[Dixielandjazz] Peggy Lee book reviewed - by Christopher Loudon

[Robert Ringwald]

The Life of a Uniquely Seductive Singer
by Christopher Loudon
Maclean’s (Canada), November 15, 2014
James Gavin’s oeuvre may be lean, just four books across 23 years; but, to borrow
a sentiment from Spencer Tracy, “what’s there is cherce.” Gavin numbers among that
rare breed of biographer capable of tremendous style and substance, meticulous about
detail and accuracy yet blessed with exceptional storytelling elan. He has a penchant
for challenging subjects, previously illuminating the shadowy path of Chet Baker
and melting the icy mystique of Lena Horne. Never, though, has he tackled as cagey
an icon as Peggy Lee, arguably the finest female pop-jazz stylist of all time, yet
a woman of massive insecurities cocooned in layers of self-deception and aggrandized
half-truths. It took Gavin five years to untangle Lee’s dense web, and what emerges
is a masterwork of balanced reporting, unflinchingly honest yet eminently respectful.
Lee’s story begins in the barrens of North Dakota, her early years shaped by a sweet
but alcoholic father and a cold stepmother who would subsequently emerge as the bete
noire of the singer’s self-spun mythology. Lee’s escape was music. Performing on
regional radio stations led her to L.A., then Chicago, where she caught the attention
of Benny Goodman. Her tenure with Goodman’s orchestra was brief, interrupted by marriage
to guitarist Dave Barbour and retirement from showbiz. Though Barbour would prove
to be her grand amour (three later marriages were short-lived and inconsequential),
their relationship was derailed by his alcoholism and her rekindled desire for stardom
in the 1950s and early ’60s, as a darling of chic supper clubs and variety series.
She could be as intense a tragedian as Billie Holiday (whom she was, early on, accused
of parroting) and as sunny as Doris Day, but Lee’s specialty was a unique seductiveness,
at once lusty and kittenish, that enabled her to thrive long after her contemporaries,
even Sinatra. And she was, in various ways, a pioneer: among the first female singer-songwriters;
an early apostle of new-age thinking; and, albeit somewhat reluctantly, a feminist
before the term or movement existed.
She could also be a tyrant, burning through a litany of assistants and household
staff. By the 1970s, though barely 50, she’d taken to bed, victim of endless illnesses
more imagined than real, rising only for concerts and recording sessions. She grew
steadily angrier, needier and, fuelled by Valium and Seconal, befogged. But her musicality
never faltered. As late as 1996, wheelchair-bound and breathless, her less-is-more
coyness could ignite thunderous ovations. To the end she remained a paradox, summed
by playwright and collaborator William Luce as “the little girl you wanted to protect
and the tough-as-nails lady who could destroy you with a few words.”
-30

-Bob Ringwald
Bob Ringwald Solo Piano, duo, Trio, Quartet
Fulton Street Jazz Band
916/ 806-9551
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