by Daphne Kraft With her eyes half closed and her head tilted beneath a cascade of champagne-colored tresses, Peggy Lee can break open a piñata of songs as hot as chili or as cool as autumn rain. Now that autumn is here, she is once again on deck at Manhattan’s[…]

by Peter Reilly There is a certain sort of praise which, if voiced often enough, can do oblique damage to performing artists of recognized stature: “Peggy Lee? Oh, she’s great!” Or, as a friend said recently, “As long as they write songs, Peggy Lee can sing them. She can sing[…]

by Robert Salmaggi We’re gonna throw the book at Peggy Lee. When this gold-topped gal is being caressed with a baby-blue spot, and lofting the inimitable Lee sound, you find yourself admiring the letter perfect precision of her act. The lead-in cues, the accord between vocalist and band, the split-second[…]

by Charles Champlin I am absolutely persuaded that amid the crackling thunder of the city in flames, some Roman lover turned to his lady, gestured at Nero and said, “He’s playing our song.” We’ve never been exactly sure what our song was, fire sirens in the rain or my scratchy[…]

author unknown In New York last week the new Peggy Lee recalled her old self: “Remember those singers with the big bands? Between numbers they’d snap their fingers, and tap their feet as if they had trouble sitting. Not me. Sitting in front of the Benny Goodman band, I was[…]

by Earl Wilson The get-well telegrams and phone calls to Peggy Lee had come from such friends as Frank Sinatra and Doris Duke. There was a note of alarm in them – for Peggy was under an oxygen tent, fighting pneumonia, at Polyclinic Hospital. Her daugher, Nicki Barbour, just 18,[…]