The Songbirds Archives

Peggy Lee and Benny Goodman: The Complete Recordings 1941-1947
Columbia/Legacy (C2K 65686), US, 1999

Reviewed by Ivan Santiago (New York City)

Columbia/Legacy’s Peggy Lee and Benny Goodman: The Complete Recordings 1941-1947 is first and foremost a blessing for collectors, if not necessarily for fans of Peggy Lee’s later, more mature and developed sound. Greatest among the "blessings" is the inclusion, for the very first time in one single package and in optimal sound quality, of all 32 Columbia/OKeh studio recordings from 1941-1943, when Lee was the female vocalist with the Benny Goodman Orchestra, plus three reunion tracks on Capitol from 1947, when both Lee and Goodman were separate recording artists of great stature at the young but increasingly illustrious label. This 2-CD release divides the Columbia output evenly (16 items per CD), tagging three alternate takes to disc one and the three Capitol tracks to disc two.

Visually, the package itself is a treat, boasting highly appealing graphics and six rarely seen period photos of Lee. A study in red and black, the design is by Eric Koehler, author of the recently released, exquisite book of LP photos In the Groove: Vintage Record Graphics 1940-60. Also commendable are the package’s sober, informative and well-paced liner notes by Will Friedwald.

The collection’s 38 tracks are a different matter. Overall, the Lee and Goodman orchestra partnership makes for an unexceptional, nondescript if occasionally pleasant footnote in the history of popular music. Lee fans in particular should approach the recordings less as musical gems and more as historical documents of the singer’s early career. Following customary practice in big band music, Lee’s vocals are not only limited to about a third of most tracks’ timing, but also meant to be secondary elements within the ensemble work. In a nutshell, the collection is best approached as aural documentation of Lee’s response to the demands of a boss, an audience, and a big band setting in which the most insistent imperative was not Sing, Sing, Sing (the title of the band’s most famous recording) but "dance, dance, dance."

I suspect that Benny always had in the back of his mind the fact that his great success had come as the leader of a great dance band, and without the dance audiences, it would have not happened. – Pianist Mel Powell, as quoted on Russ Firestone’s Swing, Swing, Swing: The Life and Times of Benny Goodman (1992).

Chicago prodigy Benny Goodman (1909-1986) had formed his band in 1934, after over a dozen years of professional experience as a clarinetist. A ready-to-dance college-age audience had catapulted the band and its music to immense success in 1935, so much so that his 1937 gig at the Paramount Theater would cause a frenzy not seen again until Frank Sinatra’s career-defining gig at the same location in 1942, coincidentally on a bill with Goodman and Lee.

In mid-August, 1941, Goodman equipped himself with a vocalist who soon made him proud, particularly from a commercial standpoint. After a few, bumpy early months with the band, the 21-year-old Peggy Lee became an important factor in the band’s hit machine. Her vocals were featured in nine of Goodman’s fourteen chart hits between November, 1941 and March, 1943 (the month of her departure), including Goodman’s only number one hit in 1942, Somebody Else Is Taking My Place. A strategic commercial move from Columbia seems to have contributed to the string of hits. Imitating competitor Victor – which at the time was issuing Glenn Miller’s consistently successful singles on its budget label, Bluebird – Columbia released many of Goodman’s recordings on its own budget label, OKeh, in 1941 and 1942. All but Lee’s first and last chart hits while with Goodman (first, I Got It Bad; last, the enduring hit Why Don’t You Do Right?) were released on OKeh.

The majority of the Lee/Goodman hits are backed by eminently danceable music. Catchiest of all is the #14 hit My Little Cousin. Its lyrics tell of how the titular character – who had "proposings by the dozen" – ultimately pops the question to a shy boy she met around the corner, thereby turning her other wooers into "mourners." The somewhat exotic tune is strongly reminiscent of traditional Yiddish song, patterned perhaps after the Andrews Sisters’ huge 1938 hit Bei Mir Bist Du Schön.

There and elsewhere, Lee shows considerable skill in her approach to the "dance, dance, dance" rule. Her dexterity might have stemmed from former experience as a vocalist with dance bands, or it may have resulted from a willingness to adapt (sacrifice?) her singing style to new musical surroundings. Whatever the cause, Lee quickly evinced a particularly successful handling of beat-driven swing numbers. This is the style – seemingly a "non-style" – that, in an analysis of I Threw a Kiss in the Ocean and My Old Flame, Gunther Schuller convincingly describes as "passive, like a distant cloud in the sky." In song after song with a dance track, Lee sounds alternately devoid of any personalized quality or brimming with slightly mechanical enthusiasm. Neither the passivity nor the hyperactivity fare well with most Lee fans, who have grown accustomed to her nuanced immersion in almost any song’s lyric.

But this earlier, pro-dance approach to singing earned Lee the widest approval among fans of big band vocals. One such fan was the anonymous Variety reviewer who, upon seeing the band in Detroit, in June, 1942, commented: "Miss Lee seems at her best in the more rollicking numbers… and from a stage standpoint she could do with a little more animation." Or witness the opinion of Goodman discographer Russell D. Connor, so diametrically opposite to fans of Lee’s later vocals. He calls her How Long Has This Been Going On? "slow, moody… the type ballad Peggy became famous for; I prefer her in up-tempo things." As a favorite, Connor singles out instead Somebody Nobody Loves, which he considers her kind of tune, for "there’s a perky lilt in her voice… one of her better, if little remarked efforts."

Somebody Nobody Loves is indeed representative of the best and the worst of dance music. Richard Sudhalter, the author of commendable liner notes for a 1993 Lee-Goodman CD, goes as far as to call this song, her tenth recording, the one in which Lee comes into her own (a controversial opinion at best; Lee herself cites How Long Has This Been Going On?). He also rightly marvels at the "rhythmically neat way," and the "verve and confidence" with which she handles lines such as "I’ve got to find me a somebody soon." Still, the modern listener finds it difficult to avoid laughing at the vocalist’s anticlimactic, upbeat reading of lyrics about a self-described "lonely Cinderella" praying "on bended knees for that certain gay prince charming" while "romance passes me by… oh me, oh my, my, my."

Band singing taught us the importance of interplay with musicians. We had to work close to the arrangement. Even if the interpretation wasn’t exactly what we wanted. We had to make the best of it. I learned to do the best with what they gave me. – Peggy Lee, as quoted on Bruce Crowther and Mike Pinfold’s Singing Jazz: The Singers and Their Styles (1997).

As a general rule, the Lee-Goodman recordings are not controlled by Lee's own creative vision, in stark contrast to the vast majority of her output from the mid-1940s through the early 1990s. Partial exceptions to this rule can be found among the collection’s standards, which account for about a third of the repertoire. On those tracks Lee explores variations on a low and slow sound that is a clear antecedent of the bluesy, subtly emotional style for which she would later become known.

The singer claims to have begun developing such a style earlier in 1941, while singing both solo and with the Guadalajara Trio at the Doll House, a supper club and "see and be seen" hangout for media stars in Palm Springs, California. Dazzled by the presence of celebrities such as Peter Lorre, Franchot Tone, James Cagney, and Jack Benny, all chattering the night away, a shy Lee couldn’t dare to raise the volume of her voice. The low volume caused the audience to gradually quiet down in curiosity. "By that accident," Lee explained, "I discovered that if I could really find my way into a song itself and didn't worry whether it was loud or soft, but if it had the proper intensity and meaning, people would listen more readily. I began to think about meaning of words, rather than just singing."

Aficionados of Lee’s softer side should listen specifically to her takes on Ellington's I Got It Bad, Berlin's How Deep Is the Ocean, the Gershwins' How Long Has This Been Going On? and Porter's Ev'rything I Love, all on disc one. The four ballads exhibit Lee's combination of the style that she had begun to develop before joining the band with the stylistic devices of several vocalists whose music she had been assiduously listening to. Those included Maxine Sullivan, her primary influence, and, during her earliest months, Helen Forrest, her hugely popular predecessor in the band, and the singer for which Lee's earliest recordings were arranged.

Ev'rything I Love, for instance, combines a slow, leisurely approach with the cool, flowing style that characterized Sullivan, the singer Lee has long considered her chief vocal influence. Ev'rything and the more upbeat hit Somebody Else Is Taking My Place are actually but two of many recordings on the first disc that are reminiscent of Sullivan's style in those years – simple and direct, with an idiosyncratic tendency toward falsetto and swoops. A close similarity in timbre between Sullivan and Lee is even more apparent, and no wonder, for the latter seems to have studied the former closely. As Lee told it, she listened again and again to a particular Sullivan rendition, Just Like a Gypsy – recorded by Sullivan in 1941, by Lee in 1946. Well into the 1980s, Lee would still praise the "simplicity and economy of [Sullivan's] work," comparing it to that of a painter "using very light brush strokes."

Lee would continue to refine and develop her sound in some of the slower ballads in the collection, and would soon sound unmistakably like nobody else. The collection's best ballads by far are Where or When and The Way You Look Tonight, on which she is clearly given freer rein than ever before. (The same holds true for the collection’s excellent final track, Arlen’s For Every Man There’s a Woman, which Lee renders as a tastefully bluesy lament.)

As both jazz critic Leonard Feather and Goodman authority Russell D. Connor have stated, these two recordings – Where or When and The Way You Look Tonight – are anomalies in the bandleader's canon. Because very little of his clarinet playing is heard throughout (particularly on The Way You Look Tonight), Lee's vocals grab the spotlight. The two songs show strong similarity in delivery and in the pervasive use of celeste, a musical instrument that is otherwise absent in Lee-Goodman efforts. (On both tracks, the celeste is probably played by pianist and arranger Mel Powell, the band member who was on closest terms with both Goodman and Lee. He greatly helped her become acclimated to the band and would remain a good friend until his passing away in 1998.) The combination of the gentle celeste with Lee's soft, slow, pensive delivery results in recordings that are indeed "celestial" in their mellowness.

These recordings also attest to Goodman's growing confidence in Lee's interpretative and commercial skills. Where or When is one of three vocals from Lee’s first session with Goodman's prestigious sextet, rather than with the entire band; The Way You Look Tonight (a # 21 hit) would be her fourth and final recording with the smaller group. The other two sextet recordings, Blues in the Night (a top 20 hit) and On the Sunny Side of the Street, elicit from Lee above-average renditions that attest to her clear ease with this format. All four performances validate Lee's own claim that "the only time I really got to express myself more… was when the sextet would play for a while. I would sing songs like Where or When or The Way You Look Tonight… You see, as a singer with an orchestra, you're a voice in it, and that's all."

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