PEGGY LEE: "In The Name Of Love"

Original released on LP Capitol ST 2096

(US, September 1964)

Peggy Lee works with arrangers Billy May, Dave Grusin, and Lalo Schifrin on this disparate collection of new songs and evergreens. Whether or not she's taking into consideration the new rock revolution led by her new labelmates the Beatles, she often has her chartmakers come up with light jazz-rock backgrounds, starting with the title song. Lee has long since demonstrated her credentials in the field of Latin music, so she doesn't seem to have felt the need to treat "The Girl from Ipanema" as a samba; instead, May conceives a swinging rhythm for the tune. Although there are ballads, including delicate versions of "My Sin" and "Shangri-La," many of these tracks are uptempo, including Lee's own contribution, her co-write with Schifrin on the movie song "Theme from 'Joy House' (Just Call Me Love Bird)." It all culminates in an excellent new song by old Lee compatriot Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, "When in Rome (I Do as the Romans Do)." (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

PEGGY LEE: "In Love Again!"

Original released on LP Capitol ST 1969

(US, January 1964)

To say, as the unsigned liner notes to Peggy Lee's LP "In Love Again!" do, that the album has a theme and that theme is love is to say it has no theme at all, really. Virtually every song sung by a pop singer like Lee is a love song. It might be more accurate to suggest that the album represents a veteran performer taking account of current trends in popular music and bending them to her own viewpoint. That Lee is intent in recasting material becomes clear immediately, as she leads off side one with "A Lot of Livin' to Do." The song's writers, Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, intended it as a parody of rock & roll when they wrote it for their Broadway musical "Bye Bye Birdie", in which it was sung by Conrad Birdie, the Elvis Presley stand-in they were making fun of. But Lee takes the song at face value and uses it to start off a side's worth of uptempo material that also includes "Got That Magic," the first of three songs she co-wrote, which is nearly a rock & roll number itself, boasting electric guitar and a honking saxophone. Rock isn't really Lee's forte, of course, though she keeps up with the beat valiantly. More her speed is her other contribution on the first side, "That's My Style," with music by Cy Coleman. Side two is the slow side, and it begins with "I Can't Stop Loving You." But unlike Ray Charles, who gave the country song soul, Lee presents it with her usual cool, thus claiming it for her own. Similarly, she doesn't seem to care that "Unforgettable" is a Nat King Cole signature song; she just renders it with her characteristic precision. The title song, another Lee/Coleman composition, is her best original on the set, and elsewhere she takes account of Latin styles, notably on her cover of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "How Insensitive" ("Insensatez"). There's nothing revelatory on "In Love Again!", just 12 quality performances from a highly identifiable singer who is not shy about taking other people's material and re-imagining it or about coming up with her own vehicles. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

PEGGY LEE: "The Man I Love"

Original released on LP Capitol T-864

(US, August 1957)

Around the same time that Peggy Lee decamped her longtime label home, Capitol Records, for what turned out to be a five-year sojourn at Decca Records in 1952, an apparently washed-up Frank Sinatra signed with Capitol. In 1957, when Lee returned to Capitol, Sinatra had re-established himself as a major recording artist. Meanwhile, the recording world had changed with the emergence of the 12-inch LP as an industry standard. "The Man I Love", Lee's first recording for Capitol in the format after re-signing, matched her with the company's flagship artist, Sinatra, who was credited as the album's conductor, his name printed on the front cover in the same size as Lee's. A year earlier, Sinatra had conducted his Tone Poems of Color album for Capitol, and though the singer did not read music and relied on arranger Nelson Riddle, he again proved himself able to make his intentions clear in working with Lee. "The Man I Love" is a concept album in the manner pioneered by Sinatra at Capitol, a group of 12 songs chosen to express a single theme. That theme, as the title suggests, is a woman's unwavering devotion to a man, as expressed in songs often composed by gilt-edged songwriters (Gershwin, Arlen, Rodgers, Kern, etc.) and taken from Broadway shows. That devotion is not starry eyed, however; in several songs, Lee acknowledges the flaws in her paramour (e.g., "Something Wonderful"), but then explains them away and reconfirms her commitment. In fact, toward the end she worries what she would do "If I Should Lose You" before declaring "There Is No Greater Love" and finally idealizing the long-term relationship in the closing song, "The Folks Who Live on the Hill." It wouldn't be surprising to find that Sinatra directed Lee to sing like one of his favorite singers, Billie Holiday, since she often does, laying back in understated vocal performances to reinforce the near-victimhood of the woman depicted in the songs. Riddle supports these interpretations with lush string charts that hint of dark feelings. The result is a superb pairing of singer, conductor, and arranger on an album that re-conceives Lee as a Capitol recording artist in the Sinatra concept album mold. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

PEGGY LEE: "Black Coffee"

Original released on LP 10" Decca DL 5482 (US 1953, August 3)

and on LP 12" Decca DL 8358 (US, May 1956)

Peggy Lee left Capitol in 1952 for, among several other reasons, the label's refusal to let her record and release an exotic, tumultuous version of "Lover." Lee was certainly no Mitch Miller songbird, content to loosen her gorgeous pipes on any piece of tripe foisted upon her; she was a superb songwriter with a knowledge of production and arrangement gained from work in big bands and from her husband, Dave Barbour (although the two weren't together at the time). The more open-minded Decca acquiesced to her demand, and watched its investment pay off quickly when the single became her biggest hit in years. "Black Coffee" was Lee's next major project. Encouraged by longtime Decca A&R Milt Gabler, she hired a small group including trumpeter Pete Candoli and pianist Jimmy Rowles (two of her favorite sidemen) to record an after-hours jazz project similar in intent and execution to Lee Wiley's "Manhattan project" of 1950, Night in Manhattan. While the title-track opener of "Black Coffee" soon separated itself from the LP - to be taught forever after during the first period of any Torch Song 101 class - the album doesn't keep to its concept very long; Lee is soon enough in a bouncy mood for "I've Got You Under My Skin" and very affectionate on "Easy Living." (If there's a concept at work here, it's the vagaries of love.) Listeners should look instead to "It Ain't Necessarily So" or "Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You?" for more examples of Lee's quintessentially slow-burn sultriness. Aside from occasionally straying off-concept, however, "Black Coffee" is an excellent record, spotlighting Lee's ability to shine with every type of group and in any context. [When originally recorded and released in 1953, "Black Coffee" was an eight-song catalog of 78s. Three years later, Decca commissioned an LP expansion of the record, for which Lee recorded several more songs. The 2004 Verve edition is therefore a reissue of the 1956 12-song LP.] (John Bush in AllMusic)

PEGGY LEE: "Things Are Swingin'"

Original released on LP Capitol T 1049

(US, July 1958)

Midway through a small lull in her live performance career, Peggy Lee recorded the stereo LP "Things Are Swingin'" in Hollywood during May 1958, at the same sessions that produced the biggest hit of her career, "Fever." (Though not on the original LP, it was added to the 2004 reissue as a bonus track.) Still, "Things Are Swingin'" isn't a high point in Lee's career, especially when considered among her many successes of the late '50s (like the following year's "Beauty and the Beat!"). Though her instincts and powers of bewitchment were faultless as ever, she betrayed a few weaknesses in her normally excellent voice (perhaps a result of her semi-retirement at the time), and the ten-piece studio orchestra - including session heavyweights Don Fagerquist, Barney Kessel, Bob Enevoldsen, Howard Roberts, Pete Candoli, and Shelly Manne - isn't given much to work with by conductor Jack Marshall. Scattered moments of brilliance abound, however, including Lee's own title song (a staple of her later live show, written with Marshall), the sleepily sensual "You're Getting to Be a Habit With Me," and "Alright, Okay, You Win," a bluesy lead that became a hit in 1958 alongside "Fever." (John Bush in AllMusic)

PEGGY LEE: "Jump For Joy"

Original released on LP Capitol T 979 (mono)

(US, 1958)

The powers that be at Capitol-EMI haven't been as thorough with their Peggy Lee reissues as they have been with, say, June Christy (a much less commercially successful artist), not to mention Frank Sinatra or Nat "King" Cole. Luckily, in 2009, the DRG label saw fit to put out domestic U.S. reissues of the previously unavailable "The Man I Love" and this "Jump For Joy", from 1957 and 1958 respectively. "Jump For Joy", Peggy Lee's second (and last) album with Nelson Riddle arrangements, was conceived as the extroverted, swinging follow-up to "The Man I Love" (which was itself produced and conducted by none other than Sinatra himself to mark her return to Capitol Records after a five-year absence). At the very least, it succeeded in securing Lee's status on the label with its solid production, classy arrangements, and, of course, her own masterful singing. "Joy" is also notable for including a number of older tunes from the '20s and '30s - songs like "Back In Your Own Back Yard," the Boswell Sisters' "When My Sugar Walks Down The Street," "Aint We Got Fun," Billie Holiday's "What A Little Moonlight Can Do," and Fred Astaire's "Cheek To Cheek." Far from making the album something of a novelty session - both Lee and Riddle can make any material sound fresh and contemporary, anyway - they only add to the bright, insouciant mood the singer and her arranger are trying to establish here. Apart from Sinatra's "Songs For Swingin' Lovers" and "A Swingin' Affair", these are some of Nelson Riddle's most hard-swinging charts. Of course, it all comes down to Peggy Lee's equally superb vocals - she has never sounded more confident or more in charge, as she looks forward to a renewed and successful association with the label where she first became a major star. (Richard Mortiflogio in AllMusic)

SOUTH PACIFIC (OST)

Original released on LP RCA Victor LSO 1032

(US, 1958)

Character-forming. There weren't many records around when I was a kid, but this was one of them, or at least an EP with four of these songs on it. I don't think "Happy Talk" could have been one of them, because I don't remember playing it, and I tended to gravitate towards the most annoying songs available. The one I do remember playing a lot is "There is Nothing Like a Dame". I liked its simple oom-pah rhythm, and I probably liked the contrast between male chorus and individual voices. I didn't think to ask what a dame was, because I knew: Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Dame Flora Robson. Confirmation, if it were needed, came from another version of the song on an LP of showtunes alongside "There's No Business Like Showbusiness". A dame, everyone knew, was an elderly English actress. Listening to it now in perhaps the first time for twenty-five years, I realise what I must have known subconsciously for a long while: that it's a remarkably frank song about a group of sailors so sexually frustrated that they're on the brink of begetting mermaids. Hearing this as a child may perhaps have led to my liking for opera; it's not impossible that it also planted the seeds of my Francophilia; what's certain is that it ensured I spent thirty years of my life confusing sex with theatrical performance. (in RateYourMusic)

Something really odd about this movie is the way they used extreme and almost surreal color-filters for a number of key-scenes. Friggin' irritating, if you ask me. But in regards to the music, it's a totally different ball game. The songs are not only both terrific and exquisite, they've rarely been bettered, which means close to definite versions of such immortal Rodgers-Hammerstein tunes as "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair", "Some Enchanted Evening", "There Is Nothing Like A Dame", the almost unreal beauty of "Bali Ha'i" and the most understated anti-racist rant you're ever likely to hear in the glorious "Carefully Taught". Man, that's what I call music. If you get it on vinyl, make sure to get a hold of a copy with the splendid gatefold sleeve and the accompanying booklet. No color filters there... (in RateYourMusic)