Medley: One Kiss/My Romance/The Most Beautiful Man In The World
Medley: But Beautiful/The Second Time Around
Fever - Peggy Lee, Cooley, Eddie
I'm Gonna Go Fishin'
I Love Being Here With You - Peggy Lee, Lee
By Myself - Peggy Lee, Dietz, Howard
Heart - Peggy Lee, Adler
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 - Peggy Lee, Holman
Medley: I Dont Know Enough About You/Manana/Why Don't You Do Right?/It's a Good Day
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. Col... more »lectors' Choice Music.« less
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's only live recording, newly discovered.
Mary Whipple | New England | 02/28/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Originally recorded on Feb. 8, 1961, the last night of Peggy Lee's show at Basin Street East, this is the only complete recording of a "pure," live performance by Peggy Lee--the entire show sung exactly as Peggy performed it, with every song included, warts and all. Lost for forty years in the Capitol Records vault, where it was mislabeled as a "backup" tape, it was finally discovered through the efforts of Cy Godfrey, Lee's attorney, and released in 2002.
And what it find it was! Here is Peggy, completely relaxed and joyfully interacting with her audience, at ease with her music, her orchestra, and her fans. Showing her range of styles, she moves from a slow, soft ballad like "The Second Time Around" to full-out wailing at the end of "The Most Beautiful Man in the World," and rock/swing/soul music in a Tribute to Ray Charles. In "I'm Gonna Go Fishin,'" which she wrote with Duke Ellington, Peggy is looser and more comfortable than on her formal recordings, and one can hear her mugging with her audience through the changes in her voice, as she sings with the full orchestra. In "You've Gotta Have Heart," she sings a section in a pseudo-Spanish accent, and in her own song, "Love Being Here With You," she even jokingly interrupts herself to ask, "I wonder what I meant by that line."
Here is Peggy Lee as you have never heard her before, an extraordinary find for the Peggy Lee fan. This is not to say there are no problems. At times, she wanders too far from her microphones, and the lyrics and her patter become almost impossible to hear; on other occasions, when she dramatically whispers her lyrics, she misses an occasional note. Still, her timing, her creative interpretations, and her ability to handle almost any tempo are at their peak here. This is a fantastic album for the Peggy Lee fan--the only opportunity ever to her "live." Mary Whipple
"
Outstanding !!!
Hoc Stercus | Hudson, NY USA | 11/13/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I have owned a previous incarnation of this recording for several years ---- the one where the tracks were recorded in the studio, but with applause added later to create a "live" effect. I wondered whether a true, live recording would be significantly different --- and worth the expense. I can say without hesitation that I am extremely grateful I took the risk. This current CD is something very special and very wonderful. It contains a vitality and immediacy that validates the trouble and effort that goes into the creation of truly live recording. Apparently an audience brought more out of Ms. Lee than a studio microphone could. She seems to invest more of herself here than she ever did in a recording booth. This album can legitimately be called a "must have" for any Peggy Lee fan."
Intoxicating, Tantalizing, Mesmerizing Miss Lee!
Allen Bardin | Columbia, SC United States | 07/23/2002
(5 out of 5 stars)
"There aren't enough adjectives to let you know how wonderful this issue is. At last, the "real" live performance of Miss Peggy Lee at the NYC jazz club, Basin Street East, is available for all of us die-hards! (The familiar Capitol release is botched-up & partially studio "fixed".) Here is Peggy at the peak of her artistry, doing her usual spellbinding. Standout tunes are a mightily swinging "The Most Beautiful Man In the World" and the gorgeous "I've Never Left Your Arms". Marvelous liner notes by the esteemed jazz critic Nat Hentoff & rare photos make this package totally irresistable to all of us who regard Peggy Lee as the best popular singer of the 20th Century. A real treasure and not to be missed!"
Exceptional Live Recording
Allen Bardin | 06/18/2004
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I saw Peggy Lee four times in person (once at Carnegie Hall, three time in Cental Park), so know how good she could be in person. Still I was unprepared for the great jazz performance captured on this live CD and released only after Lee's death.
True Lee misses some notes and not everything is perfect, but
I have not heard Peggy swing like this before on a recording. Clearly, the live setting at the peak of her career brought out the very best in one of the greatest singers of the last century."
Historic Treasure (beware of imitations!)
Samuel Chell | Kenosha,, WI United States | 02/04/2009
(5 out of 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."
Track Listings (14) - Disc #1
