The Peggy Lee Bio-Discography And Videography:
The Later Years
by Iván Santiago-Mercado
Generated on Jan 22, 2012
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GENERAL NOTES
Peggy Lee's Recording Career, 1973-1995
After long tenures exclusively on two music labels (Capitol and Decca, from 1945 to 1972), the next three decades of Peggy Lee's career find her signing short-term contracts with eight different companies. Here is a timetable of her recording activity during this period:
1974: Atlantic Records (one album and a handful of songs)
1975: A&M Records (one album and another handful of songs)
1977: Polydor Records (two albums) & Ken Barnes Productions (one album, taped in concert)
1979: DRG Records (one album)
1988: Harbinger Records (one album)
1988-1990: MusicMasters Records (two albums, plus a single)
1992: Chesky Records (one album); also two guest vocals on two other labels (Reprise Records, Park Records)
1995: one guest vocal for MusicMasters
For extensive details about each of those contracts, including the albums or singles that they produced, click on the respective years.
For additional record negotiations which did not come to fruition, see this discography's special page for unissued recordings and unfulfilled record deals, located in the Miscellanea section, or simple click here.
Three other factors characterize this last period of Peggy Lee's professional career:
1. Voice-altering Illnesses
Lee's adult life was plagued by health issues which were exacerbated by overwork and by punishing schedules. In November 1971, she went through her second serious bout with pneumonia. It required a three-month period of recuperation, starting with two weeks of hospitalization and continuing with 10 weeks of medically ordered rest at home. Lee was also forced to quit smoking, a habit which she had picked up decades earlier.
That critical period of illness seems to have had a direct effect on the quality of Lee's voice. From 1972 onwards, the light husk that had distinguised the singer's instrument in earlier decades (1950s, 1960s) is no longer in evidence. Between 1974 and 1985, the strength of her vocal cords fluctuate, too. They are at their weakest in the late 1970s, when she suffered paralysis on one side of her face, dealt with a temporarily compromised vision, and was diagnosed with Ménière's disease.
Lee's voice is at its strongest in the early 1980s. Leaving aside the change of vocal color, she sounds excellent in televised performances from 1981, in Broadway shows which took place during mid-December 1983, and in concert appearances from around the same time. Reviewing one such appearance at the Drury Lane Theater (May 1985), Larry Kart of The Chicago Tribune described Lee as "a singer of such special gifts, especially in the area where technique and emotion meet, that the term 'popular music' doesn't begin to describe her artistry."
Afterwards, poor health increasingly took a toll, though more so on the quality of the voice than on the interpretative gifts to which Kart referred. In October 1985, Lee had to be taken from a New Orleans stage to the hospital, where she ended up undergoing double bypass surgery, followed by two further operations due to infection. (Heart problems had actually been diagnosed in the second half of the 1970s. Between 1984 and 1985, her heart had been subjected to four angioplasties.) In 1987, after a fall into an orchestral pit while onstage, Lee suffered from a fractured pelvis; thereafter, she assisted herself with a cane or made use of a wheelchair. In the early 1990s, there were also battles with polymyalgia rheumatica (possibly temporal arteritis, too) and diabetes, the disease that had claimed her mother when Lee was four.
Such illnesses probably had an effect not only in the singer's voice but also in her performance style. From the mid-1980s onwards, Lee's concerts came across as familial or friendly gatherings presided by the singer, who would share anecdotes with the audience and would display her sense of humor more overtly than ever before. Whereas the songs' message remained as paramount as it had always been for her, from 1985 onwards she seemed less concerned with maintaining the technically high standards of earlier years, and more intent on keeping a strong rapport with audiences. Her voice sounded occasionally strained, and the notes were not always held. Still, the many other attributes of this Lee's craft (rhythmic dexterity, interpretative subtlety, excellent timing ... ) remained firmly in place for the duration of her years as a performing artist.
2. Precedent-setting Lawsuits
During the 1990s, some fans and members of the press took to nicknaming Peggy Lee "Litigious Lee." She and her lawyers set in motion various lawsuits that had considerable implications in the battle of music artists' rights to compensation from record companies. The earliest and best publicized one was a charge against the Disney company, for profiting from the sales of Lady And The Tramp videocassettes without sharing with the artist, who had substantially contributed to the making of the film and to its promotion. (A frequently re-released children's classic and bestseller, the video was estimated to have made, by 1990, over $90 million for Disney. For helping in the promotion of the video in the 1980s, Lee had been paid just an honorarium of $500, but not a penny from the actual sales of the product.) In the late 1990s, she also became embroiled in royalty disputes with both Decca and Capitol. The Capitol case also involved the estates of Benny Goodman, Les Brown and Dinah Shore. It was filed in 1998. Next, in 1999, Lee alone filed a $5 million class action suit on behalf of all former Decca recording acts whose royalties were allegedly being miscalculated or underreported by some of the catalogue's holders.
The Disney court case was won by Lee, the one against Capitol (EMI) was privately settled, and the Decca lawsuit was preliminarily settled in Lee's favor just a week before she passed away. Universal was ordered to set up a trust fund to compensate not just Lee but also the nearly 300 other Decca recording artists on whose behalf she had filed as well (including Louis Armstrong, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Bill Haley, but excluding a handful of artists, such as Bing Crosby, whose estates chose to sue Universal separately).
3. High-ranking Awards And Peer Recognition
As Peggy Lee became older, the music industry showed its awareness of her contributions to the music industry by bestowing a series of lifetime awards on her. Among them were the Songwriters' Guild of America President Award, the Grammy's Lifetime Achievement Award, ASCAP's Pied Piper Award for Lifetime Achievement, and two honorary doctorates. There was even a flower named after her by The American Rose Society, back in 1983. In 1995, there was also a tribute in her honor from the Society of Singers. (It was only the fourth of its kind, following those that had been given in previous years to Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and Tony Martin.)
Recording Activity (Or Lack Thereof) In 1973
Two years would elapse between Peggy Lee's last date for Capitol (April 28, 1972) and her first session for Atlantic (April 23, 1974). In that interim, some additional recording activity might (or might have not) taken place. (See note below, titled Peggy Lee's Unfulfilled Record Deals (1973-1995).)
Independently of whether she attempted or didn't attempt to record during this period, Lee did remain professionally active between record contracts. She made about a dozen guest appearances on television and gave many concert performances around the country. In New York alone, she fulfilled not only her twice-a-year engagements at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel but also gave three outdoors concerts for the Schaefer Music Summer Festival in Central Park (one per year, from 1972 to 1974). During that same period, Lee made further concert appearances in Chicago, Florida, Las Vegas, London, Ohio, San Francisco, Saint Louis, Toronto, Wisconsin, and other cities.
Statistics: Total Number Of Masters & Titles Still Unissued
For the period of 1974 to 1995, this discographical page shows that Peggy Lee recorded a total of 151 masters and 9 alternate takes. In addition to those studio recordings, it should be noted that numerous concert and televised performances are extant, too. Various rehearsal performances are preserved as well, including some that Ken Barnes Productions has already released on CD. (See this discography's page for rehearsals.)
From this period, the following 7 titles, most of them on A&M, remain unissued: "Daddy Was Dah Do" (May 27, 1975), "Crazy Life" (May 29, 1975), "The Best Thing" (May 29, 1975), "Love Me Or Leave Me" (May 30, 1975), "Saved" (first week of June 1975), "Since I Fell For You" (February 8, 1988) and "How Long Has This Been Going On" (February 8, 1988). A few alternate takes of the A&M performances are also extant. Although I have no knowledge of any other unissued songs from this period, their existence is certainly a possibility, especially on MusicMasters.
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