1996 Los Angeles Music Week Honorees

Peggy Lee's Biography    

             Lee, Peggy,  May 26, 1920. Singer, actress, songwriter.

 More than two decades have passed since Peggy Lee sang with Benny Goodman’s swing band and made her first hit recording. Yet so inexhaustible is her talent and so intense her application to her work that, almost a generation later, she stands at the peak of her career. A product of the big-band era, she derived from that apprenticeship her ability to sing anything from jazz to blues, to sing it with a beat, and with enough volume to be heard above the band. Few vocalists have had her staying power. Peggy Lee is also a successful composer, lyricist, arranger, actress, and businesswoman. To all her careers she brings a perfectionism that leaves the stamp of professionalism on everything she touches.

Of Norwegian and Swedish ancestry, Peggy Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, a farm town on the Great Plains, on May 26, 1920. She was the seventh of eight children born to Marvin Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad, and Mrs. Egstrom, who died when the child was four years old. Encouraged by the recognition she had received for her singing with the high school glee club, the church choir, and semi-professional college bands, Norma headed for Hollywood after she graduated from high school in 1938. With her she took $18 in cash and a railroad pass she had borrowed from her father. Although she got a brief singing engagement at the Jade Room, a supper club on Hollywood Boulevard, she made little impression on the film capital, and she was reduced to working as a waitress and as a carnival spieler at a Balboa midway.

Deciding to try her luck nearer home, she found work as a singer over radio station WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota, whose manager, Ken Kennedy, christened her Peggy Lee. (To supplement her income she worked for a time as a bread slicer in a Fargo bakery.) Her prospects for a career brightened when she moved to Minneapolis, where she sang in the dining room of the Radisson Hotel, appeared on a Standard Oil radio show, and sang with Sev Olsen’s band. Miss Lee broke into the big time when she became a vocalist with Will Osborne’s band, but three months after she joined the group it broke up in St. Louis, and she got a ride to California with the manager.

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.

Much of her present success Miss Lee credits to her apprenticeship with the big bands. "I learned more about music from the men I worked with in bands than I’ve learned anywhere else," she has said. "They taught me discipline and the value of rehearsing and even how to train…. Band singing taught us the importance of interplay with musicians. And we had to work close to the arrangement." In July, 1942, Peggy Lee recorded her first smash hit, "Why Don’t You Do Right?" It sold over 1,000,000 copies and made her famous.

In March, 1943, Peggy Lee married Dave Barbour, the guitarist in Goodman’s band; shortly thereafter she left the band. After her daughter, Nicki, was born in 1944, Peggy Lee and her husband worked successfully on the West Coast. In 1944 she began to record for Capitol Records, for whom she has produced a long string of hits ? many of them with lyrics and music by Miss Lee and Dave Barbour. Among them are "Golden Earrings," which sold over 1,000,000 copies [sic; song not written by Lee and Barbour]; "You Was Right, Baby;" "It’s a Good Day;" "Mañana" (which sold over 2,000,000 records); "What More Can a Woman Do?;" and "I Don’t Know Enough About You." Today Peggy Lee has a top rating as a songwriter with the AmericanSociety of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

In 1950 Peggy Lee made a first, brief screen appearance [sic; she had previously appeared in "Stage Door Canteen," "The Powers Girl" and several shorts] in Paramount’s "Mr. Music," starring Bing Crosby. In 1953 she played a featured role opposite Danny Thomas in Warner Brothers’ remake of the early Al Jolson talking picture, "The Jazz Singer," and won praise from a critic of the "New York Wolrd-Telegram and Sun" for "a very promising start on a movie career" as "a poised and ingratiating ingenue." Her performance as a despondent and alcoholic blues singer in "Pete Kelly’s Blues" (Warner Brothers, 1955) won her a nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In the 1955 balloting conducted by the Council of Motion Picture Organizations, moviegoers voted her the "Audie" statuette.

Peggy Lee has not only appeared in motion pictures but she has also written music and lyrics for them. She wrote the theme music for "Johnny Guitar" (Republic, 1954) and for "About Mrs. Leslie" (Paramount, 1954). She contributed the musical score to two George Pal cartoon features, "Tom Thumb" (MGM, 1958) and "The Time Machine" (MGM, 1960), and wrote the lyrics and supplied several voices for the Walt Disney full-length animated cartoon "Lady and the Tramp" (Buena Vista, 1955). For "Anatomy of a Murder" (Columbia, 1959) she wrote the lyrics for "I’m Gonna Go Fishin’" to music by Duke Ellington.

In the respect she commands from the critics both as a popular vocalist and as a jazz artist, Peggy Lee is a rarity among singers. Critic George Hoefer of "Downbeat" magazine has called her "the greatest white female jazz singer since Mildred Bailey," and Leonard Feather in "The Encyclopedia of Jazz" (Horizon, 1960) has described her as "one of the most sensitive and jazz-oriented singers in the pop field." Miss Lee won the 1946 polls as best female vocalist of both "Metronome" and"Downbeat" magazines, wisely read by jazz buffs, and the 1950 citation as "the nation’s most popular female vocalist" from "Billboard," a trade magazine of show business. A frequent performer on television, she sang on the Thursday night "Revlon Revues" over CBS-TV in 1960, and has appeared on televised musical variety shows starring Perry Como, George Gobel, Steve Allen and Bing Crosby. In March, 1960 she undertook a straight dramatic role in "So Deadly, So Evil" on the "General Electric Theater" on CBS-TV.

In September, 1962 Miss Lee reached what she has called the "high spot" in her career when she was selected to appear in Philharmonic Hall of New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, an auditorium usually available to those whom the management considers as serious artists. Miss Lee conducted research for, and wrote a program called "The Jazz Tree, tracing the origins and development of jazz as a native American art form. Originally scheduled for December, 1962, the booking was postponed until March, 1963 to give Miss Lee enough time to perfect her presentation.

This perfectionist approach to her programs is typical of Miss Lee. She polishes and perfects every aspect of her performances, her special coiffures, her costly wardrobe, her lighting, her entrances and exits, and her musical arrangements. Her perfectionism may derive from her association with Benny Goodman, who always demanded the best from his performers.

Rejecting the improvisatory approach of most jazz singers, Peggy Lee plans every detail of her delivery in advance, including even the movement of her hands. This perfectionism has taken its toll of her health on several occasions; she was hospitalized with virus pneumonia in July, 1958 and in November, 1961. As a result, Miss Lee has reduced her schedule, confining her public appearances to six weeks each year in New York and Las Vegas, a few television shows, and one or two charity benefits.

Although Miss Lee continues to collaborate with Dave Barbour on words and music, their marriage ended in divorce in 1951.  On January 4, 1955, Miss Lee married Brad Dexter, a movie actor. Ten months later they were divorced. Miss Lee’s third marriage, to actor Dewey Martin on April 25, 1956, also ended in divorce in 1959. [A fourth marriage, 1964-1965, was to percussionist and bandleader Jack Del Rio.] She is 5’7" in height, with hazel eyes and champagne-blonde hair. With her  daughter, Nicki, she lives in Coldwater Canyon, near Hollywood, California. It contains not only a soundproof studio with tape units,  various microphones, a grand piano, and other equipment for writing and recording music, but also an artist’s studio in which she paints and sculpts the hands of musicians and the heads of great men like Albert Schweitzer whom she admires. A book of her verse, "Softly, With Feeling," was published in 1953. In 1958 Miss Lee consolidated her various activities, which include music publishing firms and a production unit for television and films, into a company called Peggy Lee enterprises. Noted for her generosity, she has been active in such philanthropies as CARE and WAIF, and in November, 1962 was appointed national chairman of the Tom Dooley Foundation.

Peggy Lee Web Sites
 
 

 Jester Hairston, who gave up studies at Massachusetts Agriculture College in the 1920s before going on to a career than spanned movies, television, radio, composing, arranging and choral conducting, died Jan. 18 in Los Angeles. He was 98.

Best known in recent years for playing Rollie Forbes on the NBC sitcom "Amen" in the 1980s, Hairston's earlier acting roles including long-running parts on the radio and television versions of "Amos 'n' Andy" as well as bit parts in Tarzan films. 

Although many of his early acting jobs portrayed less than flattering images of blacks, Hairston never apologized for playing racial stereotypes. "We had a hard time then fighting for dignity," he said years later. "We had no power. We had to take it, and because we took it the young people today have opportunities." 

Opportunities also expanded for Hairston during his acting career. His films credits included "The Alamo," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "In the Heat of the Night," "Lady Sings the Blues," "The Last Tycoon" and "Lilies of the Valley," for which he composed the song "Amen." 

That song, which he dubbed for Sidney Poitier in the movie, reflected Hairston's lifelong dedication to preserving old Negro spirituals. He was a sought-after choral director who organized Hollywood's first integrated choir and composed more than 300 spirituals.  It was for these numerous accomplishments that he was honored by Los Angeles Music Week in 1996.

Even in his 90s, Hairston continued to conduct choirs, crisscrossing the world as a goodwill ambassador for the U.S. State Department. 

The grandson of a slave, he was born in Belews Creek, N.C., but grew up in the Homestead section of Pittsburgh, where generations of his family worked in the steel mills. Through a scholarship from his Baptist church, he enrolled at Mass Aggie in 1920 to study Landscape Architecture. 

At MAC, he briefly quarterbacked the freshman football team and also sang in the glee club as well as several area choirs. He dropped out for several years when his money ran out, returning to school after a woman impressed by his singing offered to finance his education in music. He enrolled at Tufts University and graduated in 1929. 

Making his way to New York, he met Hall Johnson, a popular conductor of Negro spirituals who hired Hairston as his assistant. It was Johnson who taught Hairston to respect the Negro spiritual.  Shedding his Boston accent, Hairston dedicated himself to preserving the music of the slaves and memorializing the conditions that gave birth to it. 

Later in his life, when working with students at college workshops, Hairston would tell them, "You can't sing legato when the master's beatin' you across your back." 

When Warner Brothers bought the Johnson show "Green Pastures" in 1935, the conductor and Hairston began their film careers. Hairston's big break came in 1936, when Russian-born composer and conductor Dmitri Tiomkin asked him to conduct the choir in the film "Lost Horizon," which won an Oscar for best score. That began a 20-year collaboration with Tiomkin, who inspired him to form the first integrated choir used in films, including "Red River," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and "Land of the Pharaohs." 

Ray Evans

      "( The )  Ruby and the Pearl"
      "Silver Bells"
      "That's You ( Eres Tu )"
       Born Raymond Bernard Evans (1915 - )
      February 4, 1915, Salamanca, New York
      Occupation: Lyricist, songwriter

      Noted lyricist, as member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame,  composed many movie songs, often in collaboration with composer Jay Livingston (b. March 28, 1915, McDonald, Pennsylvania).   Their hits include "To Each His Own," "Golden Earrings," and "Tammy," as well as Academy Award winners "Buttons and Bows"  (from "The Paleface", 1948), "Mona Lisa" (from "Captain Cary, U.S.A.", 1950), and "Que Sera Sera ( Whatever Will Be, Will Be! )" (from "The Man Who Knew Too
 Much", 1956). Livingston and Evans also wrote several popular themes for TV series, including "Bonanza", "Mr. Lucky" and "Mr. Ed."

      Among Lyricist Evans' best work (all with Livingston music): 
      1946 "To Each His Own", 
      1949 "Buttons and Bows", Academy Award winner.
      1950 "Mona Lisa", Academy Award winner. 
      1951 "Silver Bells" 
      1956 "Que Sera, Sera", Academy Award winner. 
      1957 "Tammy" 
      1964 "Dear Heart" 

      Evans is a member of the Songwriters' Hall of Fame. 
 
 

If one were to categorize the great male voices of the past 50 years, the name of Joe Williams would pop up time and time again. "Neither the passing years nor changing musical styles seem to affectJoe Williams, whose remarkable baritone remains one of the wonders of jazz. Supple, flexible, lithe, warm, embracing--it's an unusual instrument, and Williams does a great deal with it." (12/6/92,
Chicago Tribune, Howard Reich). "Aging gracefully is no easy task for a vocalist. Joe Williams defies the odds by getting better as time passes, and he should consider giving lessons ." (5/13/93, Boston Globe, Bob Blumenthal). 

December 12, 1993 marked the 75th birthday, the 58th year in the business of show and so many more milestones for Joe Williams. Although he is probably better known as a blues singer (Ev'ry Day was placed in the Recording Industry Hall of Fame in 1993), he is known by many of his fans as a balladeer, as is clearly evidenced in "A Man Ain't Supposed To Cry. "  Above all, Joe is definitely a stylist who can interpret any kind of music. But the one ingredient all the songs he's chosen to sing have in common is that underlying swinging style. 

"Here's To Life," Joe's second release for Telarc, is a magical piece of work. The selection of songs (with Johnny Pate), the orchestrations (by Robert Farnon), and his interpretations all meld together form a brilliant musical work of art.

Joe has always loved the kind of music that inspires people to hold one another in each others' arms. "I think that musicians should never forget about the intimacy of bringing two people together, and the aesthetic transference where you're almost vicariously involved in a romance between other  people." 

In discussing the selection of the music for "Here's to Life" and his friend Joe, Johnny Pate recalled when they first met over 40 years ago. "I first met Joe at the Club DeLisa in Chicago. I'll never forget one night when Joe came out on stage in a clown suit and sang an aria from Pagliacci, and sang it legitimately. It showed that he had a valid voice. I have always felt that  Joe is the best ballad singer in the world, and at 75, just listen to this most remarkable voice. It astonished all the musicians on the session."

Joe Williams was born in Cordele, Georgia in1918 and raised in Chicago by his mother. Chicago radio served as a vehicle for Joe to experience the many great jazz and blues artists of that time. Chicago's South Side served as a life experience and proving ground. He sang with many bands including Red Saunders, Johnny Long, Erskine Tate, Jimmy Noone, Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, and of course, Count Basie. That association lasted from 1954 to 1961, when Count
Basie's "Number One Son" left the band with Basie's blessing to become a solo performer.

He's had many rich experiences since then, more than 48 albums, television, movies, commercials, countless awards, honorary Doctorate of Music degrees, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and several appearances with symphony orchestra, something he particularly loves. "I love the lush sound of all the horns, strings, and tympani. My soul soars as all the round tones just roll out with joy. I get so involved with listening that I really don't want it to end." 

We lost Joe Williams on 3/29/99.  The following is a quote from the Las Vegas Sun, Tuesday, 30 March 1999:

Jazz Singer Joe Williams Dies

Joe Williams, whose smooth baritone and collaborations with Count Basie won him acclaim as one of the great voices of jazz, collapsed and died on a city street after walking away from a hospital.   He was 80.

Williams apparently died of natural causes, Clark County Coroner Ron Flud said. He had walked several miles Monday and was a few blocks from home.

His wife, Jillean, said he had been admitted to Sunrise Hospital a week ago for a respiratory ailment. The hospital reported Williams missing several hours before his body was found.

Singer Robert Goulet said: "At the age of 80, Joe could sing better than most people at the age of 20. He was one of the greatest jazz and blues singers of all time, and he was such a good man, too."

Williams' appeal stretched to other mediums:    He played Bill Cosby's father-in-law,  Grandpa Al,  on "The Cosby Show" in the 1980s.   He and Cosby
were friends, and the childhood memories Grandpa Al spun on the show were his own from Chicago.

But his fame was in jazz. Williams became a sensation in 1955 when he recorded "Everyday I Have the Blues" with Basie, and the two were together for seven years. Williams repeatedly was chosen the top male jazz singer in readers' polls for Downbeat and other magazines.

"I'm most pleasantly surprised at what still comes out of my throat,"Williams said in an 1986 interview. "I'm thrilled and thankful. I remember Edward (Duke Ellington) saying, 'I'm just a messenger boy for God.' Much of what we do comes through us. I thank God for what comes through me."Born Joseph Goreed on Dec. 12, 1918, in Cordele, Ga., the entertainer was raised by his mother and his dear grandmother. He found fun in playing the piano and singing the spirituals he heard at the Methodist church where his mother was the organist.

In his teens in the 1930s, he led the singing group The Jubilee Boys in various performances in Chicago churches. He later sang solo in a Chicago club, and made his professional debut in 1937 with the late Jimmy Noone.

His big break came in 1943, when Williams was working as a security guard to support himself. He wound up guarding the front door of the Regal Theater and met jazz luminaries such as Duke Ellington. The Regal's manager sent Williams to the Tick Tock in Boston to join Lionel Hampton's band, which had its own powerhouse blues singer, Dinah Washington.

The magic came with Basie. Williams said Basie hired him on the advice of his band.

"Basie said, 'I can't give you what you're worth. But, things get better for me, they get better for you.' I had the good sense to gowith him," Williams recalled.

The two played together from 1954 to 1961, and Williams oftenperformed with Basie until his death in 1984; Williams dedicated his renditions of "You Are So Beautiful" to Basie.

"As a talent, he was one of the best blues singers in the world and also one of the best ballad singers," added friend and singer Buddy Greco. "There will never be anyone like him, again."Tony Bennett recalled Williams once telling him: "It's not that you want to sing, it's that you have to sing."

"He defined who I really am," Bennett said in 1992.

               Paul Salamunovich completed his ninth year as Music Director
                      of the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and is only the third artistic
                      director to lead this ensemble in its thirty-five year position as
                      resident choral company of the Los Angeles Music Center.
                      During his tenure the Master Chorale continued to perform with
                      the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Hollywood Bowl Orchestras.
                      In addition, the Master Chorale has recorded two CD’s:
                      “Christmas” in 1996, and “Lauridsen-Lux Aeterna”, in 1998, a
                      recording which features the works of Composer-in-Residence
                      Morten Lauridsen and one that has also been nominated for a
                      Grammy Award. 

                      Paul Salamunovich has also had a distinguished career in the
                      academic field of choral music, having conducted over 750
                      concerts, choral festivals, clinics, and workshops throughout the
                      United States, in Canada, Mexico, Australia, the Bahamas, the
                      Far East and Europe. He has also conducted choral segments of
                      motion picture sound tracks for such studios as Warner Bros.,
                      Universal, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and Columbia. 

                      Salamunovich was a member of the music faculty and Director
                      of Choral Activities at Loyola Marymount University in Los
                      Angeles for twenty seven years and has been Director of Music
                      at St. Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood since 1949.
                      He is a recognized authority in the teaching and performance of
                      Gregorian Chant and the music of the Renaissance and was
                      honored by the Vatican in 1969 with the citation “Knight
                      Commander in the Order of St. Gregory” for his outstanding
                      contributions in the field of sacred music. In January of 1988 he
                      presented a two-week seminar at the Pontifical Institute of
                      Sacred Music in Rome. He has also been awarded honorary
                      doctorates from both the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul,
                      Minnesota and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles,
                      California and, in June of 1993, was the recipient of the first
                      Lifetime Achievement Award offered by MidAmerica
                      Productions and presented in Carnegie Hall. In the Summer of
                      1994 Paul was named Honoree of the Hollywood Bowl Patroness
                      Committee and, in May of 1995, was presented with a
                      Distinguished Artists Award by Club 100 of the Los Angeles
                      Music Center, along with Placido Domingo; Pulitzer Prize
                      winning playwright Wendy Wasserman; and writer, director,
                      producer Garry Marshall. 

                      Under his direction, the St. Charles Choir recorded five albums
                      of sacred music for the Imperial label and appeared with Andy
                      Williams in his 1969 recording of the “Battle Hymn of the
                      Republic” and again in 1986, on stage, in his popular Christmas
                      Show. On September 15th, 1987, the Choir sang at the
                      Diplomatic Reception/Prayer Service for His Holiness at St.
                      Vibiana’s Cathedral in Los Angeles and on June 29th, 1988, as
                      the first American Choir so invited, they sang Mass for the Feast
                      of Sts. Peter and Paul at St. Peter’s in Rome, with the Pope
                      presiding. 

                      His St. Charles Children’s Choir has performed with the Los
                      Angeles Master Chorale and Philharmonic Orchestra, the San
                      Francisco and Los Angeles Opera Companies, and for NBC-TV
                      with the late Lucille Ball. Under his aegis, they also recorded the
                      now classic Walt Disney album “It’s a Small World”. 

 Los Angeles Music Week,  Incorporated  is a non-profit 501(c)3, community-based outreach program in contract with the City of Los Angeles, now in its eighth year of service.  Los Angeles Music Week honors the contributions of landmark artists of all genres.  LAMW shares with children the history of music in Los Angeles and the part it plays in shaping music internationally. L.A. Music Week is an instrument of unity, building bridges to the diverse citizenry.