by Matthew Linfoot The Royal Albert Hall, January 1990: A sultry, sexy voice that fills the vast space, singing of love anticipated, fulfilled and unrequited. It comes from a lady in her seventies, too frail to stand, dressed in cardinal red, her alabaster face framed by an electric white wig.[…]

by Will Friedwald Billie Holiday, never overly generous with her praise of other singers, told Metronome magazine in 1950, “I’ve loved Peggy, ever since she started.” Then Lady Day added, “And she’s been very fortunate. She’s always had the kind of setting every singer needs.” But for Peggy Lee, who[…]

by Lee Hildebrand One does not often think of Peggy Lee as a blues singer, especially when considering the cheery optimism of such self-penned lyrics as “It’s a Good Day” and “Mañana,” two of the singer’s earliest hits. Yet the blues, as a feeling and as a musical form, has[…]

by Howard Reich In a word, she is indomitable. Undeterred by diabetes, by a heart condition that require bypass surgery a couple years ago, by a fall from a Las Vegas stage in 1987 that left her with several broken bones, singer-songwriter Peggy Lee presses on. Perhaps the same spirit[…]

by Rebecca Freligh Duke Ellington called her “the Queen.” Jazz critic Leonard Feather dubbed her “Miss Standing Ovation.” And Madonna practically curtsies in her presence. Now 72, Peggy Lee regards herself above all as a survivor, who, through faith and grit, has triumphed over such formidable Goliaths as paralysis, an[…]

by Rebecca Freligh In January 1988, record producer Bill Rudman called Peggy Lee at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, where she was performing. He told her he had a concept for an album. She didn’t know him from Adam, and it seemed she didn’t want to. “I said, ‘Just let[…]