Peggy Lee - Peggy at Basin Street East
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CD Details
Artist: Peggy LeeEdition: Music CD
Format: Live
CD Release Date: 2002-11-12
Music Label: Collector's Choice
Soundtracks:
- Overture
- Day In-Day Out
- Call Me Darling
- Medley: One Kiss/My Romance/The Most Beautiful Man In The World
- Medley: But Beautiful/The Second Time Around
- Fever
- I'm Gonna Go Fishin'
- I Love Being Here With You
- By Myself
- Heart
- I've Never Left Your Arms
- Ray Charles Tribute: Hallelujah, I Love Him So/I Got A Man/Just For a Thrill
- Peggy Lee Bow Music
- Medley: I Dont Know Enough About You/Manana/Why Don't You Do Right?/It's a Good Day
Music reviews of Peggy at Basin Street East
Music Review: Historic Treasure (beware of imitations!)
Rating: 5 Stars
This 2002 release is literally the only complete live performance by Peggy on record. Disregard "Beauty and the Beat," the Lee-Shearing meeting that was reconstructed in a recording studio after the event (at least the most recent edition has removed the gratuitous if not hokey effects that were originally added to the LP to manufacture a "concert-like" atmosphere). "At Basin Street East" came closest to capturing Peggy in live concert. But Peggy had a cold on February 9, and whether it was Capitol's idea or Peggy's, the star agreed to recreate the performance of February 9, re-recording all but two of the songs on March 8 in a New York City studio for what was clearly a simulation and misrepresentation of the advertised occasion. Curiously, earlier editions remain in print and still sell relatively well (perhaps because listeners are nostalgic about the original LP cover with its overexposed redness).
But not to have a single complete, live, concert recording by one of America's leading, most beloved and personally communicative performers would have been tantamount to tragedy, not to mention a "cheating" of future generations for whom "timeless" MP3 files existing in cyberspace would replace complete and whole performances of historic moment and significance. In the 1960s Peggy Lee was among the hottest acts in town, a pop singer who could turn a night club into an art salon while appealing to the ultra sophisticates from all genres of music, classical as well as pop and jazz. Consequently, it's all the more disappointing there are so few opportunities to catch a show exactly as it went down. If this recording isn't Peggy at her best, it's even better. (Just make sure you get the copy with the gray-scale photo of Peggy in profile.)
As for the performance, anyone familiar with Peggy's singing will have no trouble recognizing that she indeed has a cold. And there are fluffs--from Peggy's missing her entrance on the opener ("Day In-Day Out") to fizzling out on the high note concluding the next song ("Call Me Darling"). Mic placement is occasionally a problem, and the audio balance--between Peggy and the audience, Peggy and the band--is inconsistent. No matter. It simply makes even more apparent Peggy's command of her material and hold on her audience. Her "presence" is electrifying if not palpable. The venerable Nat Hentoff uses the liner notes in part to answer those who characterize Peggy Lee as a minimalist or as an emotionally "contained" singer. Rather than indulge in grandiose emoting for the sake of "impressing" an audience, Peggy invites her listener to "share" her experience, which is anything but contained. She's seen, heard, and lived it all, and the attentive listener will find in her quiet intensity the kind of storytelling that touches the deepest, most complex emotions and triggers the most personal memories, both cherished and forgotten. Whatever she "contains" is more than compensated for by the powerful and ineffable feelings she evokes in her listener.
Finally, it should not go unobserved that on this snowbound and frozen night on which everything else in NYC came to a complete standstill, Peggy Lee swung up a storm.
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Description of Peggy at Basin Street East
Subtitled - The Unreleased Show - Closing Night February 8, 1961, New York City. This album is the entire show, 14 tracks, first time released. Included are pictures of the show and notes from the August Nat Hentoff. Collectors' Choice Music.Peggy Lee may not have had the greatest pipes of her era, but few could equal her preternatural ability to underplay a song, finding nuance and new drama in even the most familiar material. This previously unreleased 1961 New York performance is not only ample evidence of that talent, but one of the most satisfying fixes of pure Peggy ever released. While previous Lee "live" recordings have been revealed to be largely fabrications, this treasure from the vaults offers up an intimate hour with the legend in all its unedited glory. It's a taut set, dotted with medleys that showcase Lee's jazzy charms and deceptively effortless ability to make each song her own, while delivering the hit "Fever" up as breezy, finger-snapping blues and casting Damn Yankees's "Heart" as loopy Cuban romp. If you need an introduction to the legend of Peggy Lee, this would be a lively, gratifying place to start. --Jerry McCulley
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