{"id":20911,"date":"2021-05-02T05:30:08","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T09:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20911"},"modified":"2021-05-02T22:24:26","modified_gmt":"2021-05-03T02:24:26","slug":"album-review-peggy-lee-something-wonderful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/05\/02\/album-review-peggy-lee-something-wonderful\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Peggy Lee &#8212; Something Wonderful"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-20912\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/peggy_lee_something_wonderf.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/peggy_lee_something_wonderf.jpg 350w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/peggy_lee_something_wonderf-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/peggy_lee_something_wonderf-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>A casual listener might only be able to name \u201cFever\u201d \u2013 and possibly \u201cIs That All There Is\u201d \u2013 but Peggy Lee scored a lengthy run of hit singles. The primary arc of her career ran from the early \u201840s (when she was the singer in Benny Goodman\u2019s big band) through 1974, when she hit the top 40 for the last time with \u201cLet\u2019s Love\u201d (a song written, arranged and produced by a fan of hers named McCartney). She didn&#8217;t really need help writing songs, though: Lee (born Norma Egstrom) wrote or co-wrote nearly 300 songs.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the multi-talented singer-actor-presenter was an all-around star who reinterpreted the works of others. Like Sinatra, she made songs her own even when she didn\u2019t have a hand in composing them. In 1951 and \u201852 she starred on her own radio show, often singing songs from the Great American Songbook. As a bonus, she often brought on the program as guests the men who wrote those tunes: Hoagy Carmichael, Matt Dennis, Frank Loesser and Johnny Mercer all appeared on her show.<\/p>\n<p>A new 2CD set from Omnivore Recordings, <em>Something Wonderful: Peggy Lee Sings the Great American Songbook<\/em> draws nearly 40 songs from that WCBS program, grouped together by composer: Mercer, Rogders &amp; Hart \/ Rodgers &amp; Hammerstein, Cole Porter, Dennis, Carmichael, Loesser and more. Backed on those by top orchestras, Lee is featured on those as well as four of her own songs (including \u201cIt\u2019s a Good Day\u201d and \u201cWhee Baby\u201d). The collection wraps up with nine standards written by other composers not previously named.<\/p>\n<p>Of the 39 tunes here, only <em>two<\/em> have been previously released, making this a serious archival addition to Lee&#8217;s body of work. You\u2019ll recognize most of these songs, from Dennis\u2019 \u201cLet\u2019s Get Away from it All\u201d to \u201cLullaby of Broadway.\u201d The audio quality is just fine, and the bits of dialogue scattered among the songs adds to the album\u2019s charm. Joe Marchese\u2019s detailed and thoroughly-annotated liner note essay places the material into the context of the period (and into the overall scope of Lee\u2019s body of work).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A casual listener might only be able to name \u201cFever\u201d \u2013 and possibly \u201cIs That All There Is\u201d \u2013 but Peggy Lee scored a lengthy run of hit singles. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,42,49,51,65],"tags":[1622,4507],"class_list":["post-20911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-pop","category-review","tag-omnivore-recordings","tag-peggy-lee","cat-19-id","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20911"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20934,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20911\/revisions\/20934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}