by Stephen Holden As a shy, frightened little girl of 8 growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, Peggy Lee had a childhood obsession: aviation. “I wanted to fly so badly,” she recalled one afternoon last week over tea in a Manhattan hotel suite with a view over Central Park. “I[…]

by Elaine St. Johns “Ernest Holmes was the greatest spiritual influence in my experience of anyone I’ve ever met. His teaching reached into every corner of my life.” So says Miss Peggy Lee, an American of Scandinavian descent who was born to an unhappy childhood in a small town in[…]

by Joseph McLellan The first number Peggy Lee sings every night in the Ritz Terrace is “I Won’t Dance.” The Otto Harbach song is not only a good, upbeat curtain-raiser; it is, in context, an existential statement – a kind of manifesto. At the moment, Peggy Lee can’t dance; she[…]

by Lou Fournier The smell of something burning drifts into the Terrace Room of the Ritz-Carlton, where Peggy Lee is moments from opening her show. People scurry, concerned glances are exchanged, and finally everything seems settled and ready. inside some fans are suggesting that watching Peggy Lee sing in the[…]

by Curt Morgan How does a singing legend stay a legend for almost 50 years? Is it luck, chance… the blind draw of fate? Is that all there is? “Musicians keep a song fresh. You never stop listening to them and hearing what they’re doing… “I’ve been working a lot[…]

by Robert Julian The Interview In the summer of 1957, I was stretched out across the front seat of my parents’ Oldsmobile ‘98’ with my head in my mother’s lap. My father drove. The final hours of our vacation were counted off by the thump-thump-thump of the tires as they[…]