Fever,
A Tribute to Peggy Lee
Live Music - Minnesota Orchestra Magazine - June, 1999
Deborah Caulfield Rybak, June, '99
In early June, singing legend Peggy Lee, famous for such
songs as "Fever" and the Grammy-winning "Is That
All There Is?," will be inducted into the Songwriters
Hall of Fame in New York. A prolific songwriter and mesmerizing
vocalist, Lee has dazzled audiences for decades with her
Nordic-ice-queen-cool vibrancy and magically distinctive
style.
The timing couldn't be better for popular Twin Cities jazz
chanteuse Connie Evingson, who brings her acclaimed Peggy Lee
tribute, Fever, to Orchestra Hall for a one-night performanceon
June 23. The show, which weaves Lee's music together with
biographical details from her fifty-year singing career, played
to sold-out houses during its initial run as part of the Illusion
Theater's "Fresh Ink" series last summer and saw
a revival at the Illusion this spring. The timing is especially
poignant, given that Lee, seventy-eight, suffered a stroke
last November and will probably never perform again.
However, as the popular member of the jazz ensemble Moore by
Four explains over pasta at Linden Hill's Zumbro Cafe, her
interest in Lee predates both those news events by about seven
years, when, within a two-week period, three people told her
that her singing reminded them of Peggy Lee. Evingson, who
was unfamiliar with Lee's work, was intrigued.
Small-Town Girls In Show Biz
As she began listening to Lee's recordings, Evingson indeed
found similarities. Lee andEvingson share small-town Midwestern
roots: Lee was born in Jamestown, North Dakota; Evingson in
Hibbing. And although
Lee's appearance in later years became almost clownish, with
her heavily mascaraed eyelids, Dutch-cut wig, and rhinestone
glasses, there is a certain resemblance between Evingson and
the Lee of the 1940s, with their exotic eyes, flashing smiles,
and cool self-assured demeanors.
But the parallels end there. Norma Dolores Egstrom, as Lee
was named at birth, endured a troubled childhood and abusive
stepmother before shooting to stardom in the 1940s, singing
with the Benny Goodman Orchestra. She went on to write more
than five hundred songs and made
some six hundred recordings through the decades, producing
dozens of hits.
Her distinctive
singing style and limitless repertoire (which ranged from
ballads to blues and Latin tunes) made her a legend among
legends such
as Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, and Louis Armstrong,
to mention but a few. Duke Ellington once said of her, "If
I am the King, man, then Peggy Lee is the Queen." Benny
Goodman observed, "There's no one else like her, and
I presume there never will be."
The more Evingson listened, the more she found herself "falling
in love" with Lee's music. "She'scomplicated," Evingson
says. "There's a light and a dark to her and she expresses
that musically very well. I think she's artistically accessible."
During a visit to New York in 1994, Evingson researched Lee
further at the performing arts library at Lincoln Center
and watched clips of Lee performing at the Museum of Television
and Radio History. She put together a rough outline of what
a tribute to Lee might look like.
The Illusion Theater was interested and hired Evingson to
develop the idea into a full-fledged show. Working with Illusion
artistic
associate and playwright Kim Hines, Evingson crafted a show
that blended Lee's songs with biographical details from Lee's
life.
"
I'm not sure whether or not the songs came first or the biographical
points," Evingson says. "But I knew I wanted to talk
about her beginnings and her song writing - her triumph over
adversity." (Lee's stellar career was punctuated with
several troubled marriages and a plague of ailments, including
diabetes and heart problems.) "Plus, I wanted to include
something about her Disney lawsuit," she adds.
Lee wrote and performed music and voices for the 1955 Disney
classic Lady and the Tramp, for which she was paid $3,500.
After Disney refused to share some of the $35 million it
later earned from video sales, Lee took matters into her
own hands
and - in a bold move - sued the company. Although a jury
awarded her $3.8 million in 1991, the case remains tied up
in appeals
court.
Fame, Faith, and Fever
Fever, which brims with biographical nuggets about Lee's
life, debuted to critical acclaim in July of 1998. The show
soon
was brought to the attention of Reid McLean, director of
presentations for the Minnesota Orchestra, by several Orchestra
staff members
who'd seen the performance. Although it's unusual for the
Orchestra to pick up an existing show, McLean acknowledges
Fever fits
perfectly into the Cabaret Pops series, which spotlights
different types of pop music from the 1930s to the present. "The
concept of focusing a show around Peggy Lee is a real natural
for us," McLean says.
Evingson describes the Orchestra Hall show as more
of a "concert
presentation" than the Illusion Theater production. In
addition to Lee's well-known classics, Evingson has included
a range of songs from Lee's repertoire, including her current
favorite "I Want to Be Loved," which was recorded
in the 1930s. In addition, Evingson is now performing Lee's
moody 1968 classic "Is That All There Is?" in its
entirety, rather than as part of a medley.
Evingson is quick to explain that she isn't trying to recreate
Peggy Lee. "I'm not playing her. I'm not imitating her
voice," she explains, adding that while some of the arrangements "are
very true to the originals, I do get creative with some of
the songs."
Evingson senses she has a link with the jazz chanteuse she's
never met. "I've always been interested in people who
come from small towns and go places," she says. But it
may go deeper than that. "There is this Scandinavian thing," she
adds, alluding to her own ancestral lineage. "There
just aren't very many Swedish-Norwegian jazz singers in this
country."
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