[Deathwatch] Peggy Lee, Singer, 81

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Message-Id: <20020122180939.A1C3B75FE3@mail.slick.org>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 10:09:39 -0800 (PST)

Singer Peggy Lee dead of heart attack at 81
January 22, 2002 Posted: 8:29 AM EST (1329 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Singer Peggy Lee -- the
sultry-throated pillar of pop music from the '40s to the '60s who is
known for "Fever" and scores of other jazzy, bluesy hits -- died at her
home Monday in Bel Air, California. 

The announcement was made in a statement from her daughter on the
singer's Web site -- peggylee.com. 

Lee, who was 81, was a composer and a singer; she recorded hundreds of
songs, wrote many others and was hailed by audiences throughout the
country and world. She won a Grammy award and an Oscar nomination. 

The cause of death "has preliminarily been determined as a myocardial
infarction, a result of the stroke she suffered three years ago,"
according to the Web site. 

Of Norwegian and Swedish ancestry, Peggy Lee was born Norma Deloris
Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, a farm town on the Great Plains, on
May 26, 1920, the seventh of eight children. 

After singing with the high school glee club, the church choir, and
semi-professional college bands, Norma headed for Hollywood after she
graduated from high school in 1938.

But she eventually found work as a singer close to home at radio
station WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota, whose manager, Ken Kennedy, named
her Peggy Lee. 

Peggy Lee came up with "the soft and cool style" that became her
trademark in Palm Springs, California, at the Doll House. 

"Unable to shout above the clamor of the Doll House audience, Miss Lee
tried to snare its attention by lowering her voice. The softer she sang
the quieter the audience became. She has never forgotten the secret,
and it has given her style its distinctive combination of the delicate
and the driving, the husky and the purringly seductive," according to a
biography on the Web site. 

Lee joined Benny Goodman's band -- the most famous swing band of the
era -- in July 1941, when the band was at the height of its popularity,
and for over two years she toured the United States with it. 

A number of biographies detail her accomplishments: 

-- In July 1942, Lee recorded her first smash hit, "Why Don't You Do
Right?" It sold over 1,000,000 copies and made her famous. In March
1943, Peggy Lee married Dave Barbour, the guitarist in Goodman's band. 


-- In 1944, she began to record for Capitol Records, for whom she
produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by
Lee and Barbour. 

-- In 1953 she played a featured role opposite Danny Thomas in Warner
Brothers' remake of the early Al Jolson talking picture, "The Jazz
Singer," and won praise from a critic of the "New York World-Telegram
and Sun" for "a very promising start on a movie career" as "a poised
and ingratiating ingenue." 

Her performance as a despondent and alcoholic blues singer in "Pete
Kelly's Blues" (Warner Brothers, 1955) won her a nomination from the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

Lee has not only appeared in motion pictures but she has also written
music and lyrics for them. She wrote the theme music for "Johnny
Guitar" (Republic, 1954) and for "About Mrs. Leslie" (Paramount, 1954).


She contributed the musical score to two George Pal cartoon features,
"Tom Thumb" (MGM, 1958) and "The Time Machine" (MGM, 1960), and wrote
the lyrics and supplied several voices for the Walt Disney full-length
animated cartoon "Lady and the Tramp" (Buena Vista, 1955). For "Anatomy
of a Murder" (Columbia, 1959), she wrote the lyrics for "I'm Gonna Go
Fishin'" to music by Duke Ellington. 

Among her other recordings were "I'm a Woman," "Lover," Pass Me By,"
"Where or When," "The Way You Look Tonight," "Big Spender" and "Is That
All There Is?" which earned her a Grammy award for best contemporary
vocal performance in 1969. 

But Lee was perhaps best known for the sultry simpleness and slow
finger-snaps of "Fever," released in 1958. The song earned her four
Grammy nominations that year, debut of the recording industry awards. 

Lee was married four times and is survived by her daughter, three
grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.