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Peggy Lee

, Singer / Songwriter / Actor
Peggy Lee
Source

  • Born: 26 May 1920
  • Birthplace: Jamestown, North Dakota
  • Died: 21 January 2002 (heart attack)
  • Best Known As: Singer of "Fever"

Name at birth: Norma Egstrom

After getting her big break as a singer with Benny Goodman's band, Peggy Lee went on to a career that mixed jazz and pop singing with movie and TV stardom. At the height of her popularity in the 1950s she was known for her sex appeal and sultry tunes, in particular the mega-hit song "Fever." Lee was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a fading torch singer in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955, with Jack Webb), and co-wrote and performed several songs for Walt Disney's animated 1955 movie Lady and the Tramp. Lee was given a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1995. She died in 2002 after a lengthy illness following a 1998 stroke.

She was paid $3,500 for Lady and the Tramp. In 1991 she won a lawsuit against Disney that allowed her to collect royalties from the 1987 videocassette release, sales of which were estimated at the time to be $90 million.

 
 
Artist: Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee

Born:
May 26, 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota

Died:
Jan 21, 2002 in Bel Air, California

Representative Songs:

"Fever," "Why Don't You Do Right?," "It's a Good Day"

Representative Albums:

The Best of Miss Peggy Lee, Capitol Collectors Series, Vol. 1: The Early Years, The Singles Collection

Similar Artists:

Influences:

Followers:

Relationship with:

Performed Songs By:

Hughie Charles, Martin Block, Edna Alexander, Bill Schluger, Don Marcotte, Maurice Yvain, Sunny Skylar, Channing Pollack, Ben Oakland, Sidney Mitchell, Walter Hirsch, Don George, Carolyn Leigh, Maceo Pinkard, Harold Adamson, Ted Koehler, Sam Coslow, Willard Robison, Arthur Johnston, Eddie Cooley, Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth, John Davenport, Victor Young, Spencer Williams, Albert Willemetz, George David Weiss, Paul Francis Webster, James Van Heusen, Jule Styne, Mike Stoller, Carl Sigman, B. Russell, Bob Russell, Fred Rose, Leo Robin, Milt Raskin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Joe McCoy, Herbert Magidson, Alan Jay Lerner, Burton Lane, Gus Kahn, Lorenz Hart, E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, Arthur Hamilton, Oscar Hammerstein II, Haven Gillespie, Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Fields, Sammy Fain, Ray Evans, Duke Ellington, Walter Donaldson, B.G. DeSylva, Sammy Cahn, Sonny Burke, Johnny Burke, Lew Brown, Richard Adler, Jerry Bock, Frank Loesser, Jerome Kern, Bart Howard, Jerry Leiber, Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, Alec Wilder, Jimmy McHugh, Dave Barbour, Johnny Hodges, Cy Coleman, James Taylor, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin

Worked With:

  • Birth Name: Norma Deloris Egstrom
  • Genre: Vocal Music
  • Active: '40s - '90s
  • Instrument: Vocals

Biography

Peggy Lee's alluring tone, distinctive delivery, breadth of material, and ability to write many of her own songs made her one of the most captivating artists of the vocal era, from her breakthrough on the Benny Goodman hit "Why Don't You Do Right" to her many solo successes, singles including "Mañana," "Lover" and "Fever" that showed her bewitching vocal power, a balance between sultry swing and impeccable musicianship.

Born Norma Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, she suffered the death of her mother at the age of four and endured a difficult stepmother after her father remarried. Given her sense of swing by listening to Count Basie on the radio, she taught herself to sing and made her radio debut at the age of 14. She made the jump to Fargo (where she was christened Peggy Lee), then to Minneapolis and St. Louis to sing with a regional band. Lee twice journeyed to Hollywood to make her fortune, but returned unsuccessful from both trips.

She finally got her big break in 1941, when a vocal group she worked with began appearing at a club in Chicago. While there, she was heard by Benny Goodman, whose regular vocalist Helen Forrest was about to leave his band. Lee recorded with Goodman just a few days later, debuting with the popular "Elmer's Tune" despite a good deal of nerves. That same year, several songs became commercial successes including "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)" and "Winter Weather." In 1943, "Why Don't You Do Right" became her first major hit, but she left the Goodman band (and the music industry altogether) later that year after marrying Goodman's guitarist, Dave Barbour.

After just over a year of domestic life, Peggy Lee returned to music, first as part of an all-star jazz album. Then, in late 1945, Capitol signed her to a solo contract and she hit the charts with her first shot, "Waitin' for the Train to Come In." Lee continued to score during the late '40s, with over two dozen chart entries before the end of the decade, including "It's a Good Day," "Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)" -- the most popular song of 1948 -- and "I Don't Know Enough About You." Many of her singles were done in conjunction with Barbour, her frequent writing and recording partner.

After moving to Decca in 1952, Peggy Lee scored with the single "Lover" and an LP, Songs From Pete Kelly's Blues recorded with Ella Fitzgerald (both singers also made appearances in the film). She spent only five years at Decca however, before moving back to Capitol. There, she distinguished herself through recording a wide variety of material, including songs -- and occasionally, entire LPs -- influenced by the blues, Latin and cabaret as well as pop. Lee also used many different settings, like an orchestra conducted by none other than Frank Sinatra for 1957's The Man I Love, the George Shearing Quintet for 1959's live appearance Beauty and the Beat, Quincey Jones as arranger and conductor for 1961's If You Go, and arrangements by Benny Carter on 1963's Mink Jazz. Barbour's problems with alcoholism ended their marriage, though they remained good friends until his death in 1965.

Peggy Lee was an early advocate of rock and made a quick transition into rock-oriented material. Given her depth and open mind for great songs no matter the source, it wasn't much of a surprise that she sounded quite comfortable covering the more song-oriented end of late-'60s rock, including great choices by Jimmy Webb, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Burt Bacharach, Randy Newman, Goffin & King and John Sebastian. She nearly brushed the Top Ten in 1969 with Leiber & Stoller's "Is That All There Is?" She continued recording contemporary material until 1972's Norma Deloris Egstrom From Jamestown, North Dakota brought her back to her roots. It was her last LP for Capitol, however. Lee recorded single LPs for Atlantic, A&M, Polydor UK and DRG before effectively retiring at the beginning of the 1980s. She returned in 1988 with two LPs for Music Masters that revisited her earlier successes. Her last album, Moments Like This, was recorded in 1992 for Chesky. Her voice was effectively silenced after a 1998 stroke, and she died of a heart attack at her Bel Air home in early 2002. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
 
Discography: Peggy Lee

Miss Wonderful [Box]

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Christmas with Peggy Lee

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A Proper Introduction to Peggy Lee: I Get Ideas

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61 Classic Performances

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The Best of Miss Peggy Lee [Bonus DVD]

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Things Are Swingin' [Bonus Tracks]

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Black Coffee [Gold CD]

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Love Songs

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Golden Greats

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The Best of the Singles Collection

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Beauty and the Beat! [Bonus Tracks]

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Latin ala Lee! [Bonus Tracks]

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Classics & Collectibles

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Swing Era

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20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Peggy Lee

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Sounds of the 20th Century

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The Singles Collection

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Complete Peggy Lee & June Christy Capitol Transcription Sessions

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Sings the Standards

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Pass Me By/Big $pender

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Trav'lin Light

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Christmas [EMI-Capitol Special Markets]

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Rare Gems and Hidden Treasures

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The Complete Recordings 1941-1947

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Pretty Eyes/Guitars alà Lee

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In Love Again/In the Name of Love

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The Best of Peggy Lee [EMI]

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Black Coffee/Sea Shells

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Man I Love/If You Go

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Musical Marriage

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I Like Men!/Sugar 'N Spice

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The Best of Miss Peggy Lee

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Latin ala Lee!/Olé a la Lee

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Extra Special!/Somethin' Groovy!

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Miss Peggy Lee

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The Best of Peggy Lee: The Blues & Jazz Sessions

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Things Are Swingin'/Jump for Joy

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The Best of the Decca Years

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Some of the Best

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Spotlight on Peggy Lee [Great Ladies of Song]

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The Best of Peggy Lee [EMI-Capitol Special Markets]

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Classics

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Love Held Lightly: Rare Songs by Harold Arlen

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Fever & Other Hits

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Capitol Collectors Series, Vol. 1: The Early Years

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If I Could Be with You

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Close Enough for Love

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Mirrors

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The Fabulous Peggy Lee

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Bewitching-Lee: Peggy Lee Sings Her Greatest Hits [Original]

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Sugar 'n' Spice

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Bewitching-Lee! Peggy Lee Sings Her Greatest Hits

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Blues Cross Country

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Olé ala Lee!

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Christmas Carousel

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Latin ala Lee!

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Pretty Eyes

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Things Are Swingin'

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Beauty and the Beat!

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Dream Street

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Songs from "Pete Kelly's Blues"

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Black Coffee

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Black Coffee and Other Delights

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Peggy Lee with the Dave Barbour Band

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Actor:

Peggy Lee

  • Born: May 26, 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota
  • Died: Jan 21, 2002 in Bel Air, California
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '50s, '80s
  • Major Genres: Music, Children's/Family
  • Career Highlights: Lady and the Tramp, Johnny Guitar, Men Don't Leave
  • First Major Screen Credit: Mr. Music (1950)

Biography

North Dakota-born vocalist Peggy Lee went straight from the family farm to local radio; by the time she was 16, she was a professional singer. Fame came relatively early when, in the late 1930s, Lee was chosen to be vocalist for the Benny Goodman orchestra. Her first film work consisted of specialty numbers in such films as The Powers Girl (42) and Stage Door Canteen (43). While best remembered for such hit records as "Lover," "Fever" and "Is That All There Is?", Lee's movie assignments of the 1950s should not be overlooked. She made her dramatic acting debut in the 1953 remake of The Jazz Singer opposite Danny Thomas, and in 1955 she was Oscar-nominated for her convincing portrayal of a hard-boiled speakeasy chanteuse who reverts to childhood after incurring severe brain damage in Pete Kelly's Blues, a film directed by Jack Webb.

Lee was also instrumental in the success of the Disney cartoon feature Lady and the Tramp (55); she not only provided several of the character voices (the Siamese Cats, the dog pound vamp "Peg," etc.), but also wrote many of the film's songs. When Lady and the Tramp was released to video in 1987, Lee, miffed that she had earned a mere $3500 for her work on the film, sued Disney for several million dollars' royalties -- and won. After Pete Kelly's Blues, Peggy Lee wrote lyrics for the 1958 musical fantasy Tom Thumb and was heard on the soundtrack of 1970's Pieces of Dreams; her acting in later years was confined to TV guest-star appearances, notably a chucklesome turn as a Mae West-style dance-hall queen on a 1967 episode of The Girl from UNCLE. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

 

(born May 26, 1920, Jamestown, N.D., U.S. — died Jan. 21, 2002, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. popular singer. She endured a difficult childhood after her mother's early death. Singing with a group in Chicago, she was engaged by Benny Goodman as his principal singer in 1941. She began singing on her own in 1943 and also began collaborating on songs, often with her husband, Dave Barbour, including "Fever," "Mañana," and several songs for Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp (1955). With her smooth, lightly husky voice, usually backed by jazz-influenced arrangements, she produced other hits such as "Lover" and "Is That All There Is?"

For more information on Peggy Lee, visit Britannica.com.

 
1920–2002, American singer and songwriter, b. Jamestown, N.D., as Norma Deloris Egstrom. Lee became famous for her singular voice—sexy, subtle, simultaneously smoky and cool—and her unique jazz-inflected interpretations of popular tunes. She began singing as a teenager and hit the big time in 1941 when Benny Goodman hired her. She scored her first big hit in 1942 with “Why Don't You Do Right?” Leaving Goodman's band in 1943, she became a solo act and cowrote (with husband Dave Barbour) and performed a number of popular songs including “It's a Good Day” (1947) and the 1948 chart-topper “Mañana.” Lee wrote or cowrote more than 200 songs and recorded more than 600, among them the sultry “Fever” (1958) and “Is That All There Is?” (1969), her late-career anthem. Lee was in several films, notably acting in The Jazz Singer (1952) and Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), voiced such animated features as The Lady and the Tramp (1955), appeared on numerous television programs, and continued to perform into the 1990s.

Bibliography

See her autobiography (1989, rev. ed. 2002); chronology by R. Strom (2005); biography by P. Richmond (2006).

 
Wikipedia: Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen.
Peggy Lee in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen.
Background information
Birth name Norma Deloris Egstrom
Born May 26 1920(1920--)
Origin Jamestown, North Dakota
Died January 21 2002 (aged 81)
Genre(s) Traditional Pop, Jazz
Occupation(s) Singer, Actress
Years active 19411996
Label(s) Decca Records
Capitol Records
Associated
acts
Jo Stafford, Patti Page, Rosemary Clooney

Peggy Lee (May 26, 1920January 21, 2002) was an American jazz and traditional pop singer and songwriter and Oscar-nominated performer. She was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota. Widely recognized as one of the most important musical influences of the 20th century, Lee has been cited as a mentor to such diverse artists as Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Madonna, k.d. lang, Elvis Costello, Dr. John, and numerous others. As a songwriter, she collaborated with her late husband Dave Barbour, Sonny Burke, Victor Young, Francis Lai, Dave Grusin, John Chiodini, and Duke Ellington who stated, "If I'm the Duke, then Peggy's the Queen." As an actress, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Pete Kelly's Blues.

Frank Sinatra, Ellla Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong all cited Lee as one of their favorite singers.

Biography

Early life

The youngest child of seven, Lee found music to provide an escape from the abusive rampages of her mentally ill stepmother, Meg, who tormented and beat the young girl. She first sang professionally with KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She soon landed her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her "salary" in food. Both during and after her high school years, she took whatever jobs she could find, waitressing and singing for paltry sums on other local stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy (actual name: Ken Sydness), of WDAY in Fargo (the most widely listened to station in North Dakota) changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee. Tired of the abuse from her stepmother, she left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17.

She returned to North Dakota for a tonsillectomy and, while there, lined up a gig at The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel West in Chicago, home of Benny Goodman, the jazz clarinetist and band leader. According to Lee, "Benny's then-fiance, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into the Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening she brought Benny in, because they were looking for replacement for Helen Forrest. "And although I didn't know, I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn't like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing." She joined his band in 1941 and stayed for two years, with the band then at the height of its popularity.

Recording career

In early 1942, Lee had her first # 1 hit, "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place," followed by 1943's "Why Don't You Do Right?," which sold over a million copies and made her famous. She sang with Goodman in two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl.

In March 1943, Lee married Dave Barbour, the guitarist in Goodman's band. Peggy said, "David joined Benny's band and there was a ruling that no one should fraternize with the girl singer. But I fell in love with David the first time I heard him play, and so I married him. Benny then fired David, so I quit, too. Benny and I made up, although David didn't play with him anymore. Benny stuck to his rule. I think that's not too bad a rule, but you can't help falling in love with somebody."

When Lee and Barbour left the band, the idea was that he would work in the studios and she would keep house and raise their daughter, Nicki. But she drifted back towards songwriting and occasional recording sessions for the fledgling Capitol Records in 1944, for whom she produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "It's a Good Day" (1946). With the release of the smash-hit #1-selling record of 1948, "Mañana," her "retirement" was over.

In 1948, she joined Perry Como and Jo Stafford as one of the rotating hosts of the NBC musical radio program Chesterfield Supper Club.

She left Capitol for a few years in the early 1950s, but returned in 1957. She is most famous for her cover version of the Little Willie John hit "Fever", to which she added her own, uncopyrighted lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet," "Captain Smith and Pocahontas") and her rendition of Leiber and Stoller's "Is That All There Is?" Her relationship with the Capitol label spanned almost three decades, aside from her brief but artistically rich detour (1952-1956) at Decca Records, where she recorded one of her most acclaimed albums Black Coffee (1956). While recording for Decca, Lee had hit singles with the songs "Lover" and "Mr. Wonderful."

Songwriting

She was also known as a songwriter with such hits as the songs from the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp, for she also supplied the singing and speaking voices of four characters. Her many songwriting collaborators, in addition to Barbour, included Laurindo Almeida, Harold Arlen, Sonny Burke, Cy Coleman, Gene DiNovi, Duke Ellington, Dave Grusin, Dick Hazard, Quincy Jones, Francis Lai, Jack Marshall, Johnny Mandel, Marian McPartland, Willard Robison, Lalo Schifrin, Hubie Wheeler, and Victor Young.

She wrote the lyrics for "I Don't Know Enough About You", "It's A Good Day", "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'", "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter", "Fever", "The Shining Sea", "He's A Tramp", "The Siamese Cat Somg", "There Willl Be Another Spring", "Johnny Guitar", "Sans Souci", ""What's New?", "Things Are Swinging", "Don't Smoke in Bed", "I Love Being Here With You", and numerous others.

During a time when youths began turning to rock'n'roll, she was one of the mainstays of Capitol recordings. She was the first of the "old guard" to recognize this new genre, as is evident in her recordings of the Beatles, Randy Newman, Carole King, James Taylor and other up-and-coming songwriters. From 1957 until her final disc for the company in 1972, she routinely produced a steady stream of two or three albums per year which usually included standards (often arranged in a style quite different from the original), her own compositions, and materiall from young artists.

Acting career

Lee also acted in several films. In 1952, she played opposite Danny Thomas in a remake of the early Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer. In 1955, she played a despondent, alcoholic blues singer in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), for which she was nominated for an Oscar.