Scott Johnson notes that yesterday was the 88th anniversary of the birth of Peggy Lee, in Jamestown,ND.

She was a musician’s musician. Think, for example, of her terrific duets with Bing Crosby and Mel Torme. or of Paul McCartney proudly contributing the title track to Lee’s 1974 “Let’s Love.” Listening to her music today, one is struck by how far she could go on her innate sense of swing and pure taste. For a heartfelt contemporary tribute to her, check out the beautiful “Fever” by the Twin Cities’ own Connie Evingson. Last week Will Friedwald found Peggy Lee “All aglow again.”

Lee’s music oozes with sultry intimacy, but Lee had a sense of herself as something of a Gatsbyesque self-creation. Reader Bob Dodd reminds us of the story in which she was going up in a hotel elevator to put on her make-up, stage clothes and jewelry for a show. A woman stared at her and finally asked, “Are you Peggy Lee?” She replied straightforwardly, “No, not yet.”

Lee’s family lived a block from my father’s house, along mainstreet in Jamestown, across from the town’s Catholic church; the house was a kindergarten when I was a kid, and was torn down when I was in junior high to make way for a car lot.

She took a shot at Hollywood first, and then latched on at WDAY in Fargo, hired by manager Ken Kennedy (who I remember on WDAY TV when I was a kid), and thence to Minneapolis, Chicago and finally LA, where she got her big break:

It was at the Doll House in Palm Springs, California that Peggy Lee first developed the soft and “cool” style that has become her trademark. Unable to shout above the clamor of the Doll House audience, Miss Lee tried to snare its attention by lowering her voice. The softer she sang the quieter the audience became. She has never forgotten the secret, and it has given her style its distinctive combination of the delicate and the driving, the husky and the purringly seductive. One of the members of the Doll House audience was Frank Bering, the owner of Chicago’s Ambassador West Hotel, who invited her to sing in his establishment’s Buttery Room.

Benny Goodman discovered Peggy Lee’s vocalizing in the Buttery Room at a time when he was looking for a replacement for Helen Forrest. Miss Lee joined Goodman’s band in July, 1941, when the band was at the height of its popularity, and for over two years she toured the United States with the most famous swing outfit of the day, playing hotel engagements, college proms, theater dates, and radio programs.

I’m gonna have to hit ITunes sooner than later.