Reviewed by Peter Wagenaar (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s when Nat Cole was king, Peggy Lee was queen of what someone once dubbed "the jazz-pop middle-ground" that would soon be eroded by rock and roll. A savvy businesswoman as well as a consummate professional, Lee handled the onslaught better than most of her contemporaries. She adapted, gradually introducing more and more middle-of-the-road pop-rock material into her albums. By the time her tenure at Capitol Records came to an end in 1972 – long after the label had bade farewell to such comparable talents as June Christy and Kay Starr – her albums were virtually wholly pop records, with maybe one or two token standards included.

Lee’s fans are among the most impassioned of the breed. She is also one of the singers most admired by other singers. Frank Sinatra once observed that you’d have to be dead to feel nothing when listening to her sing. There’s no denying that at her best – and she has many stunning moments – she’s quite astonishing. Her slightly nasal, whispery voice, with a marked sensuality that at the same time seemed somehow girlish and innocent, could swing with a vengeance one moment, caress a wistful ballad the next. Yet she could also be oddly detached, and there’s a perfunctory quality to quite a lot of work, an impression underlined by the fact that many of her albums are very short, even by the standards of those times. (The two albums on this CD together clock in at just over 55 minutes!)

Lee’s recorded output during the 20 years of her prime, roughly 1952 to 1972, is staggering in terms of its volume as well as its diversity. Her second stint at Capitol Records (1957-1972) produced over 30 albums in addition to assorted singles and, rumor has it, a fair amount of material that remains unreleased. The two albums paired on this CD date from 1964, and illustrate very clearly her artful compromise between old and new. Various peppy 1960s pop songs rub shoulders with bona fide standards like After You’ve Gone, Unforgettable and I Got Lost in His Arms, as well as aspirant standards like Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s I’ve Got Your Number and When in Rome.

The first half of In Love Again! is subtitled "light and lively." It’s vibrant and swinging and shows Lee at her best. The brassy arrangements cushion her voice, which bounces exuberantly off them as she declares "I’ve got your number," "That’s my style," and in the album’s best track, Little By Little, "You brightened my horizon / The day I laid my eyes on / you." However, the mood changes abruptly in the second half, subtitled "lush and lovely." I Can’t Stop Loving You, originally the opening track on side two, is described in the sleeve notes as a "jazz-flavored country ballad." What they fail to say is that it’s also quite awful – and a "victim song" to boot. These – and she recorded a fair number of them – always tended to bring out the worst in Lee. Her singing here is wan and wistful, not to mention faintly irritating. Fortunately a tender reading of Unforgettable gets things back on track, and the album’s title number, a warm and wondering musing on a new love, reveals what a fine ballad singer Lee was.

In the Name of Love opens with the rock-flavored title track, again an example of Lee at her spunky best. The same is true of the album’s finest number, the sexy Talk to Me Baby, which brilliantly demonstrates just how powerful Lee’s "little voice" could be on occasion. "Say that we’re helpless in the hands of fate / Prevaricate / If you must… just…," she challenges her listener, defying him not to come up with a smart answer – smartly. There’ll Be Some Changes Made, which should be a confident statement of independence, strangely enough fails to sustain this mood. Lee’s curiously detached, throwaway approach, which also afflicts her version of After You’ve Gone, makes both these numbers major disappointments. A handful of routine ballads (My Sin, Shangri-La, The Right to Love, Senza Fine) are sung with a warmth and honesty that makes them sound better than they deserve to, but the album’s closer is another Lee classic. When in Rome, an intrinsically silly song, is delivered with panache and a disarming sense of the ridiculous, and its bounce is irresistible.

All in all, these two albums make a very comfortable double bill for they are very similar in their overall feel. And while hardly vintage Lee, they nonetheless make for consistently pleasant listening, one or two tracks aside, and often a good deal more than that. The Peggy Lee neophyte, however, might be better advised to seek out her Decca album, Black Coffee, considered by some to be the definitive Lee album, or such earlier Capitol efforts as Jump for Joy and Pretty Eyes, which showcase her inimitable way with standards.

Tracks
In Love Again!
1. A Lot of Livin’ to Do (Adams, Strouse)
2. I’ve Got Your Number (Coleman, Leigh)
3. Little By Little (O’Keefe, Dolan)
4. Got That Magic (Lee, Schluger)
5. The Moment of Truth (Satterwhite, Scott)
6. That’s My Style (Lee, Coleman)
7. I Can’t Stop Loving You (Gibson)
8. Unforgettable (Gordon)
9. Once (Ils S’aimaient) (Magenta, Marnay, Gimbel)
10. (I’m) In Love Again (Lee, Coleman)
11. I Got Lost in His Arms (Berlin)
12. How Insensitive (Insensatez) (Gimbel, Jobim)
In the Name of Love
13. In the Name of Love (Levitt, Rankin)
14. My Sin (DeSylva, Brown, Henderson)
15. The Boy from Ipanema (Jobim, DeMoraes, Gimbel)
16. Shangri-La (Malneck, Maxwell, Sigman)
17. Talk to Me Baby (Mercer, Dolan)
18. There’ll Be Some Changes Made (Overstreet, Higgins)
19. After You’ve Gone (Creamer, Layton)
20. The Right to Love (Reflections) (Lees, Schifrin)
21. Theme from Joy House (Just Call Me Love Bird) (Schifrin, Lee)
22. Senza Fine (Paoli, Wilder)
23. When in Rome (I Do as the Romans Do) (Coleman, Leigh)

Loving-Lee: The Peggy Lee Fan Page