{"id":8061,"date":"2015-05-26T10:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8061"},"modified":"2015-07-09T12:57:04","modified_gmt":"2015-07-09T12:57:04","slug":"when-peggy-lee-wondered-is-that-all-there-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=8061","title":{"rendered":"When Peggy Lee wondered ‘is that all there is?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Peggy<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Miss Peggy Lee, who was born 95 years ago today and died on Jan. 21 2002 aged 81, had come close to death in 1985 and she laughed when she told me, \u201cDon\u2019t you know that people tried to avoid playing \u2018Is That All There Is?\u2019 during that time.\u00a0I was prepared to go if it was necessary. You know, \u2018Is this trip really necessary?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee survived double-bypass heart surgery in New Orleans but complications required a second operation two weeks later. When I interviewed her one evening the following May at her home in the Bel Air section of Beverly Hills, she was slim and fit again.<\/p>\n

\"Peggy<\/a>She also exuded her trademark sensuality that evoked more of the U.S. South than her North Dakota home where she was born Norma Egstrom.<\/p>\n

Lee was one of the most beloved vocalists and one of my favourites. I had seen Ella Fitzgerald with Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan with Count Basie and Cleo Laine with John Dankworth, and Miss Peggy Lee was right up there with them.<\/p>\n

She was thankful for her loyal following and she was especially grateful after her surgery and when she returned to the concert hall in 1986 in \u201cSpring Fever\u201d at the Westwood Playhouse in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cOne of the things I noticed, both at the hospital in New Orleans and at St. John\u2019s here, was the love; the honest, no-faking love that these people had. And the messages that I got from people, when I was able to understand that I was being given messages. I wasn\u2019t there for a while. But I thank those people for their prayers and their cards. It was a lovely experience to know that people cared so much. So then, you have to make it. You have an obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of her time in hospital, she said, \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t want the details. There were complications. Serious ones. But they\u2019ve cleared up, and I\u2019m doing just fine. It took a while. Six months. I\u2019m walking a lot, and today I\u2019ve been rehearsing since noon, so I\u2019m holding up. I\u2019ve always been sort of careful of my health.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Peggy<\/a>Lee credited her recovery to the reading and meditating that she has done all her life \u2013 \u201cIt all helped me, because I wasn\u2019t afraid\u201d \u2013 and to the outpouring of concern she received, athough she viewed it with typically wry humour.<\/p>\n

She always sang Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s classic \u201cIs That All There Is?\u201d with the understated optimism that there is always more and to have\u00a0life\u2019s ultimate trip postponed left her even more determined to pass that message on.<\/p>\n

She told me: \u201cThere\u2019s a tremendous amount of gratitude going on in my thoughts, not only for the things that others did, but just that I was allowed to live. They say that when you have an experience like that, there is something else that you have to do. I don\u2019t know what it is yet, but it\u2019s something that I would like to do for people. You know, when you\u2019re given that large a gift and are allowed to stay here, it\u2019s more to give something back. Maybe some work I\u2019m going to do. Something.\u201d<\/p>\n

What she did was to continue to work, later even when she was in a wheelchair, and the start was her appearance that year in concert. Besides her classic songs, she perfomed numbers such as\u00a0 \u201cWhere Can I Go Without You?,\u201d a venture into country with a subtle waltz treatment of \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know Me,\u201d and she introduced a new song she wrote with guitarist John Chiodini called \u201cI\u2019ll Give It All to You.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spotted and hired first by Benny Goodman, Lee had a 50-year career in the end and ranked at the top end of singers of jazz and standards with hits like \u201cIs That All There Is?\u201d, \u201cI\u2019m a Woman\u201d, \u201cFever\u201d, \u201cTill There Was You\u201d and \u201cI Don\u2019t Want to Play in Your Yard\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Peggy<\/a><\/p>\n

She had a brief movie career and she was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress for Jack Webb’s \u00a0\u201cPete Kelly\u2019s Blues\u201d (1955, pictured right) and she had four marriages, which all ended in divorce.<\/p>\n

With Sonny Burke, she wrote the songs for the 1955 Disney animated film \u201cLady and the Tramp\u201d, and 36 years later\u00a0 she sued the studio for a share in the profits of the video sale of the film and a California court awarded her $2.3 million.<\/p>\n

It pleased Lee that her popularity covered many generations: \u201cI\u2019m so lucky. I have a lot of young fans, because they like jazz. Then I have the ones who enjoy \u2018Lady and the Tramp\u2019, so there\u2019s always someone fresh to talk to. I\u2019m pleased when their taste in music goes up and up. It makes me very happy. It doesn\u2019t have to be mine, just as long as they like good things.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she approached her 66th birthday, she said she wished that more attention would be paid to society\u2019s elders. \u201cLearning, and growing by learning, that\u2019s what we have to leave with our young people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am in no way a prude, but just in the basic things of living and trying to make something of their lives, let\u2019s apply what we\u2019ve learned. There\u2019s nothing like rehearsal, and this is a big rehearsal. If only we could take advantage of some of these things, we wouldn\u2019t have to bump our heads so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of this story appeared in the Los Angeles Daily News and the Chicago Tribune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Miss Peggy Lee, who was born 95 years ago today and died on Jan. 21 2002 aged 81, had come close to death in 1985 and she laughed when she told me, \u201cDon\u2019t you know … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,8,2257],"tags":[4093,4096,4094,4095,965,4097],"class_list":["post-8061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-music","category-recalling","tag-benny-goodman","tag-jack-webb","tag-jerry-leiber","tag-mike-stoller","tag-peggy-lee","tag-westwood-playhouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8061"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8241,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8061\/revisions\/8241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}