by Rebecca Freligh In January 1988, record producer Bill Rudman called Peggy Lee at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, where she was performing. He told her he had a concept for an album. She didn’t know him from Adam, and it seemed she didn’t want to. “I said, ‘Just let[…]

by Mary Campbell, Associated Press Singer Peggy Lee recorded “Why Don’t You Do Right?,” her first hit, with Benny Goodman in 1942. The song is a challenge to an unreliable man. But Peggy Lee herself has been doing right by her audiences ever since, for 50 years. She just finished[…]

by Nora Burns After more calls to Peggy Lee’s press agent Terrence than 550-TOOL gets on a Saturday night, I found the legendary chanteuse in her hotel room at the Hilton, home of Club 53, where she performed all last month to an eclectic group of worshipers, including elderly singalong[…]

by Gary Giddins The first time I really listened to Peggy Lee was accidental. I’d bought a Benny Goodman collection on Harmony, got it back to the dorm late, put it on and soon fell asleep. The last thing I recalled hearing was “Why Don’t You Do Right,” and I[…]

by Gene Plaskin “I always thought of myself as a very strange little girl,” chuckles Peggy Lee, remembering herself as Norma Deloris Egstrom, the North Dakota blond abandoned as a toddler, then abused by her wicked stepmother. “My real mama was an adorable little thing – laughing, singing, playing piano[…]

by Howard Kissel Only in Hollywood movies, I had always supposed, do you see a frazzled maitre d’ hoisting tiny tables over crowds and jamming them into the already tight spots between the tables to squeeze in patrons desperate to get into a nightclub. But that was exactly the scene[…]