I was a fan but not a huge fan of Peggy Lee and I went to see her at Carnegie Hall because I was a HUGE fan of Mel Torme and she was opening for him.
I left the concert besotted. I have never ever seen anything like it. Though very sick with diabetes (this would be her last concert in nyc), she had to be lifted to a sofa in the middle of the stage and handed a MIC.
She proceeded to blow the house down.
Four standing ovations before she was carried back out. Her voice had lost nothing, husky, tender, throaty. She played everything you knew she would. Outstanding on "Manana" (which she also wrote the lyric to) as well as "He's A Tramp" (no, really, that one, the "Lady And The Tramp" one.
My memory of the setlist is fuzzy so I got this off the internet . It was written by Phillip Elwood, the San Francisco Chronicle's music critic: "Love Being Here With You," running through "Some Cats Know," "Fever," "Manana," "See See Rider," "Them There Eyes" and many more. "Always True To You Darling (In My Fashion)," " 'S Wonderful," and a heart-wrenching "I'll Be Seeing You."
Elwood also added this tidbit: "She reflected back 55 years during a recent conversation and said, "I think I'm singing better now that when I was with Benny (Goodman)." Her Carnegie Hall audience seemed to agree"
I have heard her Goodman days and she was excellent there but towards the end of her career, she was perfection. How much stage craft and talent to hold Carnegie hall in the palm of her hand through her voice and her charisma. 40 years earlier, Peggy Lee was a sultry stunner, time had taken that beauty away in a purely visual sense but she was the same woman still and she hadn't lost the ability to project that beauty.
It was a remarkable thing to see. One in the eye for time and more than that, it is hard to believe that in her prime she was any better. She nailed every whisper, every blurred come on.
The pink visage, the dyed blonde hair, the flickering wrist movements; it is as if she had transcended not just her old age, but her any age.
Here is some film I've found of her around that time.