Peggy Lee dies at 81: Singer was fan favorite in LV

Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2002 | 10:54 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Peggy Lee, a singer-composer whose smoky, insinuating voice in such songs as "Is That All There Is?" and "Fever" made her a jazz and pop legend and whose resilience helped her overcome setbacks such as falling from a Las Vegas stage 15 years ago, died Monday in Los Angeles. She was 81.

Lee died from a heart attack at her Bel Air, Calif., home, her daughter, Nicki Lee Foster, said.

"She was a great interpreter of lyrics," said longtime Las Vegas publicist James Seagrave, a Peggy Lee fan since his childhood who has collected her records. "Songwriters loved her, because she showed such sympathy for the words. And she herself was an excellent songwriter."

Lee long performed in Las Vegas, opening in the 1970s the Barbary Coast Theatre at the old International, which today is the Las Vegas Hilton. While Lee played the smaller of the resort's two showrooms, Barbra Streisand appeared in the bigger room.

"It was Lee who got the rave reviews," said Seagrave, a former Las Vegas newspaper columnist.

Lee also performed at Caesars Palace with Alan King and headlined the Frontier.

Lee, who won a Grammy, received an Oscar nomination and sold out houses worldwide, repeatedly battled injury and ill health, including heart trouble, during a career that spanned more than half a century.

A diabetic, Lee often was troubled by weight and glandular problems. In 1961 she was felled by double pneumonia and in 1976 she had a near-fatal fall in a New York hotel. She was seriously injured in another fall in Las Vegas in 1987.

In early 1985 she underwent four angioplasties -- balloon surgery to open clogged arteries -- and resumed her singing tour. While appearing in New Orleans in October 1985, she underwent double-bypass heart surgery. In 1998 she suffered a stroke, which impaired her speech, requiring therapy.

Ever resilient even under non-health setbacks, she immediately put together a tour of Canada, Japan, Great Britain and Los Angeles shortly after her well-attended but critically panned biographical Broadway show, "Peg" closed after 18 performances in 1984.

Generations of younger audiences will forever remember Lee as the voice of the wayward canine who sang "He's a Tramp (But I Love Him)," in Disney's "The Lady and the Tramp." She collaborated with Sonny Burke on the songs for that animated 1955 film.

Thirty-six years later she would win a landmark legal judgment. A California court awarded her $2.3 million after she sued for a portion of the profits from the videocassette sale of the movie. The case hinged on a clause in her pre-video-era contract barring the sale of " transcriptions" of the movie without her approval.

"She was a perfectionist, she had an incredible ear," Foster said. "She saw her performance as a total complete musical picture from start to finish."

During a career that began during a troubled childhood and endured through four broken marriages, Lee also recorded hit songs with the Benny Goodman band.

Her vocal flexibility and cool, breathy voice brought sultry distinction to big band showstoppers, pop ballads and soulful laments. She was considered in the same league as Billie Holiday, Mildred Bailey, Ella Fitzgerald and Bessie Smith.

Her hits touched generations of listeners. Lee's more notable recordings included "Why Don't You Do Right?," "I'm a Woman," "Lover," "Pass Me By," "Where or When," "The Way You Look Tonight," "I'm Gonna Go Fishin"' and "Big Spender." The hit "Is That All There Is?" won her a Grammy for best contemporary female vocal performance in 1969.

"Many singers confuse shouting with emotion. Peggy Lee sends her feelings down the quiet center of her notes," Whitney Balliett, longtime jazz critic for The New Yorker, wrote. "She does not carry a tune; she elegantly follows it."

She was born Norma Egstrom on May 26, 1920, in Jamestown, N.D., where her father worked as a handyman and part-time railroad station agent.

Her mother died when she was 4, she recalled in a 1985 interview, and she was abused by a stepmother. She said the experience turned out to be good for her, because "I learned independence."

She decided to become a singer at age 14, when she would earn 50 cents a night at gigs for local PTAs. A few years later she traveled to Fargo, where she sang on a local radio station. The WDAY program director suggested a name change, and she became Peggy Lee.

Lee eventually arrived in Hollywood with $18 in her pocketbook, supporting herself as a waitress and between nightclub jobs.

Goodman, then the King of Swing, hired her to sing with his band after hearing her while she was performing at a Chicago hotel.

A string of hits, notably "Why Don't You Do Right?" made her a star. Then she fell in love with Goodman's guitarist, Dave Barbour, and withdrew from the music world to be his wife and raise their daughter, Nicki. But she returned to singing when the marriage fell apart.

"I kept blaming myself for his alcoholism and the failure of our marriage," she said. "And I finally understood what Sophie Tucker used to say: You have to have your heart broken at least once to sing a love song."

Lee's sultry voice kept her a favorite in radio, on records and later in television. She became an accomplished songsmith, co-writing "Manana" and "It's a Good Day" with Barbour.

She recalled in a 1988 interview that her husband (Barbour) "thought of me as a jazz singer. I never did. I didn't know what I was. I just liked to think of interpreting."

Sun reporter Ed Koch and Associated Press writer Greg Risling contributed to this report.