Peggy Lee
The Times, June 1994
On a clear day, Los Angeles is azure blue: the sky, the ocean, all those pools glinting in the sun. But here, high up among the velvet lawns and high-tech security of wealthy Bel Air, it appears peach-pink. That's the colour of this bedroom, French-styled and grand, shutters half-pulled against the afternoon's light. And of my hostess's robe, heavily silken, redolent of the glamour of a vanishing age. And of a rose, displayed in various stages of its unfolding in four slim crystal vases.
Peggy Lee, the woman in whose honour this bloom was named, has invited me to tea. She smiles winningly and says she couldn't quite wait (a slice of chocolate mousse cake is already on her plate, and a silver fork in her hand). "Forgive me for starting without you," she all but drawls, while propped up against the pillows, "but a lady gets a little hungry."
She is looking quite magnificent, this despite a temporary virus and that the fact that no photographer has been scheduled to capture the occasion. Her hair is wrapped in a turban of deep leaf-green. Vast pearls hang from her ears. Dark glasses, their frames frosted with diamante, all but hide her eyes. "Cary Grant and I were great friends and I noticed that he would always pay attention to detail," she says. "He'd read every last thing written about him, vet every photo taken ... this at a time when other people would talk about 'those damn bromides.' And he had a perfect image, didn't he?
"Well, what is it that people say? 'Perfection is made up of trifles, but perfection itself is no trifle.' I may not have lived up to that maxim, but at least I've made an effort."
Something stirs close by, although in the soft half-light is hard to see quite what. The rustling comes from an open box of shiny cardboard that sits grandly on the counterpane, its interior cushioned with folds of bridal-white tissue paper. Inside, a silver chinchilla cat stretches and yawns. "Baby, I forgot to tell you that Alan was coming," purrs that familiar voice, as distinctive in speech as in song. Near by, a signed photograph of Louis Armstrong offers a testament to Lee's enduring appeal; "To Peg, the greatest ever since I heard her chirp the first note." Audiences and critics have been in agreement with him, throughout a career that now spans more than 50 years.
Born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, she is one of the few definitive artists in America's popular vocal tradition. And not only academics or those advanced in age recognise this fact. Madonna came to visit recently, dressed demurely and bearing a bouquet of cabbage roses. kd lang, too, is a committed fan. "She was here to see me a short while back and I didn't even realise that we'd met before," Lee says. "I was playing dates in Canada one time. She was just sort of always there, hanging around, and one day on my way out of the theatre I spoke to her. Such a sweet little shy girl. To hear the music that is coming from her now is especially wonderful."
Lang was among the celebrities - Rosemary Clooney, Mel Torme, Ray Charles, Johnny Mathis and Manhattan Transfer were there also - who responded eagerly when the charitable foundation The Society of Singers presented their heroine with the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement a few weeks ago. "She (lang) sang Black Coffee and a tune I did way back called I Am In Love," the magnificently lazy voice reports of the Los Angeles ceremony's highlights. "Cleo Laine sang beautifully and Natalie Cole performed I'm A Woman with all those lyrics and every little mannerism off pat, right down to the walk I used to do, back in the days when I was still walking."
This qualifiying clause, casually made, is a first reference to the fact that, when she performs now, it is from a seated position (she broke her pelvis in a fall some years ago, and suffers from diabetes and a heart condition). "It feels quite natural, the audience and me on the same level. I'm lucky that my style of singing has always been minimalist. And because my breathing isn't affected, I feel I could go on for ever."
Searching out a report of the Ella celebrations in 'Variety', she acknowledges what no-one else might dare, the comic potential to her reduced mobility. 'Who was that platinum blonde being wheelchaired down Wilshire Boulevard, a cat on her lap, heading towards the Beverly Hilton on Monday?' it begins. "Me," she chuckles. "My limousine broke down on the way and we couldn't find a taxi cab, so there was nothing else to do but make a dash for it, Baby included. She doesn't like short cars but will always ride in a stretch. A lot of people have applied for her place in the next life."
Although made with a hint of self-mockery, such a remark would never be uttered by the dirty realists of the current pop aristocracy. Miss Lee, however, believes in conveying a glamorous image. "I remember when screen magazines first began to picture the starlet in the kitchen, wearing a little apron and pretending to cook. I didn't like it. You should always look like a star, even put on a hat and some dark glasses when you go to the market. Otherwise people lose a little of the esteem they have for you."
Surely such a philosophy, taken to extremes, would render Hollywood awash with Norma Desmonds? "Well," she replies, smiling, "everything in moderation seems to me a good rule."
Growing older within a community offering unconditional love to all that is new, youthful and shining , is a concept tackled within the words to Ready To Begin Again, one of the items on the set list for next week's rare London concert appearance.
Written for her by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were responsible for her Grammy-winning classic Is That All There Is?, it first appeared on the quite remarkable 1976 LP Mirrors. 'When my teeth are at rest in the glass by my bed,' the lyric begins, 'And my hair lies somewhere in a drawer/ Then the world doesn't seem like a very nice place/ Not a very nice place any more." Slowly and deliberately though, the narrator prepares herself for the day ahead, putting on her rings, her pearls and her pins, until, "I'm ready to begin again/ Looking fresh and bright, I trust/ Ready to begin again, as everybody ... must.'
Once upon a time, it was said, Lee found the song too depressing to perform, but today she is pleased by my admiration for it and wonders if it wasn't perhaps a little ahead of its time? She may be right, for we are not used to artists of her stature deconstructing their iconography publicly. At 74 though, she is too concerned with the future - other performances to give, records to make, books to write - to worry about such things, let alone about her age. She dislikes morbid talk, but says she believes in the afterlife and so has no fear of dying, even though she would prefer to continue here for ever.
"The body tries to go on meeting all your demands, but when you're through with it and your soul goes on to the next plane, it's just like you left an old suit lying there," is her explanation of the transition from one world to the next. Almost superfluous to add that Miss Lee's voice, captured on all of its many recordings, will remain immortal.
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