Available to stream once again!
Release date: June 13, 2025
At Last: The Lost Radio Recordings features 44 rare solo performances from Peggy Lee’s own radio series, all of which can’t be heard anywhere else. Originally released on CD by Real Gone Music in 2015, this stunning collection is now back digitally. Hear Peggy’s only versions of “Skylark,” “When I Fall in Love,” “You Belong to Me,” “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” “I Got Rhythm,” “Everything Happens to Me,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Just One More Chance,” “Getting to Know You,” “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “The Wheel of Fortune,” and the title track, “At Last.” Here are the original 2015 liner notes by David Torresen:
“I always had my ear on the radio” – Peggy Lee
The emerging medium of radio played a vital role in the musical development of young Norma Deloris Egstrom and in the early career of the exceptional singer she became, Miss Peggy Lee.
Born in 1920, Lee later wrote and reminisced to interviewers about the education radio provided an aspiring singer on the Great Plains in the mid-1930s. “Growing up, I lived in such a remote section of North Dakota that at the beginning we didn’t even have electricity,” she told the New York Times in 1988. “When we did, I discovered the Bennie Moten Orchestra with Count Basie coming out of Kansas City on an Atwater Kent radio with five dials on it. I didn’t think of it as swing or jazz. It was just good music.”
At the age of 16, Lee began performing her own brand of good music on radio throughout southeastern North Dakota, first at a station in Valley City, then in Jamestown, and, finally, in Fargo at WDAY, the state’s oldest and largest station. It was there in 1937 that Norma Egstrom was renamed Peggy Lee, and where she not only sang but bantered and participated in sketches as “Freckle-Faced Gertie,” developing a versatility that would later prove useful in many musical-variety settings. Lee also helped with filing work at the station, “which is how I found out about the good composers and lyricists – Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen. The giants and pure gold to a girl just discovering them.”
Lee was introduced to a nationwide radio audience at 21 when Benny Goodman chose her to replace vocalist Helen Forrest, who had resigned from her role as the female vocalist for Goodman’s outfit. Between August 1941 and March 1943, Goodman’s broadcasts from theaters and hotel ballrooms in New York, Chicago, Hollywood and elsewhere regularly featured Lee on one or more songs, including her biggest record hits with the band, “Somebody Else Is Taking My Place” and “Why Don’t You Do Right?”
After leaving the Goodman band to marry guitarist Dave Barbour and give birth to their daughter Nicki, Lee returned to the recording studio in late 1944 as a solo singer for the newly formed Capitol Records label. Before long, she entered the radio studio as a frequent guest of one of her childhood radio heroes, Bing Crosby. Lee appeared on Crosby’s show 49 times over an eight-year period, mastering tricky duet arrangements on short notice and learning from the very best in delivering every spoken line, whether scripted or spontaneous, with wit, warmth and sincerity. She also learned a thing or two from the beloved comedian Jimmy Durante while serving as his show’s featured vocalist throughout its 1947-48 season. “Crosby and Durante – not one but two of the greatest entertainers who ever lived – and I had the pleasure of going to the NBC and CBS studios and working with them,” she wrote. “Working two networks simultaneously, I guess I met just about everyone in radio in those days.”
The postwar years were especially prosperous for the newlywed songwriting partnership of Peggy Lee and Dave Barbour. Lee had chart success with several of their songs, such as “I Don’t Know Enough About You,” “It’s a Good Day,” “Everything’s Movin’ Too Fast,” and the best-selling single of 1948, “Mañana.” She also scored hits from other composers, including “Golden Earrings,” “Bali Ha’i,” and “Waitin’ for the Train to Come In.” She sang the latter on Frank Sinatra’s radio show.
Other radio opportunities emerged, some of which Lee co-hosted. In 1947 there was Rhapsody in Rhythm with bandleader Jan Savitt and The Summer Electric Hour with bandleader Woody Herman. For the 1948-49 season, Lee was the Thursday night host of the popular nightly Chesterfield Supper Club while Perry Como and Jo Stafford hosted on other nights. Lee’s guests over 37 Thursdays included Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Johnny Mercer and the Mills Brothers.
Peggy Lee had paid her dues on radio for 14 years, first as a local entertainer, then nationwide as a singer with a major band, then as another host’s guest or regularly featured vocalist, and then as a co-host or alternating host. As the 1950s began, it was finally time to headline a program of her own.
The Peggy Lee Show
Lee’s self-titled radio series consisted of 89 episodes that aired on CBS between June 1951 and November 1952, and were also broadcast in modified form over the Armed Forces Radio Service. The first 42 episodes (June 17, 1951 to May 1, 1952) featured musical direction by Russ Case, a longtime associate of Perry Como, and originated from New York. In the spring of 1951, as Lee’s marriage to Barbour ended, she moved from Los Angeles to New York, where most television broadcasts then originated and where she appeared on such shows as Toast of the Town (Ed Sullivan’s original TV show), Songs for Sale and TV’s Top Tunes. Living in New York also allowed her to hone her nightclub performing skills at the legendary Copacabana.
The remaining 47 episodes (May 6 to November 4, 1952) beamed from Los Angeles, where Lee returned to tackle her first starring role in a feature film, the Technicolor remake of Warner Bros.’ 1927 landmark The Jazz Singer. Music direction for the west coast edition of The Peggy Lee Show was by Francis “Sonny” Burke, with whom Lee worked closely in the early 1950s. She was among the first to record Burke’s standard with Paul Francis Webster, “Black Coffee,” which became the title song for one of her most celebrated albums. Together, Burke and Lee wrote “Sans Souci,” which Lee recorded memorably for Decca Records and promoted on The Peggy Lee Show, as well as the songs for Walt Disney’s animated feature Lady and the Tramp, including “Bella Notte,” “He’s a Tramp,” and “The Siamese Cat Song.”
Lee revisited several of her 1940s hits on The Peggy Lee Show and also promoted her current releases on Capitol and Decca, including “It Never Happened to Me,” “Everytime,” “Just One of Those Things,” “Be Anything (But Be Mine),” “Forgive Me,” “Watermelon Weather,” “You Go to My Head,” and her audacious reworking of Rodgers and Hart’s “Lover,” a huge hit in mid-1952. But the 44 songs on At Last: The Lost Radio Recordings were selected on the basis of their overall rarity in the Lee catalog. She recorded none of these songs for commercial release, nor were they among the many titles she recorded as transcription discs exclusively for radio airplay.
On The Peggy Lee Show, Lee sang many songs that were currently on the record charts for other singers, as was common during a time when Your Hit Parade captivated both radio and television audiences. Among the selections featured here, “Cry,” “Please Mr. Sun,” and “The Little White Cloud That Cried” were all hits for Johnnie Ray, then at the height of his popularity. “You Belong to Me” was a major success for both Jo Stafford and Patti Page. “Come On-a My House” and “Botch-a-Me” both scored for Rosemary Clooney, while “Did Anyone Call?” was the flipside for her hit “Tenderly.” Other hits and their respective hit-makers include “Somewhere Along the Way” (Nat King Cole); “When I Fall in Love” (Doris Day); “Domino” (Bing Crosby, Tony Martin); “Half as Much” (Hank Williams, Clooney); “The Wheel of Fortune” (Kay Starr); “It Takes Two to Tango” (Pearl Bailey); “The Blacksmith Blues” (Ella Mae Morse); “Just One More Chance” (Les Paul and Mary Ford, reviving a 1931 Crosby hit); “And So to Sleep Again” and “Come What May” (Page); “Solitaire” and “Since My Love Has Gone” (Tony Bennett); “Trust in Me” (Eddie Fisher); “Here in My Heart” (Al Martino); “Go Go Go” (Richard Hayes); “I’m Gonna Live Till I Die” (Frankie Laine); and “Pretty-Eyed Baby” (Stafford, Laine).
Lee also showcased many recent songs from stage and screen, represented here by “Getting to Know You” from The King and I; “My Darling, My Darling” from Where’s Charley?; “After All, It’s Spring” from Seventeen; “Life Is a Beautiful Thing” from Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick; and “Zing a Little Zong” from Just for You. The latter, by Harry Warren and Leo Robin, was an Academy Award nominee for best song, and in early 1953 Lee sang it on the first-ever telecast of an Oscar ceremony.
This collection is rounded out by two traditional ballads (“Danny Boy”; “Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?”) and several songs from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that endured through the years: “I Got Rhythm,” “A Kiss to Build a Dream On,” “Heigh Ho (It’s Off to Work We Go),” “Johnny One-Note,” “Undecided,” “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “Everything Happens to Me,” “At Last,” “Skylark,” “Ol’ Buttermilk Sky,” “It’s a Most Unusual Day,” and two songs from the ‘20s that became title songs for movie musicals in the ‘50s, “I’ll See You in My Dreams” and “Singin’ in the Rain.”
While At Last: The Lost Radio Recordings compiles only solo recordings from Lee’s 1951-52 radio shows, we can’t overlook her many distinguished guests over the course of 89 episodes, representing every facet of American entertainment from vaudeville to big bands to Broadway to film to television to jazz to popular songwriting. They included Desi Arnaz, Harry Belafonte, Hoagy Carmichael, Barbara Carroll, Nat King Cole, Bob Crosby, Dan Dailey, Matt Dennis, Johnny Desmond, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Merv Griffin, Dick Haymes, Woody Herman, George Jessel, Liberace, Frank Loesser, Gordon MacRae, Johnny Mercer, Red Norvo, Jackie Paris, Louis Prima, Johnnie Ray, Danny Thomas (Lee’s Jazz Singer co-star), Mel Torme, and Mary Lou Williams.
By 1952, television had significantly overtaken radio on the musical-variety front, and Peggy Lee’s colorful radio career faded along with this series. But much of Lee’s greater career was only beginning. Within three years, she received an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress for her performance in Pete Kelly’s Blues. Television continued to welcome her; over the next four decades she hosted several specials and made over a hundred guest appearances on nearly every musical-variety series, including those of Cole, Como, Crosby, Sinatra, Stafford, Sullivan, Dinah Shore, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Danny Kaye, Sammy Davis Jr., Andy Williams, Carol Burnett, Johnny Cash and Julie Andrews. Her live performance career flourished through the mid-1990s in the U.S., Canada, England and Japan at nightclubs, showrooms, concert halls, and, briefly, Broadway. She continued to write songs with a variety of partners, among them Harold Arlen, Cy Coleman, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mandel, Marian McPartland, Quincy Jones, and Victor Young.
As a recording artist, Lee thrived in the era of the long-playing album, beginning with the 1953 release of her first concept set, Black Coffee with Peggy Lee. She worked closely with some of the greatest arrangers, conductors, and bandleaders, including Benny Carter, Gordon Jenkins, Quincy Jones, Billy May, and Nelson Riddle. Over a 35-year period, she released nearly 50 original albums, offering such commercial and critical successes as The Man I Love, Things Are Swingin’, Beauty and the Beat, Latin ala Lee, Basin Street East, Sugar ‘n’ Spice and Mink Jazz. She had career-defining hit singles with 1958’s “Fever” and 1969’s “Is That All There Is?” and also enjoyed chart success with “Mr. Wonderful,” “I’m a Woman,” and “Big Spender.” She won a Grammy award for “Is That All There Is?” and received 11 other Grammy nominations. In 1995, the year of her last studio recording and her final concerts, at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, she received a Grammy award for lifetime achievement.
“For the singing of popular songs, Peggy Lee was about as good as you can get,” composer Andre Previn told the Boston Globe after Lee’s passing in 2002. “When she did some of those unbelievably slow ballads, she would still swing like a house afire. Her sense of rhythm was unbeatable, sensational. And when she sang a song of unrequited love, she really got to you.”
David Torresen
Editor, PeggyLee.com
January 2015
The Peggy Lee Bio-Discography and Videography by Ivan Santiago-Mercado was invaluable in preparing notes for this collection. Visit it at peggyleediscography.com
Tracks
Disc One
1. Peggy Lee Radio Show Opening
2. It’s a Most Unusual Day
3. I’ll See You in My Dreams
4. Getting to Know You
5. Cry
6. You Belong to Me
7. Takes Two to Tango
8. Solitaire
9. Did Anyone Call?
10. Please Mr. Sun
11. The Wheel of Fortune
12. Life Is a Beautiful Thing
13. Somewhere Along the Way
14. And So to Sleep Again
15. Undecided
16. Everything Happens to Me
17. A Kiss to Build a Dream On
18. Botch-a-Me
19. My Darling, My Darling
20. Just One More Chance
21. Since My Love Has Gone
22. Zing a Little Zong
23. Skylark
Disc Two
1. I Got Rhythm
2. Pretty-Eyed Baby
3. Ole Buttermilk Sky
4. The Little White Cloud That Cried
5. When I Fall in Love
6. Come What May
7. Johnny One-Note
8. Singin’ in the Rain
9. Come On-a My House
10. Here in My Heart
11. Danny Boy
12. Half as Much
13. Go, Go, Go
14. I’ll Never Smile Again
15. After All, It’s Spring
16. Trust in Me
17. Blacksmith Blues
18. Domino
19. Heigh Ho (It’s Off to Work We Go)
20. Oh Dear, What Can the Matter Be?
21. I’m Gonna Live Till I Die
22. At Last
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Original CD release (now out of print)
Real Gone Music
Release date: March 10, 2015
Produced by Real Gone Music in collaboration with the Peggy Lee estate, At Last: The Lost Radio Recordings presents 44 solo performances from Peggy’s own radio series, nearly all of them unavailable since they originally aired in the early 1950s on CBS Radio and the Armed Forces Radio Service.
Peggy recorded prolifically for Capitol Records, Decca Records and other labels, but none of the songs featured on At Last can be found elsewhere since she never recorded them for commercial release, nor for transcription discs. These radio performances are her only available versions of such standards as Skylark, A Kiss to Build a Dream On, I Got Rhythm, Everything Happens to Me, Singin’ in the Rain, Just One More Chance, Getting to Know You, I’ll See You in My Dreams, and the title song, At Last.
Included as well are Peggy’s distinctive interpretations of songs that were on the charts for other singers during her show’s 1951-52 run, including Tony Bennett, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Doris Day, Frankie Laine, Patti Page, Johnnie Ray, Jo Stafford, and Kay Starr. Hits of the day featured here include You Belong to Me, When I Fall in Love, The Wheel of Fortune, Cry, Half as Much, Come On-a My House, and I’m Gonna Live Till I Die.
At Last: The Lost Radio Recordings is produced for Real Gone Music by Jim Pierson and Gordon Anderson. Associate producers are Holly Foster-Wells, vice president of Peggy Lee Associates, LLC; Ivan Santiago-Mercado, author of The Peggy Lee Bio-Discography and Videography; and PeggyLee.com editor David Torresen, who provides liner notes. Mastering is by Mike Milchner of SonicVision and booklet design by Tom D. Kline. The 16-page booklet includes several rare photos provided by Peggy Lee Associates, LLC.