Peggy Lee, All Aglow Again – May 23, 2008 – The New York Sun

Peggy Lee, All Aglow Again
Jazz

By WILL FRIEDWALD
May 23, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/arts/peggy-lee-all-aglow-again/77335/

Fifty years ago this month, Peggy Lee recorded “Fever.” The song was neither her biggest hit nor her own composition, but today it is not just her signature, but one of the most iconic pop records ever made. Now, 50 years later, with a counterintuitiveness Lee would have approved of, her daughter, Nikki Foster, and granddaughter, Holly Foster Wells (working in conjunction with Collectors’ Choice Music), are commemorating the golden anniversary of one of the best-known songs of all time by releasing some of the least-known music of Lee’s career.

Michael Ochs Archives

FEVER DREAM Peggy Lee poses for a portrait in the early 1960s.

Lee (1920-2002) is generally regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of the Great American Songbook, a crucial hit maker of the same vintage as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole. Like most of her contemporaries, Lee started as a big-band vocalist (with Benny Goodman) before becoming a solo headliner. But there were several factors that made her unique: While she might have had less in the way of pure vocal chops than the others of her echelon, she had a greater sympathy for the blues (an unusual talent for a woman of Scandinavian descent from North Dakota) as well as a gift for songwriting equalled by few singers.

Peggy Lee, All Aglow Again – May 23, 2008 – The New York Sun.