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Is that all there is? : the strange life of Peggy Lee / James Gavin.

by Gavin, James, 1964- author.

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New York : Atria Books, 2014.

Lee, Peggy, 1920-2002.

Singers -- United States -- Biography.

9781451641684 (hardback)

1451641680 (hardback)

601 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

First Atria Books hardcover edition.

Miss Peggy Lee cast a spell when she sang. She purred so intimately in nightclubs that couples clasped hands and huddled closer. She hypnotized, even on television. Lee epitomized cool, but her trademark song, "Fever" -- covered by Beyoncé and Madonna -- is the essence of sizzling sexual heat. Her jazz sense dazzled Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong. She was the voice of swing, the voice of blues, and she provided four of the voices for Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, whose score she co-wrote. But who was the woman behind the Mona Lisa smile? Music journalist James Gavin offers the most revealing look yet at an artist of infinite contradictions and layers, including interviews with hundreds who knew her. Lee was a North Dakota prairie girl who became a temptress of enduring mystique. She was a singer-songwriter before the term existed. Lee "had incredible confidence onstage," observed the Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop; yet inner turmoil wracked her. She spun a romantic nirvana in her songs, but couldn't sustain one in reality. As she passed middle age, Lee dwelled increasingly in a bizarre dreamland. She died in 2002 at the age of eighty-one, but Lee's mystique has only grown since.

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