazz listeners.ĭuring her return to Capitol she made some seminal recordings, notably 1958’s sensual “Fever,” and some enchanting influential ones as well (her original composition 1961’s “I Love Being Here with You,” 1957’s “Folks Who Live on the Hill,” 1969’s “Is that All there Is?”). 1953’s Black Coffee (a 10” album later expanded to a 12” LP) established her as an important albums artist capable of executing a concept thoroughly and successfully, a pattern she continued during her second tenure at Capitol Records (1956-72). Her “orgiastic” arrangement of “Lover” angered composer Richard Rodgers but it was a hit in 1952 and has influenced most subsequent renditions. Lee, who possessed a modest voice and a deft way with a phrase, was a minimalist whose “less is more” approach preceded the “cool” school of vocal singing that gained favor in the ‘50s (i.e. Peggy Lee’s main musical contribution to pop music came during her 1952-56 stint at Decca Records. Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee