Peggy Lee

The Peggy Lee Songbook: A Gallery

Where Can I Go Without You

Image 17 of 54

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Recorded in the same Decca Records session as “How Strange” on February 13, 1953, “Where Can I Go Without You” eventually became one of Peggy’s most-recorded ballads. She rerecorded the song in 1963 for Capitol Records and in 1989 for her Grammy-nominated album The Peggy Lee Songbook: There’ll Be Another Spring (Musicmasters). Among the singers who have recorded it: Shanna Carlson, Freddy Cole, Nat King Cole, Natalie Cole, Chris Connor, Vic Damone, Connie Evingson, Feist, Connie Francis, Joni James, Jack Jones, Beverly Kenney, Dean Martin, Tish Oney, Catherine Russell, Nina Simone, Mel Torme, Marlene VerPlanck, Dionne Warwick and Carol Welsman.

Peggy’s promising songwriting partnership with Young was cut short by his death at 56 in 1956. “When Victor Young asked me to write some lyrics for him, you can’t imagine how thrilled I was,” she wrote in her autobiography. “He was like God to musicians. He was small in stature, but a giant nonetheless… When he talked to you he would make little karate chops with his hand, as if he were measuring off bars of music. I suppose the whole world was music to him. ‘The bass line is the road bed, Peg,’ he used to say. We had a mild hit with ‘Where Can I Go Without You?’” (The song peaked at #28 on Billboard’s charts in March 1954.)