Black Coffee is the first album by Peggy Lee, released in the ten-inch format in 1953 on Decca Records in the United States, catalogue DL 5482. In 1956, at the request of the record label, Lee recorded four more songs for a reissue of the album in the twelve-inch LP format, catalogue DL 8358.The entry on-line at allmusic.com erroneously states that the initial 1953 issue was an album of four 78 RPM records. The 2004 Verve Master Series compact disc reissue includes facsimiles of both the 1953 and 1956 LP covers front and back, and Will Friedwald identifies the release as a ten-inch LP in the liner notes. The 1956 cover is pictured at the right.

History

By 1953, Lee had been recording professionally since joining the Benny Goodman Orchestra in 1941, but had only released songs on 78s or 45s. This was her first opportunity to record an album, and in the early 1950s, common record company wisdom reserved the 12" LP for classical music and, in the case of Decca and Columbia Records, cast recordings of Broadway musicals. This practice would end soon after this LP was recorded, ten-inch records discontinued generally by the mid-1950s, Lee adding four songs at sessions in 1956 to expand the running time up to that of the twelve-inch LP.

Reception

Neither the 10" nor the 12" release made the Popular Album Chart, the chart expanding to a listing of ten to thirty LPs on average during 1956. Joni Mitchell has declared the album among her favorites,Black Coffee, Verve Master Edition 3093, 2004, liner notes. leading off her torch song album of 2000, Both Sides Now, with a selection from Black Coffee, "You're My Thrill". In his book Jazz Singing, Will Friedwald names the album as one of his desert island discs.Friedwald, Will. Jazz Singing, New York: Da Capo paperback, 1996, p. 435.

Sessions

Three separate sessions in 1953 yielded the initial eight tracks for the ten-inch LP, all at Decca Studios, 50 West 57th Street in New York City, on April 30, May 1, May 4. The 1956 sessions to record the additional four tracks needed for the twelve-inch LP were done with different personnel at the Decca studios in Hollywood on April 3.

On October 26, 2004, the album was reissued as part of the Verve Records Master Edition series, Verve and Decca now both units within the giant Universal Music Group conglomerate. The track sequence followed that of the 1956 twelve-inch reissue. No original producer is listed, although Milt Gabler is mentioned in the reissue credits as Decca A&R.

Personnel

1953 sessions

* Peggy Lee - vocals

* Pete Candoli - trumpet

* Jimmy Rowles - piano

* Max Wayne - bass

* Ed Shaughnessy - drums

1956 sessions

* Peggy Lee - vocals

* Stella Castellucci - harp

* Lou Levy - piano

* Bill Pitman - guitar

* Buddy Clark - bass

* Larry Bunker - drums, vibraphone, percussion

References

Black Coffee

Category:Peggy Lee albums

Category:Decca Records albums

de:Black Coffee (Album)

Artist/Band Information

Peggy Lee (26 May 1920 – 21 January 2002) was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and performer. She wrote music for films, acted, and created conceptual record albums---encompassing poetry, jazz, chamber pop, and art songs.

Biography

Early life

Lee had Norwegian and Swedish ancestry, and was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh of eight children of Marvin Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad. Her mother died when Lee was four years old. She sang professionally over KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She later had her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her a "salary" in food. Both during and after her high school years Lee sang for paltry sums on local radio stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy of WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota (the most widely heard station in North Dakota) changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee. Lee left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17.

She returned to North Dakota for a tonsillectomy and later made her way to Chicago for a gig at The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel East, where she was noticed by bandleader Benny Goodman. According to Lee, "Benny's then-fiancée, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into The Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening she brought Benny in, because they were looking for a replacement for Helen Forrest. And although I didn't know, I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn't like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing." She joined his band in 1941 and stayed for two years.

Recording career

In 1942 Lee had her first #1 hit, "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place", followed by 1943's "Why Don't You Do Right?" (originally sung by Lil Green), which sold over a million copies and made her famous. She sang with Goodman's orchestra in two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl.

In March 1943 Lee married Dave Barbour, a guitarist in Goodman's band. Peggy said, "David joined Benny's band and there was a ruling that no one should fraternize with the girl singer. But I fell in love with David the first time I heard him play, and so I married him. Benny then fired David, so I quit, too. Benny and I made up, although David didn't play with him anymore. Benny stuck to his rule. I think that's not too bad a rule, but you can't help falling in love with somebody."

When Lee and Barbour left the band, the idea was that he would work in the studios and she would keep house and raise their daughter, Nicki. But she drifted back to songwriting and occasional recording sessions for the fledgling Capitol Records in 1947, for whom she produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "It's a Good Day" (1948). With the release of the #1-selling record of 1947, "Mañana", her "retirement" was over.

In 1948 Lee joined Perry Como and Jo Stafford as a rotating host of the NBC Radio musical program Chesterfield Supper Club. She was also a regular on NBC's Jimmy Durante Show.

She left Capitol for a few years in the early 1950s, but returned in 1953. She is most famous for her cover version of the Little Willie John hit "Fever", to which she added her own, uncopyrighted lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet," "Captain Smith and Pocahontas") and her rendition of Leiber and Stoller's "Is That All There Is?". Her relationship with the Capitol label spanned almost three decades, aside from her brief but artistically rich detour (1952–1956) at Decca Records, where in 1956 she recorded one of her most acclaimed albums, Black Coffee. While recording for Decca, Lee had hit singles with the songs Lover and Mister Wonderful.

Lee is today internationally recognized for her signature song "Fever". She had a string of successful albums and top 10 hits in three consecutive decades. She is regarded as one of the most influential jazz vocalists of all time, being cited as a mentor to diverse artists such as Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Madonna, and Dusty Springfield. Lee was also an accomplished actress,.

In her 60-year-long career, Peggy was the recipient of three Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, an Academy Award nomination, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Award; the President's Award, the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Living Legacy Award from the Women's International Center. In 1999 Lee was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.http

Songwriting

Lee was a successful songwriter, with songs from the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp, for which she also supplied the singing and speaking voices of four characters. Her collaborators included Laurindo Almeida, Harold Arlen, Sonny Burke, Cy Coleman, Duke Ellington, Dave Grusin, Quincy Jones, Francis Lai, Jack Marshall, Johnny Mandel, Marian McPartland, Willard Robison, Lalo Schifrin and Victor Young.

She wrote the lyrics for:

*"I Don't Know Enough About You"

*"It's A Good Day", composed by Dave Barbour

*"I'm Gonna Go Fishin'", composed with Duke Ellington

*"The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter"

*"Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)"

*"Bless You (For The Good That's In You)", composed with Mel Tormé

*"What More Can a Woman Do?"

*"Don't Be Mean to Baby"

*"New York City Ghost", composed with Victor Young

*"You Was Right, Baby"

*"Just an Old Love of Mine"

*"Everything's Movin' Too Fast"

*"The Shining Sea"

*"He's A Tramp"

*"The Siamese Cat Song"

*"There Will Be Another Spring"

*"Johnny Guitar", composed with Victor Young

*"Sans Souci", composed with Sonny Burke

*"So What's New?"

*"Don't Smoke in Bed"

*"I Love Being Here With You"

*"Happy With the Blues" with Harold Arlen

*"Where Can I Go Without You?"

*"Things Are Swingin'"

*"Then Was Then" with Cy Coleman

Her first published song was in 1941, "Little Fool". "What More Can a Woman Do?" was recorded by Sarah Vaughan with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. "Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)" was no.1 for 9 weeks on the Billboard singles chart in 1948, from the week of 13 March to 8 May.

Lee was a mainstay of Capitol Records when rock'n'roll came onto the American music scene. She was among the first of the "old guard" to recognize this new genre, as seen by her recording music from the Beatles, Randy Newman, Carole King, James Taylor and other up-and-coming songwriters. From 1957 until her final disc for the company in 1972, she produced a steady stream of two or three albums per year which usually included standards (often arranged quite different from the original), her own compositions, and material from young artists.

Acting career

Lee starred and sang in the hit films The Jazz Singer, Disney's Lady and the Tramp, and Pete Kelly's Blues, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1952 Lee played opposite Danny Thomas in a remake of the early Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer. In 1955 she played an alcoholic blues singer in Pete Kelly's Blues, for which she received an Academy Awards nomination. In 1955 Lee did the speaking and singing voices for several characters in Disney's Lady and the Tramp movie: she played the human "Darling" (in the first part of the movie), the dog "Peg", and the two Siamese cats "Si" and "Am". In 1957 Lee guest starred on the short-lived ABC variety program, The Guy Mitchell Show.

In the early 1990s she retained famed entertainment attorney Neil Papiano to sue Disney for royalties on Lady and the Tramp. Lee's lawsuit claimed that she was due royalties for video tapes, a technology that did not exist when she agreed to write and perform for Disney. Her lawsuit was successful.

Never afraid to fight for what she believed in, Lee passionately insisted that musicians be equitably compensated for their work. Although she realized litigation had taken a toll on her health, Lee often quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson on the topic: "God will not have his work be made manifest by cowards."

She also successfully sued MCA/Decca with the assistance of noted entertainment attorney Cy Godfrey.

Personal life

Lee was married four times; each marriage ended in divorce:

*Musician Dave Barbour (1943–1951); daughter Nicki Lee Foster (born 1943)

*Actor Brad Dexter (1953)

*Actor Dewey Martin (1956–1958)

*Actor Jack Del Rio (1964–1965)

Retirement and death

Lee continued to perform into the 1990s, sometimes in a wheelchair.http Holden, Stephen, Sounds Around Town: Peggy Lee (7 August 1992)

Legacy

Academy Awards memoriam omission

She was not featured in Memoriam Tribute during the 2002 Academy Awards ceremony. When her family requested she be featured in the following year's ceremony, the Academy stated they did not honor requests and Lee was omitted because her contribution to film and her legacy were not deemed significant enough, although she had been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Pete Kelly's Blues. Her family pointed out that, although she had been omitted, R&B singer/actress Aaliyah, who died a few months earlier, was included though having been in only one moderately successful film, Romeo Must Die (Queen of the Damned had yet to be released). The Academy provided no comment on the oversight.

Awards

Lee was nominated for 12 Grammy Awards, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit "Is That All There Is?" In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Lee is a recipient of North Dakota's Roughrider Award; the Pied Piper Award from The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP); the Presidents Award, from the Songwriters Guild of America; the Ella Award for Lifetime Achievement, from the Society of Singers; and the Living Legacy Award, from the Women's International Center. In 1999 she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Carnegie Hall tribute

In 2003, "There'll Be Another Spring: A Tribute to Miss Peggy Lee" was held at Carnegie Hall. Produced by recording artist Richard Barone, the sold-out event included performances by Cy Coleman, Debbie Harry, Nancy Sinatra, Rita Moreno, Marian McPartland, Chris Connor, Petula Clark, and others. In 2004 Barone brought the event to the Hollywood Bowl and to Chicago's Ravinia Festival, with expanded casts including Maureen McGovern, Jack Jones and Bea Arthur. The Carnegie Hall concert was broadcast on NPR's "Jazz Set".

Bibliography

;Autobiography

*Peggy Lee, Miss Peggy Lee: An Autobiography, 2002, Bloomsbury (UK), ISBN 0-7475-5907-4

;Biography

*Peter Richmond, Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee, 2006, Henry Holt and Company, ISBN 0-8050-7383-3

*Robert Strom, Miss Peggy Lee: A Career Chronicle, 2005, McFarland Publishing, ISBN 0-7864-1936-9

;Album liner notes

*Will Friedwald, Album liner notes The Best of Peggy Lee, The Capitol Years

Discography

Capitol Records

*1948 Rendezvous with Peggy Lee (set of 78s: 6 songs)

*1952 Rendezvous with Peggy Lee (10-inch LP: 8 songs; 12-inch LP: 12 songs)

Decca Records

*1953 Black Coffee (10-inch version)

*1954 Songs in an Intimate Style

*1954 Selections from Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas' (w/ Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye)

*1955 Songs from Pete Kelly's Blues (w/ Ella Fitzgerald)

*1956 Black Coffee (12-inch version)

*1957 Dream Street

*1957 Songs from Walt Disney's "Lady and the Tramp"

*1958 Sea Shells (recorded 1955)

*1959 Miss Wonderful (recorded 1956)

*1964 Lover (recorded 1952)

*1964 The Fabulous Peggy Lee (recorded 1953-56)

Capitol Records

*1957 The Man I Love

*1959 Jump for Joy

*1959 Things Are Swingin'

*1959 I Like Men!

*1959 Beauty and the Beat!

*1960 Latin ala Lee!

*1960 All Aglow Again!

*1960 Pretty Eyes

*1960 Christmas Carousel

*1960 Olé ala Lee

*1961 Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee

*1961 If You Go

*1962 Blues Cross Country

*1962 Bewitching-Lee

*1962 Sugar 'N' Spice

*1963 Mink Jazz

*1963 I'm a Woman

*1964 In Love Again!

*1964 In the Name of Love

*1965 Pass Me By

*1965 Then Was Then - Now Is Now!

*1966 Guitars A là Lee

*1966 Big $pender

*1967 Extra Special!

*1967 Somethin' Groovy!

*1968 2 Shows Nightly

*1969 A Natural Woman

*1969 Is That All There Is?

*1970 Bridge Over Troubled Water

*1970 Make It With You

*1971 Where Did They Go

*1972 Norma Deloris Egstrom from Jamestown, North Dakota

Post-Capitol albums

*1974 Let's Love

*1975 Mirrors

*1977 Live in London

*1977 Peggy

*1979 Close Enough for Love

*1988 Miss Peggy Lee Sings the Blues

*1990 The Peggy Lee Songbook: There'll Be Another Spring

*1993 Love Held Lightly: Rare Songs by Harold Arlen (rec. 1988)

*1993 Moments Like This

Chart singles

Film and television

;Film

*The Powers Girl (1943)

*Stage Door Canteen (1943)

*Banquet of Melody (1946) (short subject)

*Jasper in a Jam (1946) (short subject) (voice)

*Midnight Serenade (1947) (short subject)

*Peggy Lee and the Dave Barbour Quartet (1950) (short subject)

*Mr. Music (1950)

*The Jazz Singer (1952)

*Lady and the Tramp (1955) (voice)

*Pete Kelly's Blues (1955)

*Celebrity Art (1973) (short subject)

;Television

*Mystery guest on What's My Line?' (28 February 1960)

References

;Notes