The Peggy Lee Estate has announced that Peggy Lee 100, a centennial celebration honoring one of the 20th century’s most important musical influences in the world of jazz and popular music.
Throughout 2020, the 100th anniversary of Peggy Lee’s birth—May 26, 1920—will be commemorated around the globe with music releases, notable exhibitions, special events, programming and a host of tributes and concerts, including a just-announced Hollywood Bowl tribute concert on August 5, “Miss Peggy Lee at 100 with The Legendary Count Basie Orchestra.”
Kicking off The Peggy Lee 100 celebration is the release of Ultimate Peggy Lee, a new collection from Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) available April 17. The 22-track comprehensive set features her hits, five songs she co-wrote, as well as the previously unreleased “Try A Little Tenderness,” which makes its world debut 57 years after it was recorded.
Born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, she was christened Peggy Lee in 1937 by a local North Dakota deejay. A 13-time GRAMMY® Award-nominee, Peggy Lee helped redefine the female singer with her captivating voice, which continues to resonate with audiences of all ages. Her compositions and recordings, including “It’s A Good Day,” “I Don’t Know Enough About You” and “I Love Being Here With You,” can be heard today in countless television shows and feature films.
Best known for such songs as “Is That All There Is?,” “Fever,” “Why Don’t You Do Right,” and “I’m A Woman,” which made her a jazz and pop legend, she recorded over 50 albums and amassed over 100 chart entries. She won the GRAMMY® for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit “Is That All There Is?” In 1995, she received the GRAMMY’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Coined “the female Frank Sinatra” by Tony Bennett, Lee did something few of her male counterparts ever attempted: she wrote songs. As one of the foremothers of the singer-songwriter school, Lee ranks among the most successful female singer-songwriters in the annals of American popular music. Over her remarkable seven-decade career, singer, songwriter and composer Peggy Lee wrote over 200 songs and recorded over 1,100 masters.
Her vast and varied catalog of songs have been covered by Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, Natalie Cole, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Diana Krall, Queen Latifah, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Janelle Monae, Nina Simone, Regina Spektor and Sarah Vaughan.
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Photo Credit: Larina Marina