The Peggy Lee Bio-Discography:
The Capitol Years, Part V (1960-1962)

Peggy Lee (ldr), Emmanuel "Manny" Klein (om), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Billy May (con), Billy May And His Orchestra (acc), Al Hendrickson (g), Max K. Bennett, Meyer "Mike" Rubin (b), Lou Levy (p), Stella Castellucci (hrp), Stan Levey (d), Arnold Belnick, David Frisina, James Getzoff, Ben Gill, Anatol Kaminsky, Murray Kellner, Daniel "Dan" Lube, Nathan Ross, Marshall Sosson, Joe Stepansky, Gerald Vinci, William Weiss (vn), Alvin Dinkin, Cecil Figelski, Virginia Majewski, Paul Robyn (vl), Charles Gates, Ralph "Ray" Kramer, George Neikrug, Eleanor Slatkin (vc), Peggy Lee (v)

The Pretty Eyes Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: February 15, 18 and 19, 1960.


Photos

The album that resulted from these sessions, in its original stereo and mono formats.


Songs And Songwriters

1. "Pretty Eyes"
2. Marvin Phillips
3. The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra
The original Capitol LP Pretty Eyes credits its titular song to Marvin Phillips, and the same credit holds true for all ensuing reissues. However, Phillips is being erroneously credited. He did compose a song titled "Pretty Eyes," but the music and lyrics of his song are different from those performed by Peggy Lee. As a member of the doo-wop duo Marvin & Johnny (along with Emory Perry), Phillips also
recorded his composition for an Aladdin Records single, which could be heard here the time of this writing.

The number sung by Peggy Lee is instead the same one that The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra recorded for Columbia's subsidiary Vocalion on December 14, 1939, with vocals by Dan Grissom. (Lunceford recorded a second version in 1944, for Decca.) The original Vocalion 78-rpm disc does not credit Lunceford among the songwriters, but copyright notices do.


Personnel

1. Billy May
During the first half of 1960, Peggy Lee entrusted the arranging and conducting of her sessions to the man who she would later name her favorite arranger.

Their earliest work together dated back to the singer's first year as a Capitol artist (1944). At that time, May was playing trumpet in combos led by Lee's husband, Dave Barbour.

Billy May was particularly proud of the work that he did during the sessions for the ballad album Pretty Eyes. As for Lee's assessment, she loved May's conducting and arranging for not only Pretty Eyes but also their subsequent album together Christmas Carousel (the latter recorded in June of 1960). Most of all, Peggy Lee admired Billy May's versatility, amply evident in his arrangements for his 1960 sessions for her.

2. Alvin Dinkin versus Alvin Dinken
This musician's last name is given as Dinkin in some sources, Dinken in others. Herein I have chosen to enter his name as "Dinkin" because that's the spelling used in the more reliable sources.


Arrangements

1. Source
The Capitol LP Pretty Eyes credits all arrangements to Billy May. Eleven of the album's twelve scores (including all four from this session) are also extant in Capitol's library, and May is the credited arranger for all of them.

2. "Remind Me"
Peggy Lee's sheet music library contains not only the May's arrangement of "Remind Me" but also a Benny Carter arrangement of the same song.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Billy May (con), Billy May And His Orchestra (acc), Al Hendrickson (g), Max K. Bennett, Meyer "Mike" Rubin (b), Lou Levy (p), Stella Castellucci (hrp), Stan Levey (d), Arnold Belnick, David Frisina, James Getzoff, Ben Gill, Anatol Kaminsky, Murray Kellner, Erno Neufeld, Nathan Ross, Marshall Sosson, Joe Stepansky, Gerald Vinci, William Weiss (vn), Joseph Di Fiore, Alvin Dinkin, Virginia Majewski, Paul Robyn, Abraham Weiss (vl), Naoum Benditzky, Charles Gates, Kurt Reher, Eleanor Slatkin (vc), Peggy Lee (v)

The Pretty Eyes Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: February 15, 18 and 19, 1960.


Photos

Sides or panels from a store window display. Created by Capitol as part of its promotional push of Pretty Eyes, the display consisted of three flat panels, each one with a height of 19 inches and a width of 12 inches.


Songs And Songwriters

1. "I'm Walking Through Heaven With You"
2. Jimmie Lunceford
The number of songwriters that contributed to "I'm Walking Through Heaven With You" is in dispute. Pianist Joe Turner is the only one credited in the Capitol LP Pretty Eyes. Similarly, the Library of Congress gives credit to Turner for both words and music.

However, BMI credits the tune to both Joe Turner and Ruth "Rozz" Gordon. She is also listed at the Library of Congress, but not as a co-writer; Gordon is instead identified as one of the song's 'claimants.'

Meanwhile, numerous CDs credit not only Turner, but also Jimmie Lunceford, whose band first recorded the song in 1934 (and again in 1940 or 1941). The original Decca 78-rpm disc also credits Lunceford. Even though Lunceford might have nabbed a credit without actually contributing to the writing, the inclusion of his name on the original release had led me credit him in this discography, too.


Arrangements

1. Source
The Capitol LP Pretty Eyes credits all arrangements to Billy May. Corroboration comes from Capitol's sheet music library, where ten of the album's twelve scores are also extant, with May indeed credited as arranger on all of them. (From this particular session, the library misses only the arrangement for "Because I Love Him So.")

2. "As You Desire Me"
Peggy Lee's sheet music library contains an arrangement of "As You Desire Me" that is not by Billy May, but by Bill Holman. I am assuming that the Holman arrangement was not the one used in this studio session. It might have been used for a 1966 televised performance, or else in concerts.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Billy May (con), Billy May And His Orchestra (acc), Arthur "Art" Fleming, Jules Jacob[s], Ronnie Lang, Ted Nash aka Theodore Nash, Wilbur "Willie" Schwartz (sax), Bobby Gibbons (g), Max K. Bennett (b), Lou Levy (p), Stan Levey, Carlos Mejía (d), Peggy Lee (v)

The Pretty Eyes Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: February 15, 18 and 19, 1960.


Photos

First: World Record Club's own LP edition of Pretty Eyes. Second: back cover of EMI's 1986 Pretty Eyes LP reissue. Unlike the original back cover, this reissue offers a color photo of Lee's gaze.


Songs (Cross-references)

1. "Moments Like This"
For Peggy Lee's two other Capitol versions of "Moments Like This," see sessions dated February 5 and March 1, 1961. See also session dated September 8, 1992.


Arrangements

1. Source
The Capitol LP Pretty Eyes credits all arrangements to Billy May. Ten of the album's twelve scores are also extant in Capitol's library, and May is the credited arranger on all of them. (From this session, the library misses only the score for "You Fascinate Me So.")


Issues

1. The Album Pretty Eyes In The Music Charts
There is no indication of Billboard chart activity for the LP Pretty Eyes. It does show up, though, at #49 in Cash Box's Best Selling Monaural & Stereo Albums chart (October 1, 1960). This chart was sub-divided into two sub-charts (mono, stereo), each one consisting of 50 slots. Lee's Pretty Eyes entry is on the stereo chart, where her popular Latin Ala Lee LP can also be found, climbing down, at #34. Possibly accounting for the absence of Pretty Eyes's corresponding Top LP's dual chart is the fact that there were only 30 slots in its stereo sub-chart (and 40 slots in the monaural sister, on the week of October 3, 1960).

2. Pretty Eyes [LP, World Record Club]
3. "Moments Like This"
The World Record Club vinyl T 484 differs from the original LP issue of Pretty Eyes (Capitol S/ST 401). It substitutes the song "Moments Like This" for " 'Deed I Do," a master recorded back on November 19, 1947. This change occurs in the LP only; World Record Club reel Tt 484 includes "Moments Like This," not " 'Deed I Do."

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Jimmy Joyce (vdr), Harry Klee, Ronnie Lang, Wilbur "Willie" Schwartz (r), George Van Eps (g), Max K. Bennett (b), Lou Levy (p), Stella Castellucci (hrp), Stan Levey (d), Harry Bluestone aka Blostein, Harold Dicterow, Jacques Gasselin, Anatol Kaminsky, Murray Kellner, Marvin Limonick, Joseph Livoti, Nathan Ross, Felix Slatkin (vn), Alvin Dinkin, Virginia Majewski, Alex Niemann, Abraham Weiss (vl), Charles Gates, Edgar Lustgarten, David Pratt, Joseph Saxon (vc), Peggy Lee (v), Jimmy Joyce Children's Choir (bkv)

The Christmas Carousel Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: June 15 and 19, 1960. Also singles session, dated October 10, 1959.


Photos

Shots of the album that resulted from these sessions, in its original stereo and mono formats. Viewers wishing to obtain a CD edition of Christmas Carousel are advised to avoid the 1990 disc listed above, and opt instead fo one of the various holiday CD anthologies to be pictured in the next section. (First released in 1990 and reissued many times afterwards, that Christmas Carousel CD suffers from an over-cleaning, nuance-blurring approach to remastering.)


Songs

1. "White Christmas" iIn The Music Charts
For the week of December 8, 2018, Peggy Lee's rendition of the Irving Berlin standard "White Christmas" peaked at #12 on Billboard's Holiday Streaming Songs chart. As of 2021, this posthumous entry remains Peggy Lee's last hit number: her 75th in the American singles charts.


Arrangements And Arrangers

1. Christmas Carousel [LP]
2. Happy Holiday [LP]
3. Billy May, Part 1
In her autobiography, Peggy Lee writes that Billy May "did all the wonderful arrangements" for the albums Christmas Carousel and Happy Holiday. Lee's statement is accurate only as a generalization.

May indeed was the chief arranger for the main sessions of Christmas Carousel (held on June 15 and 19, 1960) but not for an earlier session (October 10, 1959) whose songs were incorporated to the album long after they had been originally released on a single.

As for Happy Holiday, three of its songs come from a July 9, 1965 session whose songs were arranged by Sid Feller. (The rest of Happy Holiday is a reissue of the earlier LP, Christmas Carousel, minus a few songs.)

4. Billy May, Part 2
5. Jimmy Joyce
Billy May is identified as the arranger of this session's five titles in various sources: the album Christmas Carousel, Lee's autobiography, and Jack Mirtle's The Music Of Billy May: A Discography.

Further corroboration comes from Capitol's sheet music library, in which eleven of the twelve arrangements are kept. May is credited in all of them. Missing from the Capitol library is the score for the album's titular song.

Copies of eleven of the twelve arrangements can also be found in Lee's own sheet music library, where the score for "The Christmas Song" is the one missing. Of the four masters from this session, the scores of "White Christmas" and "The Christmas Waltz" do have May's name but the arrangement of "Christmas Carousel" gives no author information. More problematically, the arrangement for "The Star Carol" is credited to not to May but Jimmy Joyce, the session's vocal director. In this discography, I have decided to jointly credit the "Star Carol" score to Joyce and May.


Masters, Alternate Takes And Issues

1. "Christmas Carousel"
The existence and availability of the above-listed alternate take of "Christmas Carousel" should be deemed possible, rather than definitive. The information that I have about the take and about its alleged release seems reliable but is still in need of corroboration. (The same degree of tentativeness applies to a master from the next Christmas Carousel session.) Since I have not been able to track down the 8-track cartridge where the alternate can supposedly be found, I would appreciate any assistance on this matter.

2. "The Star Carol" [Masters #33978 And #33998]
According to the Capitol Label Discography, "The Star Carol" bears the number 33978 in at least one Capitol file. At some point, the number was changed to 39998, and it appears as such in most other Capitol files. This alteration was probably made in order to fix an inadvertent duplication: the same number had also been used for the first master from the next session (#9491, by Dwayne Hickman).

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Jimmy Joyce (vdr), Billy May (con), Billy May And His Orchestra (acc), Arthur "Art" Fleming, Jules Jacob[s], Harry Klee, Ted Nash aka Theodore Nash, Wilbur "Willie" Schwartz (sax), James "Jim" Decker, Vincent DeRosa, Richard "Dick" Perissi (frh), Clarence Karella (tu), George Van Eps (g), Max K. Bennett (b), Lou Levy (p), Stella Castellucci (hrp), Stan Levey (d), Emil Richards, aka Emil Radocchia (per), Peggy Lee (v), Jimmy Joyce Children's Choir (bkv)

The Christmas Carousel Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: June 15 and 19, 1960. Also singles session, dated October 10, 1959.


Photos

Five abbreviated/expanded reissues of the 1960 album under discussion. Any of these items is preferable choices to the CD editions of Christmas Carousel, which are unfortunately saddled with a very antiseptic-sounding remastering.

First in view is a 1965 LP that drops three of the 12 original numbers. It substitutes the dropped numbers with three freshly recorded masters.

Though designed to look like a LP, the second reissue shown above is a 2000 budget CD. Although it offers only 11 tracks (eight from the album under discussion, three from the 1965 LP reissue), this compact disc is still highly recommended, due to its superior sound quality.

The third item, Christmas With Peggy Lee, also qualifies among her best overall holiday anthology to date. Consisting of 16 tracks, it combines nine numbers from the album under scrutiny with the three additions from the 1965 reissue, plus two tracks from a 1949 single and one brand new, previously unissued Lee vocal, recorded in the early 1980s.

The next item above is an eleven-track CD from Universal's "Icon" series. Released in 2014, this small set contains seven tracks from the 1960 Christmas Carousel LP, along with the three indispensable titles from the 1965 reissue and one number from an original 1953 Decca single.

The last picture row highlights the latest of all the official Peggy Lee holiday anthologies in existence. It is variously available as two LPs (first image), one CD (second image), and as digital album file. Among its 22 tracks are 10 selections from Christmas Carousel, all three exclusive tracks from Happy Holiday, Lee's 1949 and 1953 holiday singles, two duets with Bing Crosby, and three other assorted tracks, including her ca. 1982 recording "My Dean Acquaintance."


Masters, Alternate Takes And Issues

1. "Don't Forget To Feed The Reindeer" [Master #34026 Or Master #34027?]
According to Billy May discographer Jack Mirtle, the personnel files at the American Federation of Musicians identify the master that contains "Don't Forget To Feed The Reindeer" as #34026. In Capitol's session files, it is given as #34027, and master #34026 is skipped. A minor sequencing error -- either at Capitol or at AFM -- seems to be at play.

2. "Jingle Bells (I Like A Sleighride)"
The existence and availability of the above-listed alternate take of "Jingle Bells (I Like A Sleighride)" should be deemed possible, rather than definitive. The information that I have about the take and about its alleged release seems reliable but is still in need of corroboration. (The same tentativeness applies to a master from the previous Christmas Carousel session.) Since I have not been able to track down the 8-track cartridge where the alternate can supposedly be found, I would appreciate any assistance on this matter.

3. Christmas With Peggy Lee [CD] In The Music Charts
In 2006, this compact disc (containing nine of the 12 tracks from the LP Christmas Carousel, plus seven tracks from other sources) peaked at #22 in Billboard's Traditional Jazz Albums chart and #42 in the same magazine's sisterly Jazz Albums chart. The album spent two weeks on the first chart, four week on the second.

Christmas With Peggy Lee thus became the first of several posthumous chart entries for the singer, and her 24th entry in the American album charts. (As for the original LP Christmas Carousel, I have found no indication of chartactivity. Naturally, the LP's best bet would have been an appearance in a Billboard Christmas Albums chart. Unfortunately, the magazine did not publish such a chart in 1960, the year of the album's release. See also notes under session dated July 9, 1965.

4. Ultimate Christmas [CD/LP] In The Music Charts
For details on this issue's chart success, consult the notes under the session dated July 9, 1965.

Songs And Songwriters

1. "Jingle Bells (I Like A Sleighride)"
2. James Pierpont
Most issues, including Peggy Lee's own albums, list this master simply as "I Like A Sleighride." In truth, the actual performance consists of two lyrics: the traditional holiday song "Jingle Bells" combined with a few newly written lines, perhaps by Lee herself.

Although the songwriting credits for "Jingle Bells" often list it as a "Traditional" -- thus giving the impression that it is a folk song or a centuries-old anonymous tune -- this number was actually written in 1857 by American composer James Pierpont (1822-1893).

3. "Deck The Hall(s)"
This traditional number exists in more than one variant, each with a set of partially different choruses. The set sung by Lee is the one that mentions boughs of holly, a burning yule log and the mistletoe.

The title itself has two variants, one singular, the other plural. In the covers of the Capitol LPs Christmas Carousel and Happy Holiday, the title was printed in singular. However, in the vinyl of Christmas Carousel the plural was used -- not, however, in the vinyl of Happy Holiday. As for the CD version of Christmas Carousel, it lists the track as "Deck The Halls." Since the word that Peggy Lee clearly sings is halls, I have chosen to use the plural.


Arrangers

1. Billy May
2. Dave Cavanaugh
Capitol's sheet music library contains the arrangements for this session's "Jingle Bells (I Like A Sleigh Ride)," "Deck The Halls" and "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town." All three of them are credited to Billy May. As for this session's two other songs, their arrangements can be found instead in Peggy Lee's sheet music library, but neither one has an author credit. In secondary sources, including Jack Mirtle's The Music Of Billy May: A Discography, May is named as the arranger of all five titles.

3. "Jingle Bells (I Like A Sleighride)"
In the LP Christmas Carousel, the words "arr. & adapted by Billy May and Dave Cavanaugh" can be found under this song's title. Hence I have credited both men for the arrangement. The LP's credit is not reproduced in the CD version.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Joe Harnell (con), Justin Gordon, Jules Kinsler, Harry Klee, Wilbur "Willie" Schwartz (sax), Henry Miranda, Alfonso "Al" Rojo, James "Jimmy" Salko (t), Tony Reyes (b), Eduardo "Eddie" Cano (p), Eduardo Aparicio, Carlos Mejía, Ramón "Ray" Rivera, Pascual Rodríguez (per), Peggy Lee (v)

The Olé Ala Lee! Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: July 16, 23, and 24, 1960.


Photos

Back and front cover of the album that resulted from these sessions. This is the monophonic US edition. Not shown above, a stereophonic US edition was also released. (For visual imagery, consult section XIII of this discography's Capitol album gallery.)


Issues

1. Olé Ala Lee! [British LP Edition Versus American LP Edition]
2. "Together Wherever We Go"
The American edition of the album Olé Ala Lee! (Capitol 1475) was issued in 1960. It contains twelve tracks. All twelve titles are listed in the album's back cover, and on the vinyl itself.

The British edition of Olé Ala Lee! bears the same catalogue number and the same artwork as the American original, but differs in two respects. First, it had to wait until until May of 1966 to come out. Back in 1960, British EMI had pressed Olé Ala Lee! in EP configuration only, and it appears to have limited itself to two EPs containing eight of the twelve tracks. According to the company's own press releases, public demand triggered the belated issuing of the LP edition in the UK.

Second, the back cover of the 1966 British edition lists not twelve but eleven tracks. The unlisted title is "Together Wherever We Go." Actual listening of the album reveals that the omission is only in the fine print of the back cover: all twelve tracks, including "Together Wherever We Go," are in the vinyl disc. Furthermore, all twelve tracks are also listed on the vinyl disc's physical label. My thanks to Yvan Tarbouriech and to Steve Dodd for confirming these details. Steve has further corroborated that the above-described situation applies to both the mono and stereo versions.

The reason for the omission of "Together Wherever We Go" from the back cover of the British LP edition is not known to me. Clues can be gathered from the fact that "Together Wherever We Go" originated in the 1959 Broadway show Gypsy, which had yet to make its British debut in 1960 and 1961, when Olé Ala Lee! would have been originally slated for release in the United Kingdom. EMI possibly lacked permission to issue any versions of the show's songs until after the show's British debut. (A similar situation had happened with the album Latin Ala Lee!. "Till There Was You" had to be skipped from the 1960 British edition of that LP because the song had originated in The Music Man, a show which did not premiere in the UK until 1961. As for Gypsy, it actually had to wait until 1973 for its British debut.)

There would have been no such restrictions in 1966. The omission of the title from the British LP's back cover might have been merely the result of overzealousness and sloppiness or confusion, after the consultation of internal documentation indicating that a contractual clause forbade the British release of the track back then.

The peculiarities surrounding EMI's handling of the track carried over to the digital era. Produced in the United Kingdom, the EMI CD Latin Ala Lee! / Olé Ala Lee! does include"Together Wherever We Go" but it is misidentified as a bonus track. Such labeling implies that the track had not been previously issued on the British LP edition. Presumably, the producers of the CD made this incorrect claim because they only took a look at the track listing as it appeared in the back of the LP, failing to actually give it a listen, or to take a close look at the physical label on the vinyl disc.

Steve Dodd offers has offered other plausible explanations for the error on both the LP and the CD. The artwork of Olé Ala Lee! might have posed an additional challenge. To quote Steve:

"in the UK ... album covers were almost exclusively printed with a laminated coloured front, flipped over a non-laminated b&w reverse ... It now seems to me more likely that the album was prepared for release back in 1960, with a black & white reverse and 'Together Wherever We Go' omitted because Gypsy had not yet opened in the U.K. I don't know why it was finally released in the mid-1960s, but by then there would have been no restrictions on 'Together Wherever We Go, and it was possible to include it. Perhaps they then decided to use the original back cover artwork [listing only 11 tracks] - for reasons of economy, or because it just wasn't noticed that a track had been omitted from the listing; by the mid-1960s, the standard number of tracks on a pop album had been reduced from twelve to eleven, anyway. (Sugar 'N' Spice, which also had a humorous double-sided colour sleeve, defeated them completely and the album was never released in the U.K.) Calling 'Together Wherever We Go' a 'bonus track' on the twofer CD decades later might be because [record store owner] Ray Purslow, who supplied the original artwork for the CD, sent them only the cover and not the record! Or maybe they didn't check the record, having the eleven-track precedent of Latin Ala Lee! in front of them."


Masters

1. "Come Dance With Me"
According to Michel Ruppli et al in the Capitol Label Discography, "Come Dance With Me" was first attempted on this date (the 16th) and then remade later, on the 23rd. I can offer partial confirmation for the claim: in the AFM sheet for July 23, 1960, "Come Dance With Me" is indeed listed as one of five performances recorded at that date.

One source which disagrees with (or, more likely misses) the above-given information is Peggy Lee's session file. in it, master #34209 appears only under this July 16 session. No later remake is listed.

Here is a reproduction of the data given by Ruppli et al:

July 16, 1960
34209 Come Dance With Me - unissued

July 23, 1960
34209 Come Dance With Me (remake) - Cap. T/ST 1475 [etc.]

As can be seen, the Ruppli data would seem to suggest that the song is preserved in both versions, with the same master number. I have no evidence that such is the case. Hence, for the time being (while hoping for confirmation of the existence of two masters), I am listing "Come Dance With Me" only once, and under the present session.


Arrangements

1. Joe Harnell
Capitol's library of scores contains all the arrangements for the album Olé Ala Lee!. They are uniformly credited to Joe Harnell.


Personnel

Primary or official data about this session's personnel is not available to me. In its absence, I am offering a listing from a secondary source with a high degree of specificity: the booklet of Blue Moon's Latin Ala Lee! / Olé Ala Lee!. (Though currently in the Public Domain business, label owner Jordi Pujol is a dedicated jazz fan with over 50 years of researching and reissuing experience. Unfortunately, Pujol does not disclose the source for this personnel source in the CD booklet.)

Given the non-official nature of my source, the personnel that I have entered above should be deemed tentative. Then again, the specificity of the CD's information gives hope that it is accurate -- maybe even drawn from the session's AFM contract. (Compare it to the personnel on the next, July 23, 1960 session, for which I did count with a AFM report as a source.)

Peggy Lee (ldr), Emmanuel "Manny" Klein (om), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Joe Harnell (con), Justin Gordon, Jules Kinsler, Harry Klee, Wilbur "Willie" Schwartz (sax), Henry Miranda, Alfonso "Al" Rojo, James "Jimmy" Salko (t), Tony Reyes (b), Eduardo "Eddie" Cano (p), Fred Aguirre, Eduardo Aparicio, Carlos Mejía, Ramón "Ray" Rivera (d), Peggy Lee (v)

The Olé Ala Lee! Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: July 16, 23, and 24, 1960.


Photos

Two of at least three Japanese LP editions of the album Olé Ala Lee!. First up is a montage featuring the. red vinyl, front cover, and song. lyrics insert of Capitol Csp 1062. Next is the back cover of Capitol 2LP 1960. Release years unknown.


Arrangers And Arrangements

1. Joe Harnell
2. Marty Paich
3. "I Can't Resist You"
The back cover of the Capitol album Olé Ala Lee! includes the collective credit "arranged & conducted by Joe Harnell." All 12 album arrangements are extant in Capitol's music sheet library, where they are uniformly credited to Harnell. However, an arrangement of "I Can't Resist You" kept in Lee's sheet music library is credited to Marty Paich.

Unfortunately, I have not inspected the Paich arrangement; hence I do not know whether it is the same one heard in this session. I suspect that it is the same. I can imagine any number of reasons why Capitol might have inaccurately credited Harnell with all of the scores -- for instance, Paich's ties to another record company, or the possibility that Harnell farmed out the arrangement, or a scribe's lax behavior in the handling of the label's paperwork.

Leaving my suspicions aside, the most logical assumptions would be that (a) Paich wrote his arrangement for Lee's concert performances, perhaps back during her Decca years, and (b) that Harnell's identification as the author of this session's arrangement is accurate.

Until the Paich score is inspected and compared with the performance on master #34245, I am following the most logical option.

(Lee recorded another version of "I Can't Resist You" in 1979. The arrangement for that version is credited to Dick Hazard.)


Personnel And Instruments

The above-listed instrument and musician names were taken from the American Federation of Musicians' contract for this session. The listings are thus fully reliable.

2. Ray Rivera
This musician is chiefly known as a guitarist. However, the official documentation for this and in other Peggy Lee sessions lists him as a drum player.


Issues

1. Olé Ala Lee! [EPs]
Capitol made a total of three EPs out of Latin Ala Lee!, the popular album of which Olé Ala Lee! is clearly a sequel. In the case of the Olé Ala Lee! album sessions, only two EPs were issued:

Eap/Sep 1 1475 - "Come Dance With Me " & "You Stepped Out Of A Dream" & "From Now On" & "Non Dimenticar""
Eap/Sep 2 1475 - "Love And Marriage" & "I Can't Resist You" & "Fantástico" & "Olé"

Had there been a third Olé Ala Lee EP, it would have included the four songs that were left out of these other two EPs: "You're So Right For Me," "Together Wherever We Go," "Just Squeeze Me," and "By Myself."

If I am to rely on data which at this time is incomplete, it would seem that different songs were paired in the mono and stereo versions of the two issued EPs. The pairings listed above reflect the contents of the mono editions. Once I am able to corroborate that the data about the stereo versions is accurate (and it might not be), I will enter it in the database, and will modify this note accordingly.

2. Olé Ala Lee! [45-rpm Singles?]
No single from the Olé Ala Lee! sessions was ever released to retail stores. (You will notice that the database above does list some singles. However, the various 45-rpm discs listed are not singles made for sale at commercial stores. Instead, some of them were manufactured by the AFRS strictly for radio airplay in their military service stations, and others were produced by Capitol for playing in jukeboxes. See also point 3 below.)

This absence of an Olé Ala Lee! single stands in contrast with most previous and subsequent original Lee LPs on Capitol. (Joining Olé Ala Lee! as exceptions are the earlier album Pretty Eyes and the later album Something Groovy!.)

3. Olé Ala Lee! [Jukebox EP]
The catalogue number X-1475 belongs to the jukebox EP version of Olé Ala Lee!. The EP set consists of the following 33 rpm discs, all of them released only in stereo:

X1 1475 - "Come Dance With Me" & "Just Squeeze Me"
X2 1475 - "By Myself" & "You're So Right For Me""
X3 1475 - "Fantástico" & "Together Wherever We Go"
X4 1475 - "Olé" & "Love And Marriage"
X5 1475 - "I Can't Resist You" & "'Non Dimenticar"

This jukebox set thus culls 10 of the 12 songs from its LP counterpart, leaving out "From Now On" and "You Stepped Out Of A Dream."

An additional side note, pertaining to jukebox EPs in general. Oftentimes, discs such as the ones from the EP under discussion wound up being sold as separate pieces. Online auction sites sometimes misrepresent their true nature, failing to acknowledge that they were originally part of a larger unit.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Joe Harnell (con), Justin Gordon, Jules Kinsler, Harry Klee, Wilbur "Willie" Schwartz (sax), Tony Reyes (b), Eduardo "Eddie" Cano (p), Fred Aguirre, Eduardo Aparicio, Carlos Mejía, Ramón "Ray" Rivera (per), Peggy Lee (v)

The Olé Ala Lee! Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: July 16, 23, and 24, 1960.


Photos

World Record Club's licensed reissues of the album Olé Ala Lee!, both believed to have been made available in 1970. The first reissue was released by the Australian branch of this EMI mail order company, the second by the British branch.

Personnel

This date's musicians are unknown, but presumed to be mostly the same ones who participated in an earlier Olé Ala Lee! session, dated July 23, 1960.


Arrangers And Arrangements

1. Joe Harnell
All arrangements for the album Olé Ala Lee! are extant in Capitol's music score library. They are uniformly credited to Joe Harnell.

2. "Olé"
Peggy Lee kept a copy of Harnell's "Olé" arrangement in her sheet music library.


Masters And Sources

This discography's June 24, 1960 date actually holds the contents of two Capitol file sessions which I have conflated into one. Below is the sessions data as it appears in the Capitol file. My reasons for the conflation are also given below.

First entry

Peggy Lee (vo) with Joe Harnell's Music.
LA, July 24, 1960
(Session #9564)
34253 Just Squeeze Me (But Don't Tease Me) - (see master 34296)
34254 Non Dimenticar - Cap. Eap 1 1475 [etc.]
34255 Olé - (see master 34297)
34256 By Myself
All titles issued on Cap. T/St 1475.

Second Entry

Peggy Lee (vo) with Joe Harnell's Music.
LA, 1960
Prob. remastered from session #9564
34296 Just Squeeze Me (But Don't Tease Me) - (see master 34253)
34297 Olé - (see master 34255)
All titles issued on Cap. T/St 1475.


I have decided to list the contents of the two entries together in one session because

a) arguably, Capitol's file does not fully treat the second entry as a separate session. No session number is given to the entry, and no full date is provided either. (It is worth noting, however, that the files do not have a session #9565. Maybe that number was intended for this entry, but it was inadvertently left unused.)

b) the file itself states that the second entry probably consists of remasters of the previous session, not new performances.

c) I am told that, in a different document (a Capitol inventory) only masters #34296 and #34297 are listed -- not masters #34253 nor #34255. This piece of information further strengthens the likelihood that the song titles common to the first and second entries refer to the same Lee performances.


Personnel

Primary or official data about this session's personnel is not available to me. In its absence, I am offering a listing from a secondary source with a high degree of specificity: the booklet of Blue Moon's Latin Ala Lee! / Olé Ala Lee!. (Though currently in the Public Domain business, label owner Jordi Pujol is a dedicated jazz fan with over 50 years of researching and reissuing experience. Unfortunately, Pujol does not disclose the source for this personnel source in the CD booklet.)

Given the non-official nature of my source, the personnel that I have entered above should be deemed tentative. Then again, the specificity of the CD's information gives hope that it is accurate -- maybe even drawn from the session's AFM contract. (Compare it to the personnel on the next, July 23, 1960 session, for which I did count with a AFM report as a source.)

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Bill Holman (con), Bill Holman and His Orchestra (acc), Peggy Lee (v), Other Individuals Unknown (unk)

The 1960-1962 Singles Sessions And The Extra Special! Pick-up Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: July 26, 1960. September 1, 1960. May 19, 1961. November 14, 1962. These four dates were the only singles sessions that Peggy Lee held between 1960 and 1962. During the same three-year period, she naturally recorded numerous album sessions as well, and Capitol culled additional singles from such sessions. But the four dates in question were the only ones exclusively dedicated to recording songs for release on singles.

Of the songs recorded at this July 26, 1960 date, Capitol promptly issued two ("Bucket Of Tears" and "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' ") on Capitol 45-rpm discs. The session's third master, "Call Me Darling, Call Me Sweetheart, Call Me Dear," was left unissued.

Seven years later, all three masters were incorporated to a Capitol LP called Extra Special!. Deceptively posing as an original album, this 1967 LP picked up songs that had been released on 45-rpm disc earlier in the decade, and also a few that had been left unissued. (In addition to "Call Me Darling, Call Me Sweetheart, Call Me Dear": "The Shining Sea" and "Oh! You Crazy Moon").

Whether unintentionally or by design, the 1967 album features recordings from every preceding year of the 1960s, except for 1964. To be more precise, the album's other tracks come from not only 1960 (July 26, September 1) but also 1961 (May 19), 1962 (April 2), 1963 (May 29), 1965 (February 19), and 1966 (May 21 & September 13).





Photos

Near the top of the session: Stereo and mono editions of the anthological LP Extra Special!, on which all three masters from this session were issued in 1967. (Previously, two of them had been commercially issued only on a 45-rpm single. The remaining master was making its debut.) Also above: an album review, published by Record World. Right below: front cover of Duke Ellington's all-instrumental LP Otto Preminger's Anatomy Of A Murder, released by Columbia Records in 1959, and sheet music for "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'," co-credited to Ellington and Peggy Lee. Toward the middle this session's notes: an array of albums and singles on which the same Duke Ellington-Peggy Lee number can be found, some of them by saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and others by vocalist Jane Harvey. Also, photography from Harvey's session, which counted with the distinguished participation of the song's composer. Near the bottom of the session: Capitol's promotional ad for the Peggy Lee single "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'" and photography from around 1950 (large picture) and 1954 (small pictures), showing that the singer already hooked on more than a feeling (for fishing). Grabbed from an old magazine in less than optimal shape, the small images capture her fully gone fishin' during a summer vacation.





Songs And Cross-references (Film)

1. "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' "
2. Anatomy Of A Murder
The melody of "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " is the "Main Title Music" of Otto Preminger's film Anatomy Of A Murder, which premiered on July 1, 1959. That courtroom thriller featured a full score by Duke Ellington, recorded between May 29 and June 2, 1959. According to Peggy Lee in her autobiography, "[o]ne day Duke Ellington brought me the tape with the theme music from the movie Anatomy Of A Murder, and I was impressed. He just said, Here you are, your Highness - write this, and he left." Elsewhere, Lee has chucklingly remarked that Ellington vanished before she even uttered a word, leaving her standing there, all by herself.

"I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " is actually a vocalese number of sorts. Explains Klaus Stratemann, in his exhaustive text Duke Ellington: Day By Day And Film By Film: "Peggy Lee, vocalist and poetess, composed a set of lyrics to go with the main title of Anatomy Of A Murder. To be more precise, she took the obstinato saxophone figure with brass interjections that follows Quentin Jackson's opening 'Wah-Wah' trombone statements and used this as thematic material for a song that came to be titled I'm Gonna Go Fishin'. It was recorded by its lyricist, of course, but by several others as well."

The persona of Lee's lyric is a woman whose man has lied to (and possibly cheated on) her: "Woke up this morning', / Wanted to cry. / ... / He's a real good one / For having his cake, / ... / Sweet-talking liar / Spin me your yarn, / Tell me a story / Big as a barn. / Gonna stop list'nin', / I won't hear you out, / ... / Sweet-talking liar/ You're in for a fall, / You tell me a story, / You talk to the wall! / Gonna go my way / On down the highway / ..." The woman of this lyric also follows the common adage that 'there are plenty more fish in the sea,' as she proclaims that she's out to find herself a new, better man: "Yeah, I'm gonna go fishin' / That's what I'll do. / Think about nothing, / Not even you. / Catch a real big one / A big speckled trout / Snapping in the water / I'll pull him on out! / ... / Here in the water / Look at him shine, / There goes a big one, / That one is mine!" Simple yet sharp, this lyric can be said to be an update of old blues numbers with which it shares a "my-man-done-me-wrong" thematics.

The film itself inspired the basic concept that permeates Peggy Lee's lyrics: fishing as a metaphor. In Anatomy Of Murder, Jimmy Stewart plays a small-town lawyer for whom fishing is a way to both relax and meditate on how to solve his cases. Throughout the movie, he is dealing with a rape-murder case that compels him to also do some detective work. The movie's fishing scenes inspired Lee to conceive of the lawyer-detective as a fisherman for whom the fish represented the elusive perp that he is trying to catch. It was such a parallel -- or, as she calls it, poetic symbol -- that guided Lee during the writing of her own set of words.

"I finished the lyric and gave it to Duke Ellington," she adds in her autobiography, "The Duke liked it all, and that was enough for me."

3. "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " (And Anatomy Of A Murder) At The Grammys
On April 12, 1961, the third Grammy Awards ceremony was held. This time, two separate awards had been created for the category of Best Vocal Performance, Female. One honored albums, the other "single records or tracks. For the third consecutive year, both Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee received nominations -- in both categories. The other nominees in the singles category were Doris Day, Eileen Farrell and Brenda Lee. As had previously been the case, the winner was Fitzgerald, thanks to her endearing concert performance of "Mack The Knife."

During the previous ceremony (1959), the original Anatomy Of A Murder movie soundtrack had been the winner of three Grammys. In Duke Ellington: Day By Day And Film By Film, Klaus Stratesmann further points out that Gerry Mulligan's instrumental version of I'm Gonna Go Fishin' "gained the distinction of being nominated for a Grammy award [the next] year, in the category of Best Jazz Performance - Large Group (DB: 25.5.61)." Apparently left unmentioned in the Downbeat quote that is his source (and in Stratemann's otherwise comprehensive comments) is the aforementioned fact that Peggy Lee's vocal version was also Grammy-nominated on that same year.

Lee's name was also connected to another of the Grammy nominations for this year; see details under session dated August 14, 1959.







Dating

1. "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' "
2. Jane Harvey (1959)
3. Gerry Mulligan (1960)
In her autobiography, Peggy Lee simply states that, once she finished writing her "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " lyric, she just gave it to Duke Ellington. It is not clear if the singer means that she turned in the lyric just for the composer's perusal, or for him to do with it as he wished. Were the last alternative to be the correct one, it could explain why at least two versions of "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " were recorded long before Lee's own.

One said version was sung by Jane Harvey, another former canary with the Benny Goodman Orchestra that had gone on to having a solo career in concert and on record. In 1959 (or, otherwise, earlier), Harvey did a full studio session featuring Ellington compositions, one of them being Lee's lyric of "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'." Accompanied by members of the Duke's orchestra, she did that session for the Signature label, which was owned by Bob Thiele, her husband last the time. Also a well-known record producer, Thiele had previously worked with Ellington on several dates of note, and had even enlisted Harvey to do a coupe of guest vocals at an Ellington concert (ca. 1958). It is thus likely that the Lee lyric arrived at the Thiele-Harvey session courtesy of the Duke. In September 1959, Harvey's version saw release in the form of a 45-rpm disc (Signature 12007), with Ellington and Johnny Burke's "A Hundred Dreams From Now" on its back. The same single was issued by Pye International in the United Kingdom around February of 1960, and more recently (2011) reissued on two Harvey CDs. (My thanks to Walter at Honeydhont for his kind assistance in researching this matter.)

The other early version of "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " was an instrumental by Gerry Mulligan. Several jazz discographies state that it was recorded on May 21, 1960 (i.e., two months earlier than Lee's version). Verve Records released Mulligan's instrumental on at least four issues, all of which curiously give songwriting credits to not only Duke Ellington but also Peggy Lee. Out on June 13, 1959, the earliest is likely to have been 45-rpm single V-10216, with both sides dedicated to Mulligan's lengthy performance of this number. There was a 33.3-rpm edition (VS-910) of this single as well. Later in the year, more Mulligan fans heard his version when they reached the last track of the then-new LP The Concert Jazz Band (MG V-8388 or, in stereo MG VS-3888). That LP is pictured below, and so is yet another single (V-2030, 45 rpm), from 1960. Finally, and for what is worth, there is an extant concert version, too. It's from a November 19, 1960 date in Paris.

I do not know how Mulligan became acquainted with the song. He could have received a tape from Ellington. The saxophonist could have also listened to Lee doing it in concert. In 1960, both artists performed at the Basin Street East club in New York.

As for other early vocal versions, by the likes of Chris Connor, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé, Annie Ross, and The Four Freshmen, all of them date from a couple years later (1962, 1963.)



















Masters And Takes

1. "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'" (July 26, 1960)
2. "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'" (September 1, 1960)
The Capitol Label Discography lists "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " under two dates: July 26 and September 1, 1960. The same master number (#34271) is found under both dates. Under the second date, the recording is labeled a remake. Furthermore, the author supplies the following note: "this title is listed in artist files, but issues are listed as using the July 26 version (see session #9570)."

Meanwhile, Capitol's Peggy Lee session file lists "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " only under one session -- the one dated July 26. Although I am more inclined to believe in the accuracy of the claim that there was a remake undertaken on September 1, I have still given priority to the data in the session file, in accordance to my policies throughout this sessionography. (Definitive confirmation (or a rebuttal) won't probably be forthcoming until a careful listening of Lee's session tapes from both dates is made. The AFM's session report should also be consulted. Unfortunately, this humble discographer has no access to Capitol session tapes or AFM sheets.)

3. "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'" (Takes #12 versus Take #23)
Also of note is the fact that two takes of "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " have been commercially released. As shown above, take #23 is heard on the original 45-rpm single, take #12 on all the other issues that I have consulted. (For the record, the only above-listed issues that I have yet to audition are the Air Force single and the AFRS transcription disc. Those have been entered under take #23 only because a choice between takes had to be made. Both entires should thus be deemed tentative, and subject to change in the future.)

My thanks to fellow fan Ken, who alerted me to the existence of two issued takes. He was also first in reporting that the difference between these takes is very minimal, and seems circumscribed to the music. To wit: an intro a few seconds longer, and slight divergences in the horns' playing.

4. Master #34272
Notice that this session contains three songs whose master numbers are 34269, 34270, and 34271. According to the Capitol Label Discography, Capitol's session files do not have any information for master #34272. Ruppli et al presume that the master number was simply left unused. Perhaps so; maybe Lee and the musicians exhausted their pre-scheduled session time. ("I'm Gonna Go Fishin' " seems to have required a particularly high number of takes.)

Another possibility is that Lee and company did use master #34572 for a performance that was ultimately scrapped. If such was the case, the main suspect would be a performance of "I Love Being Here With You." The released version of that song was recorded in Lee's next singles session (September 1, 1960); under our "suspicion" or theory, it would have been first attempted at the present session. The September 1 session was conducted by Ralph Carmichael, who arranged at least one of the session's other four songs. Carmichael is likely to have arranged that session's other songs as well, with one exception: "I Love Being Here With You," which is credited to Bill Holman (this session's conductor).

In a nutshell: though highly circumstantial, the details surrounding these July 26 and September 1 sessions do allow for the hypothesis that the seemingly non-existent master #34272 was a scrapped attempt at "I Love Being Here With You." Additional details on this subject matter can be found in the notes under the September 1, 1960 session.


Issues

1. Capitol #4449 [45]
2. Capitol #4498 [45]
This session generated songs for two singles which were given somewhat similar numbers, 4449 and 4498. More curiously, and unlike Lee's previous 45-rpm discs, those two singles lack the prefix F. (It is absent from Capitol session sheets, and it is missing in the vinyl itself.) As for the songs on the flip side of each single, both were recorded on September 1, 1960.


Arrangements And Sources

1. Sources
My source for this session's arranging credits is the back cover of the LP Extra Special!.

2. Bill Holman
3. "I'm Gonna Go Fishin' "
One of arranging credits in the back cover of the aforementioned LP is for "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'," and it is given to Bill Holman. His authorship of the arrangement is further confirmed by the existence of the score, credited to him, in Capitol's sheet music library.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Nancy Wilson (v), The Chipmunks (bkv), Other Individuals Unknown (unk)

Toys For Tots And Meals For Millions: The Humanitarian Campaign Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: August 19 and September 1, 1960. Peggy Lee was one of various Capitol artists who recorded a promotional spot in support of the Marine Reserve charity campaign Toys For Tots, which distributes toys to children in need. Other artists to do so were Nat King Cole, Vic Damone and Nancy Wilson. In their respective versions, the same "Toys For Tots" musical performance is heard. All four singers may have thus sung their interpretations to a pre-recorded track. were not sold in commercial stores, "Toys For Tots" singles were probably sent directly to Marine Corps facilities, and/or to radio stations.





Issues And Dating

1. Capitol Kb 2820 [45]
2. Capitol Pro. 1940-1941 [45]
3. Capitol Tb 2497-2498 [45]
Only the first of these items is listed in Peggy Lee's Capitol session file, where it is actually given the wrong catalogue number (2830). I should add that the release year which I have entered for this single (Kb 2820) is tentative, and thus in need of confirmation.

The other two singles are not listed in the session file. I learned of their existence through secondary sources, including eBay auctions.

One eBay auctioneer's ad has given 1960 as the release date for Capitol Pro. 1940-1941, but I cannot vouch for the reliability of this piece of information. I suspect that the auctioneer merely looked up the recording date of the Peggy Lee master, and used it as the single's release date.

No other source supplies a date for Pro. 1940-1941. The above-given date is partially arbitrary. To be more specific, I am working on the assumption that Vic Damone recorded his vocal while he was under Capitol contract. This assumption relies in turn on a pattern. All the other aforementioned artists with "Toys For Tots" singles -- Cole, Lee, and Wilson -- were at Capitol when they made their respective contributions. For the record, Damone's Capitol session work started in late September 1961 and finished in early April 1964. Hence "late 1961" is the earliest possible date for the release of single pro. 1940-1941, and early 1964 the last possible date. While hoping for the discovery of more exact or illuminating information, I have assigned a ca. December 1963 to this promo.

Similarly, the release year that I have entered for Capitol 45-rpm disc Tb 2497-2498 should be deemed approximate, and thus subject to alteration if/when additional information turns up. None of the sources sources at hand provides dating information for this single, either. The above-given date is an estimate, reliant on the fact that the other side of the single (the Nancy Wilson master) was recorded in June of 1965. It thus follows that the earliest possible date for the single's release is the second half of 1965. The entire year of 1966 is also a valid (and strong) alternative.

I should reiterate that, for all these singles, the term "release" refers to the date in which the discs were sent out to radio stations. None of them were commercially released.

3. Christmas Cocktails [CD]
4. Secret Track: The Three-Singers Edit Of "Toys For Tots"
Pictured below, the Capitol CD Christmas Cocktails was tthe first out of three holiday volumes from the "Ultra Lounge" series. Special mention must be made of the fact that it contains three so-called secret tracks. (They are considered "secret" because the CD's track listing does not list these titles, leaving the unknowing listener to be surprised at their inclusion.) The trio of surprise numbers is positioned at the very end of the disc, after track #18. One of them is "Jingle Bells," sung by Johnny Mercer. Another one is a tongue-in-cheek parlando version of "Violets For Your Furs," spoken by a 1950s act known as The Continental.

The remaining secret track is a special version of "Toys For Tots," sung by Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, and Nancy Wilson, who are heard in that order. The track is a mix of those artists' separate versions of "Toys For Tots," presumably put together specifically for inclusion in the Christmas Cocktails CD under discussion. So clever is this mix that listeners might be left with the impression that all three singers gathered together to record one single performance. No such event happened: Cole recorded his "Toys For Tots" (master #17965) on November 22, 1957, and Wilson did hers (master #53805) on June 4, 1965.





Personnel

1. The Chipmunks
For her "Toys For Tots," Lee is accompanied by an uncredited group that talks in the manner of the cartoon rodents who, along with David Seville, sang novelty hits such as "The Chipmunk Song" and "The Witch Doctor" in 1958. (Seville created those Chipmunks vocals by recording a trio of human voices at half-speed, and then playing them back at normal speed.)

Since Lee's is the only voice credited in the official documentation that I have consulted, my identification of the group as The Chipmunks is tentative. Independently of whether Seville was or was not involved, the vocal style is identical to the one heard in his Chipmunks recordings. Hence the backing voices of Lee's track must have been created essentially through the same engineering methods that Seville used.

October 2009 addendum to this note: a belated consultation of the Capitol Label Discography has now strengthened the claim that I made in the previous paragraph (originally written in the late 1990s). To wit: text lists The Chipmunks as the accompaniment for this session.


Masters And Sources

1. Master #34349 And Master #34350
Note that, in this session, I have listed together two masters that are separately found in Capitol vaults: #34349 and #34350. Master #34350 is identified in Peggy Lee's Capitol session files as a 'voice track.' Master #34349 apparently contains the pre-recorded, instrumental component of the track.

2. "Toy For Tots" [sic]
Capitol's Peggy Lee session file lists the title of this master as "Toy For Tots." Evidently, the plural particle has been inadvertently skipped from the first noun. The actual single correctly uses the plural for both nouns.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Ralph Carmichael (con), Ralph Carmichael and His Orchestra (acc), Peggy Lee (v), Other Individuals Unknown (unk)

The 1960-1962 Singles Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: July 26, 1960. September 1, 1960. May 19, 1961. November 14, 1962. These four dates were the only singles sessions that Peggy Lee held between 1960 and 1962. (To further clarify, the point being made is that these four sessions were the only ones exclusively dedicated to recording songs for release on singles -- not that those were her only singles within that three-year period. On the contrary, many additional singles were culled by Capitol from Lee's concurrent album sessions.)

Of the songs recorded at this September 1, 1960 date, Capitol promptly issued a couple ("My Gentle Young Johnny" and "I Love Being Here with You") on 45-rpm discs. A third master (When He Makes Music") had to wait till the following year for release, as the flip side of another single. (As for this date's fourth song, it was not meant for commercial release. "Meals For Millions" was a promotional item, intended for charity. See discussion below.)


Meals For Millions And Toys For Tots: The Humanitarian Campaign Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: August 19 and September 1, 1960. Peggy Lee wrote and recorded the song "Meals For Millions" in an effort to promote Meals for Millions, Inc., a non-profit organization for which she served as chairman. This Los Angeles-based organization provided high-protein, multi-purpose food to hunger areas worldwide. Peggy Lee's recording was used as the theme song of the organization's 1962 self-promotional documentary, titled People To People.


Photos

First image: a can of MPF (Multi-Purpose Food), the main product prepared by the non-profit organization Meals For Millions. Founded in 1946, the foundation had as its statement of purpose "the eradication of hunger in the world through three-cent meals." Extant accounts describe the main product as "a tasteless additive that could be mixed with virtually anything to provide one-third of the daily vitamins, minerals, and protein needed by the average adult." As a self-contained organization, Meals For Millions remained in place until 1979, when it merged with another foundation, Freedom From Hunger.

Second image: having acquired the releasing rights for the prospective cast album of the 1960 Broadway show Tenderloin, Capitol proceeded to enlist its roster on the communal task of recording songs from the score. Pride of place was initially given to Peggy Lee's interpretation of a tender ballad, "My Gentle Young Johnny," as shown in the trade ad above. Ultimately, however, the Tenderloin's chart hit turned out to be "Artificial Flowers," a Dickensian tale of woe served by Bobby Darin in the form of a cynically swinging version.


Masters And Issues

1. The Issuing Of "Meals For Millions"
No forty-five-rpm disc release of the song "Meals For Millions" is listed in Capitol's files, and I have never seen one. Nonetheless, a disc was presumably pressed and distributed for promotional, non-commercial purposes. Hence the following remark, made by Gene Handsaker in an interview with Peggy Lee, conducted for the Associated Press: "Peggy Lee spun her latest recording on her turntable. Out came the familiar rich, warm voice pleading not of love or joy in living, but – soybeans!"

2. "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'", Master #34271 (July 26 / September 1, 1960)
Back in the late 1990s, this discography's main source of legitimate information was Capitol's artist (session) logs. Another important source, the Capitol Label Discography, by Michel Ruppli, Bill Daniels and Ed Novitsky, was published in 2007 and did not become available to me until a few years later. One advantage of that 2007 CD-ROM source is that it culled its data not only from artist files but also from other Capitol documents that had not been previously available to me.

There are a few divergences between the above-mentioned sources. One of them pertains to master #34271 ("I'm Gonna Go Fishin' "). Both sources actually agree in assigning master #34271 to this July 26, 1960 date. Only Ruppli's text lists, however, a September 2, 1960 remake with the same master number. Ruppli also includes the following note: "this title is listed in artist files, but issues are listed as using the July 26 version (see session #9570)."

Ideally, a vault search for the relevant tapes should be made, in order to determine whether the text are referring to two different masters or just one. (Also. potentially helpful: an inspection of AFM's reports for both of these sessions.) Since no search has been made. yet, herein I have made the decision to listing master #34271 only under the July 26 session. One determining factor is the sharing of the same master number by the two alleged recordings. Chances are that the second date points to a remastering of #34271 (or, otherwise, some other engineering process applied to that master).

3. "Leave It To Love": Master #34416 (September 1, 1960)
4. "Leave It To Love": Master #39916 (May 31, 1963)
Capitol's session log indicates that Peggy Lee recorded the song "Leave It To Love" twice. Recorded three years apart, the earlier master was numbered 34416, the latter one 39916. Furthermore, the log presents this session's master as the one included in Lee's 1965 album Then Was Then And Now Is Now!, while the 1963 master is listed as unreleased.

An actual search of Capitol's vaults have retrieved no traces of a master #34416, however. Perusal of additional official paperwork has come up empty, too. The Capitol Label Discography adds to and backs up this state of affairs: author Michel Ruppli has placed the words "no information" next to the 1963 master number.

I believe that a numerical duplication was mistakenly made in the session file: number 3[99]16 was inadvertently re-entered as number 3[44]16. To increase the state of confusion, all issues were wrongly listed under that duplicate master number. I have acted in accordance to my belief: in this discography, the duplicate has not been entered. The album Then Was Then And Now Is Now! (along with its derivates) has been re-assigned to master #39916, recorded on May 31, 1963.

This subject matter remains open to further scrutiny, of course. Perhaps a master #34416 will be found one day in the future, after all, even if at the present time it seems unlikely.


Conductors, Arrangers, And Source Disparities

1. Ralph Carmichael
2. Bill Holman
3. "I Love Being Here With You"
4. "When He Makes Music"
As can be seen above, Ralph Carmichael is credited with conducting this date. Oftentimes, press reports and other secondary sources indiscriminately credit conductors with the arrangements of all the songs from the session for which they were responsible. Such was not always the case, as proven by official or reliable data extant from some Peggy Lee sessions.

Peggy Lee's own personal sheet music library is my main source for the identification of Bill Holman as the arranger of "I Love Being Here With You."

The back cover of the LP Extra Special! is one of my sources for the identification of Ralph Carmichael as the arranger of "When He Makes Music" -- the only session master for which I have given him such credit. Another source is Peggy Lee's sheet music library, where a Carmichael arrangement of the song has been preserved.

I have not found reliable arranging credits for the session's two other masters. (Carmichael might or might not be responsible for them.)

Returning to the case of "I Love Being Here With You," the correct identification of its arranger and conductor is a somewhat thorny subject. Two sources credit Holman as conductor: the original 45-rpm single (#4498) and -- probably relying on the credit given on that single -- the Capitol CD set set Miss Peggy Lee.

One source credits Carmichael as conductor: Capitol's session file. According to the file, Ralph Carmichael was the man who conducted not only "I Love Being Here with You" but also all other songs from this September 1, 1960 session.

Which source, if any, is offering fact, and which one is in error? Therein lies the question. Or could it be that both sources are correct? That is to say, could we possibly have two separate conductors on the same date?

After taking onto consideration a variety. of reasonable explanations, I have chosen to operate under the belief that there was only one conductor (Carmichael) but two arrangers at a minimum. As entered in the database above, master #34420 ("I Love Being Here With You") was in my opinion arranged by Bill Holman but conducted by Ralph Carmichael.

In other words, I believe that the 45-rpm single wrongly credits Holman as the conductor of that particular master. Furthermore, I am inclined to think that the error in the credit stemmed from a misreading of the circumstances at play. Because Holman had also arranged and conducted that single's flip side
(and also because he had arranged "I Love Being Here With You"), he was automatically and/or carelessly credited with conducting "I Love Being Here With You" as well.

On a separate but related note, I also suspect that "I Love Being Here With You" was originally attempted but scrapped on July 26, 1960. On that date, it would have indeed been conducted by Holman himself. As mentioned in the notes under that earlier session, there is master that would seem to belong to the date -- #34272 -- but which has been left blank on the label's files. The master was thus either left unused or used, but scrapped after being deemed unsatisfactory (Yet another possibility is that, for one reason or another, producer Dave Cavanaugh moved the information about master #34722 from the July 26 to the September 1 date, giving a new number to the master in the process. In the end, we need to check the AFM session reports for both date, in the hope of clear-cut clarification.)

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Joe Harnell (con, p), Bob Donovan (r, f), Danny Stiles, Phil Sunkel, Willie Thomas (t), Ray De Sio, Mickey Gravine (tb), Dennis Budimir (g), Max K. Bennett (b), Abe Rosen (hrp), Stan Levey (d), Francisco "Chino" Pozo (bo, cng), Peggy Lee (v)

Photos

Original stereo and monophonic editions of the LP on which Capitol released the Basin Street masters under discussion.


Dating

In 1961, February 5 fell on a Sunday. Oddly, the words "nightly except Sunday" appears in the few 1961 Basin Street East trade ads that I have seen. If the ads' wording means that the club was invariably closed on Sundays in 1961, then either (a) Capitol's session files show a wrong date or (b) a special concert took place on that night, perhaps comprising an invited audience.


Sources, Masters, And Dating

Due to the complex nature of the Basin Street East sessions, I have provided a supplementary page with raw data about them (e.g, transcriptions of the Basin Street East dates as they appear in Capitol's session file). That supplementary page also includes my analysis of various conflicting or tentative matters, such as my dating and my (live versus studio) identification of the masters.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Joe Harnell (con, p), Bob Donovan (r, f), Danny Stiles, Phil Sunkel, Willie Thomas (t), Ray De Sio, Mickey Gravine (tb), Dennis Budimir (g), Max K. Bennett (b), Abe Rosen (hrp), Stan Levey (d), Francisco "Chino" Pozo (bo, cng), Peggy Lee (v), Session Musicians (bkv)

Photos

Front and back of the CD which contains all the performances listed above. For further detail, consult the next paragraph.

Sources

Though not listed in Capitol's session files, this concert was found in the company's vaults. It was made commercially available in the form of a Collectors' Choice CD aptly titled Peggy At Basin Street East: The Unreleased Closing Night - February 8, 1961, New York City (#294 2), whose booklet is my main source of information. In a note that is part of the CD's booklet, co-producer Cy Godfrey explains that this concert survived in the form of mis-marked tapes, which "might have been destroyed were they not listed in Capitol's computers as backup or safety tapes made on February 16, 1961. It was not until they were examined and played that we realized that they were the long-lost closing night recordings made on February 8, 1961, and that February 16 was a tape transfer date."


Masters And Songs

1. Instrumentals
2. "Overture"
3. "Peggy Lee's Bow Music"
Among the 14 tracks that are part of Collectors' Choice CD #294 2, there are two instrumentals: an "Overture" with which Joe Harnell and the other musicians open the show (timing: 1:32) and a thematic track titled "Peggy Lee Bow Music" (timing: 1:24), obviously played while the singer is taking her bows.

4. Medleys
5. The Hits Medley
6. The Love Medley
This concert includes 4 medleys. Those are not medleys of the 'garden variety' type (i.e. not the kind of superficial medley which circumscribes itself to just two or three lines from each song). Lee sings a fair number of choruses from each song, and interprets each medley cohesively.

The only arguable exception is the fourth medley, which Peggy Lee jokingly calls "a fruit compote." Dedicated to her hits of yore, Lee sings one fast chorus or two from each of the chosen songs. She still brings a fresh twist to them. New arrangements are heard during "Mañana," "It's A Good Day" and, most notably, "Lover." There are partially different phrasing in some of the selections, too. This hits medley is the concert's encore.

The four medleys are:

a) One Kiss / My Romance / The Most Beautiful Man In The World (Timing: 4:15)
b) But Beautiful / The Second Time Around (Timing: 5:46)
c) Ray Charles Tribute, which begins with a sung intro. (I am tentatively crediting Lee as the songwriter of that brief bit of introductory, special material.) / Hallelujah, I Love Him So / I Got A Man / You Won't Let Me Go / Just For A Thrill / Yes, Indeed! (Timing: 14:30)
d) I Don't Know Enough About You / Mañana / Why Don't You Do Right? / Lover / It's A Good Day (Timing: 4:45)

Comments from a concertgoer (who attended on a different night) suggest that Lee sometimes treated the second medley as a three-song arc about love. Without pausing, she would sing back-to-back and complete versions of "But Beautiful," "I've Never Left You Arms," and "The Second Time Around." (In this session's concert, however, she chose to sing "I've Never Left You Arms" separately.)


Issues

1. "You Won't Let Me Go"
2. Peggy At Basin Street East [CD]
The track listing of Collectors' Choice CD #294 2 misses "You Won't Let Me Go," which is part of Lee's tribute medley to Ray Charles.

3. Peggy Lee's Goodbye To Her Basin Street East Audience
4. Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee [CD]
Notice that Capitol licensed the entire contents of this session to Collectors' Choice, and that Capitol itself has not released any of it. The material that Capitol has issued on its LP and CD incarnations of Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee comes instead from the other Basin Street East sessions listed in this page.

There is, however, one minor exception to the points made in the paragraph above: the instrumental "Peggy Lee's Bow Music" is part of both Capitol and Collectors' Choice releases. Incidentally, Lee is heard at the end of this instrumental, thanking and saying farewell to the audience. Capitol issues end with this farewell but the Collectors' Choice disc continues with one final track -- Lee's encore, aka the hits medley.


Miscellanea

1. Peggy Lee Plugs Frances Faye
2. "It's A Good Day"
While singing "It's A Good Day," Peggy Lee sneaks in the words "don't forget Frances Faye ....... tomorrow!" The winningly raucous performer was indeed scheduled to follow Lee at Basin Street East. (Lee obviously wanted the club to maintain the successful, over-capacity attendance that it had been enjoying during her engagement. And she was fond of Faye as well. I am not completely sure that the singer-pianist was able to start her engagement on the next day, however. I have heard of one Basin Street East engagement that Faye had to postpone due to illness; it could have been this one.)

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Joe Harnell (con, p), Bob Donovan (r, f), Danny Stiles, Phil Sunkel, Willie Thomas (t), Ray De Sio, Mickey Gravine (tb), Dennis Budimir (g), Max K. Bennett (b), Abe Rosen (hrp), Stan Levey (d), Francisco "Chino" Pozo (bo, cng), Peggy Lee (v)

Photos

The 1961-1962 New York nightclub scene offered concert appearances by the likes of Stan Getz (at Birdland), Peggy Lee (at Basin Street East), and Thelonius Monk (at the Village Vanguard). Monk actually attended Lee's Basin Street East concerts on several occasions. Seen in some of the images above is one of the various promotional matchbooks that Basin Street East designed for the enjoyment of Lee's concertgoers. This particular book of matches belonged to her last year at the club (1965).


Songs And Songwriters

1. "I Got A Man"
Peggy Lee sings a gender-altered variation of the song "I Got A Woman," co-written and popularized by Ray Charles. Heard throughout this feminized version are quite a few modified lyrics, perhaps conceived by Lee herself.

2. Renald Richard
The song "I Got A (Wo)man" is credited only to Ray Charles in many issues, including the original Capitol LP Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee. Nonetheless, the song is actually a collaboration between Charles and trumpet player Renald Richard.


Sources, Masters, And Dating

Due to the complex nature of the Basin Street East sessions, I have provided a supplementary page with raw data about them (e.g, transcriptions of the Basin Street East dates as they appear in Capitol's session file). That supplementary page also includes my analysis of various conflicting or tentative matters, such as my dating and my (live versus studio) identification of the masters.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Joe Harnell (con, p), Bob Donovan (r, f), Danny Stiles, Phil Sunkel, Willie Thomas (t), Ray De Sio, Mickey Gravine (tb), Dennis Budimir (g), Max K. Bennett (b), Abe Rosen (hrp), Stan Levey (d), Francisco "Chino" Pozo (bo, cng), Peggy Lee (v)

Photos

Possibly a limited release, the above-seen Capitol 45-rpm single featured one of the live, in-concert numbers from the present session. The same number, "Yes Indeed," was also waxed by the United States Air Force onto a 45-rpm disc, used for recruitment programming.


Songs

1. Tribute Medley To Ray Charles
2. "I Got A Man"
During regular concerts, Peggy Lee sang "I Got A Man" as part of a medley in tribute to Ray Charles. She does so, for instance, in the full concert from February 8 that was released on CD by Collectors' Choice. For this session she performed "I Got A Man" not as part of a medley, however, but as a separate track. (See also parallel comment about "Them There Eyes," in notes under session dated February 28, 1961.)

2. Peggy Lee's Bow Music"
Since master #23467 is an instrumental in which Lee does not play, I have not entered it in this Peggy Lee sessionography. (It was played by the musicians while she was taking her bows.)


Issues

1. Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee [CD]
The track listing of this Capitol CD contains a minor mistake. Its last two tracks are listed in the following manner:

12. A Tribute To Ray Charles:
Just For A Thrill
Yes Indeed
13. Peggy Lee Bow Music

The mistake is that, based on how these selections are tracked by music players, the total number of tracks should be 14. Instead, "Peggy Lee Bow Music" is tracked as #14. Moreover, players track "Yes, Indeed!" as #13 (despite the fact that, being part of the tribute to Ray Charles, it would be more logical to expect "Yes Indeed" among the titles gathered under #12).


Collectors' Corner

1. "Yes, Indeed! / Boston Beans" [45]
Capitol 45-rpm single F 4576 was issued with a picture sleeve. A smiling Peggy has her arms half raised. Her hands are under the collar of the white blouse that she is wearing.


Sources, Masters, And Dating

Due to the complex nature of the Basin Street East sessions, I have provided a supplementary page with raw data about them (e.g, transcriptions of the Basin Street East dates as they appear in Capitol's session file). That supplementary page also includes my analysis of various conflicting or tentative matters, such as my dating and my (live versus studio) identification of the masters.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Other Individuals Unknown (acc), Peggy Lee (v)

Photos

Right place, wrong time: Peggy Lee with society bandleader and concert pianist Stanley Paul. An inline auction of this photo attached a 1961 to it, but Paul's own website gives it a 1962 date. Were 1961 to be the correct year, the likeliest month would then have to be October, when Lee carried out her second Basin Street East engagement of that year.

Wrong place, right time: Peggy Lee, in 1961, with actor Edd Byrnes. This photo appears to have been taken during her July-August visit to London, where she fulfilled a scheduled engagement at the Pigalle nightclub, as well as the taping of a TV special.


Songs

1. Tribute Medley To Billie Holiday
2. "Them There Eyes"
Through her February 1961 Basin Street East engagement, Peggy Lee sang two tribute medleys. One was dedicated to Ray Charles, the other to Billie Holiday. In all likelihood, Lee sang both medleys on most nights, but alternated between them: one was done at the early show, the other at the late show. Taped by Capitol, the Ray Charles medley has been preserved, fortunately.

The Billie Holiday medley does not seem to have been taped, unfortunately. "God Bless The Child" and "Loverman" are among the numbers that Lee probably sang as part of this medley. "Them There Eyes" might have been its centerpiece.

At this studio session, Cavanaugh and Lee decided to reprise not the entire medley but its centerpiece. Lee sings the number in full. "Them There Eyes" was actually a song to which Lee returned often during her career, not only in concert but also on record (1946, 1947, 1952) and on TV (1962, 1983).

(See also parallel comment about the Ray Charles Medley and its "I Got A Man," in notes under session dated February 9, 1961.)

3. One Kiss Medley
4. "The Vagabond King Waltz"
5. "The Most Beautiful Man In The World"
Another medley that Peggy Lee did at the Basin Street East club consisted of the songs "One Kiss," "My Romance" and a varying third number. In the February 8 concert that was issued on CD by Collectors' Choice, the medley's third song is "The Most Beautiful Man In The World." In this studio session, it is instead "The Vagabond King Waltz."

In the interest of variety, Lee probably alternated between "The Most Beautiful Man In The World" and "The Vagabond King Waltz" during her live shows. (As already mentioned, she alternated between her Ray Charles and her Billie Holiday medleys, too. There are also two or three other titles, such as "It All Depends On You" and "Moments Like This," which she did not sing on every show during this run.)

6. Ballad Medley
7. "But Beautiful"
8. "The Second Time Around"
In the February 8 concert that was released by Collectors' Choice, Peggy Lee performs "But Beautiful" and "The Second Time Around" as one ballad medley. At these studio sessions, Lee and Cavanaugh chose to record the two numbers separately.


Arrangements

1. "Them There Eyes"
2. Mundell Lowe
3. Marty Paich
In addition to this session's score by Dick Hazard, Peggy Lee kept two other arrangements of "Them There Eyes" in her sheet music library, one by Mundell Lowe and the other by Marty Paich.


Sources, Masters, And Dating

Due to the complex nature of the Basin Street East sessions, I have provided a supplementary page with raw data about them (e.g, transcriptions of the Basin Street East dates as they appear in Capitol's session file). That supplementary page also includes my analysis of various conflicting or tentative matters, such as my dating and my identification of the masters as either live taping or studio recordings.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Other Individuals Unknown (acc), Peggy Lee (v)

Photos

Hellos and goodbyes. The first hand waving was made from the 20th Century Unlimited. In late January 1961, the express train took Lee to New York, where the just discussed Basin Street East engagement took place.

The precise context under which the second handwaving took place is not known to me. I suspect the occasion to have been Lee's arrival from her London engageme If so, the date would be August 1961 -- or, otherwise, late July. Perhaps the words above Lee's head serves as a clue that her trip was on an American Airllines airplane.


Songs And Cross-references

1. "Moments Like This"
Lane and Loesser's "Moments Like This" seems to have been a favorite Peggy Lee standard. She taped or recorded quite a few versions. There are three studio masters (February 19, 1960; March 1, 1961; September 8, 1992 ), one extant live performance (February 5, 1961) and one televised broadcast (May 25, 1966).

Of course, she probably sang this number often through her Basin Street East engagement, although not on every show. For the sake of variety, Lee is likely to have skipped "Moments Like This" at times, substituting it with another ballad (possibly "It All Depends On You").


Issues

1. Capitol #4576 [45]
2. "Moments Like This"
3. "Boston Beans"
According to an oral report for which I have no official confirmation, this studio recording of "Moments Like This" was slated for release as a single. Ultimately, however, it was excluded from release not only on 45-rpm disc but also on all other formats. The producers of The Singles Collection made the smart decision of finally releasing it in that CD set, on the rationale that -- though previously unissued -- it had been originally intended for 45-rpm issue, after all.

It occurs to me that "Moments Like This" might have been originally planned for inclusion in Capitol single #4576. That 45-rpm disc does include one song from the Basin Street sessions ("Yes, Indeed!"). The flip side features "Boston Beans" (recorded on April 15, 1961), which bears no relation to Basin Street East, however.

A Capitol ad for single #4576 suggests that it was rush-released, and that the reason for the rush was the unexpected demand for "Boston Beans," particularly in the Massachusetts record market. If this information is true (rather than mere promotional overstatement), then perhaps Cavanaugh decided to bump "Moments Like This" out of the single in favor of the interest-arising "Boston Beans."

4. Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee [Jukebox EP]
The catalogue number X-1520 belongs to the jukebox EP edition of Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee. The set consists of the following quintet of stereophonic 33.3 rpm 7" discs,:

X1 1520 - "Fever" & "Moments Like This"
X2 1520 - "Medley: One Kiss-My Romance/ The Vagabond King Waltz" & "The Second Time Around"
X3 1520 - "I Got A Man" & "Yes Indeed"
X4 1520 - "I Love Being Here With You" & "Them There Eyes"
X5 1520 - "Day In - Day Out" & "But Beautiful"

This jukebox set thus culls 12 of the 13 tracks sung by Lee in the LP counterpart. The left-out track was "Just For A Thrill."

An additional note, pertaining to jukebox EPs in general. Oftentimes, discs such as the ones from the EP under discussion wound up being sold as separate pieces. Online auction sites sometimes misrepresent their true nature, failing to acknowledge that they were originally part of a larger unit.

5. The Album Basin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee In The Music Charts And At The Grammys
This long play entered Billboard's Best-Selling Pop LPs chart on the week of September 11, 1961 and thereby became Peggy Lee's 12th album entry. It peaked at #77 on its 3rd week (September 25, 1961 issue) and spent 22 weeks in this chart. (For her previous album entry, see earlier session, dated March 28, 1959).

Held on May 29, 1962, the fourth Grammy awards ceremony downsized its awards for best female popular singer from two to one. The category was renamed Best Solo Vocal, Female. Also, this time all nominations were for albums, none for singles. Those differences aside, tidings in this category went almost as usual: Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee were nominated for the fourth straight year -- Fitzgerald for an album that the Academy listed as Mr. Paganini. (I presume that the album in question is the one officially titled Ella In Hollywood, whose most popular song was "Mr. Paganini.") On this occasion, the winner was not Fitzgerald but Judy Garland, for her concert piece Live At Carnegie Hall. The other two nominees were Billie Holiday and Lena Horne.


Sources, Masters, And Dating

Due to the complex nature of the Basin Street East sessions, I have provided a supplementary page with raw data about them (e.g, transcriptions of the Basin Street East dates as they appear in Capitol's session file). That supplementary page also includes my analysis of various conflicting or tentative matters, such as my dating and my (live versus studio) identification of the masters.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Quincy Jones (con), Benny Carter, Buddy Collette (as), Bill Green, Bill Perkins (ts), Jack Nimitz (bar), Robert "Bob" Fowler, Conrad Gozzo, Al Porcino, Jack Sheldon (t), Vernon "Vern" Friley, Lewis "Lew" McCreary, Frank Rosolino (tb), Bob Knight (bt), Dennis Budimir (g), Max K. Bennett (b), Frank Strazzeri (p), Stan Levey (d), Francisco "Chino" Pozo (cng, per), Peggy Lee (v)

The Blues Cross Country Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: April 14, 15, 17 and 19, 1961. May 19, 1961.


Photos

Mono and stereophonic editions of the LP on which US Capitol originally released this session's masters.


Sources And Personnel

1. Reliability
I have three main sources for the personnel of the 1961 Blues Cross Country sessions: Capitol's Peggy Lee sessions file, the booklet of the official CD issue (Capitol Jazz #724352008827, produced by Michael Cuscuna), and Michel Ruppli's The Capitol Label Discography. To simplify this commentary, I will call these three sources A, B, and C, respectively. There is also a fourth source of note, the booklet of the Public Domain CD Blues Cross Country / If You Go from the Fresh Sound company, identified in the paragraphs below as source D.

Out of these four sources, I consider B (the Capitol Jazz CD) the most trustworthy, in part because of my assumption that producer Michael Cuscuna and company consulted the session reports at the American Federations of Musicians. (The rationale behind the assumption: Cuscuna is known to have done so for many of the jazz-oriented releases in which he has been involved.) On the matter of session personnel, the AFM reports are considered the most reliable of all the existent sources. (It is still healthy to bear in mind that, even if my assumption that source B comes from the AFM reports were to be proven correct, we should never discard the possibility of human error, particularly during the process of transcribing and printing information.)

Although my four sources do agree to a large extent, there are discrepancies among them, especially in the matter of which musicians were present for each session, and less significantly in the identification of instruments played. Sources B, C, and D are actually closely aligned, with a few exceptions, such as the sax distribution for this April 14, 1961 date.

Source A is, by far the most divergent of the four. It gives a collective personnel for all the April 1961 dates, and no personnel for the May 19, 1961 sessions. The collectivity already marks this source as less valuable than the other three sources form, which for generally form an unified, agreeing group. (Most likely, source D consulted source B, and source C consulted one or more of the other sources.)

Among the more specific points that also diminish the value of source A is its listing of three musicians who are nowhere to be found in the other sources (pianist Lou Levy, trumpet players Frank Beach and Manny Klein). Compounding that source's shortcomings is the fact that it lists the dates' pianist(s) as "Lou Levy or Jimmy Rowles."

After studying and comparing the four sources, I have come to suspect that the personnel listed in source A was a projected or tentative one. A scheduled or planned personnel could explain the source's inclusion of Lou Levy, who was Peggy Lee's regular piano accompanist during these years, and who might have not participated in these sessions either because his technique was deemed unsuitable to the brassy dates planned or, more likely, because he was otherwise occupied (perhaps playing for Ella Fitzgerald, as he is known to have done from time to time during these years, when not working for Peggy Lee).

Other specific personnel divergences among the four sources will be discussed more in the notes under each of the Blues Cross Country sessions, including this one. Herein, suffice it to reiterate that I have chosen B as my primary source, and that I will be using these session notes to point out disagreements between B and my other sources.

2. Saxophones: Source Divergences
Sources A and C claim Plas Johnson and Bill Perkins on tenor saxes, Benny Carter and Bill Green on alto saxes. Sources B and D agree on Carter and Perkins only, listing Green on tenor instead of alto and omitting Johnson. Sources B and D also add Buddy Collette on alto sax.

3. Piano: Source Divergences
Source A list "Lou Levy or Jimmy Rowles" as the date's pianist; all other sources identify the pianist as Frank Strazzeri.

4. Percussion: Source Divergences
For this session, Chino Pozo is listed as playing conga and bongo according to source A, bongos (plural) but no conga according to source C. Meanwhile, sources B and D list him not on bongo but on conga and percussion.

5. Trumpets: Source Divergences
As already pointed out, source A lists six trumpet players, while all other sources list four. The additional players in source A are Frank Beach and Manny Klein.


Arrangers And Arrangements

1. Quincy Jones
The Capitol album Blues Cross Country credits all its arrangements to the album's conductor, Quincy Jones. Collective credits such as this one often prove to be inaccurate generalizations. I have thus abstained from crediting Jones, except fro those cases in which Peggy Lee's sheet music library holds arrangements under his name.

2. Dick Hazard
3. "Kansas City"
There is one arrangement of "Kansas City" in Lee's library, and it is credited to Dick Hazard. Because I have not been able to inspect the arrangement or to verify that it is the same one used for the album's version, this credit should be deemed tentative. Hence both Quincy Jones and Dick Hazard remain in contention as possible authors of the "Kansas City" arrangement.


Masters And Dating

1. "Goin' To Chicago Blues" [Master #35743]
In Capitol's session file, Lee's performance of "Goin' To Chicago Blues" appears under this session. In the discographical information provided by the Capitol Jazz CD Blues Cross Country, it is found under the next date. Meanwhile, the Capitol Label Discography by Ruppli et al lists the song title under both sessions, and clarifies that the April 15 entry was a a remake.

It thus seems that Lee and company first attempted "Goin' To Chicago Blues" on April 14, then on the 15th. The master number of the April 14 performance (35743) was re-assigned to the April 15 remake. Since the Capitol documentation at my reach gives no clear indication that this April 14 performance of "Goin' To Chicago Blues" was preserved, I have included master number 35743 only under the April 15 date.


Issues

1. Blues Cross Country [Jukebox EP]
The catalogue number XE-1671 belongs to the jukebox EP version of Blues Cross Country. The EP set consists of the following 33-rpm discs, all of them released only in stereo:

Xe1 671 & Xe2 671 - "Kansas City" & "Basin Street Blues"
Xe3 671 & Xe4 671 - "Los Angeles Blues" & "I Lost My Sugar In Salt Lake City"
Xe5 671 & Xe5 671 - "The Grain Belt Blues" & "New York City Blues"
Xe7 671 & Xe6 671 - "Goin' To Chicago Blues" & "San Francisco Blues"
Xe9 671 & Xe10 671 - "Boston Beans" & "St. Louis Blues"

This jukebox set thus culls 10 of the 12 songs from its LP counterpart, leaving out "Fisherman's Wharf" and "The Train Blues."

An additional side note, pertaining to jukebox EPs in general. Oftentimes, discs such as the ones from the EP under discussion wound up being sold as separate pieces. Online auction sites sometimes misrepresent their true nature, failing to acknowledge that they were originally part of a larger unit.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Quincy Jones (con), Benny Carter, Bill Green (as), John "Plas" Johnson, Bill Perkins (ts), Jack Nimitz (bar), Robert "Bob" Fowler, Conrad Gozzo, Al Porcino, Jack Sheldon (t), Vernon "Vern" Friley, Lewis "Lew" McCreary, George Roberts, Frank Rosolino (tb), Dennis Budimir, Howard Roberts (g), Max K. Bennett (b), James "Jimmy" Rowles (p), Stan Levey (d), Francisco "Chino" Pozo (cng, per), Peggy Lee (v)

The Blues Cross Country Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: April 14, 15, 17 and 19, 1961. May 19, 1961.


Photos

Promotional Capitol issues. Released in 1962, the two above-seen LPs contain the exact same tracks, though they have been sequenced differently for the budget alternative. "Goin' To Chicago Blues" was also the Blues Cross Country track chosen for inclusion on the flip side of the promotional 45-rpm single shown last.


Songs

1. "The Grain Belt Blues (Orange Blues)"
A couple of sources, including Capitol's session files, give the sub-title "Orange Blues" to this song. However, the sub-title is followed by a question mark, which presumably means that the redactor was in doubt about the sub-title's validity as part of the song's official name.


Masters And Dating

1. "Goin' To Chicago Blues" [Master #35743]
The inclusion of master #35743 in this April 15, 1961 session is based on discographical information provided by the Capitol Jazz CD Blues Cross Country, and reiterated in the Capitol Label Discography. Peggy Lee's session file, on the other hand, dates the master one day earlier (April 14, 1961). As explained in the previous session, I have given more credence to the information provided by the Michael Cuscuna-produced CD.


Arrangements

Copies of this session's scores exist in Peggy Lee's music sheet library. All four library arrangements are indeed credited to Quincy Jones.


Issues And Cross-references

1. Single #4576 [45]
2. "Boston Beans"
See commentary under session dated March 1, 1961.


Personnel, Sources And Cross-references

1. Sources For Personnel
See note under session dated April 14, 1961, where sources A, B, C, and D (to be mentioned below) are identified by name.

2. Trumpets: Source Divergences
3. Percussion: Source Divergences
See equivalent notes under April 14, 1961 session.

4. Trombones: Source Divergences
Source A is the only one that lists Bob Knight on bass trombone. All other sources add George Roberts to the list of trombone players, and give no specification as to whether a bass trombone was played by any of the musicians.

5. Piano: Source Divergences
All sources list Jimmy Rowles on piano, but source A is more tentative ("Lou Levy or Jimmy Rowles").

6. Guitar(s): Source Divergences
Source A is the only one that lists one guitarist (Dennis Budimir). All other sources list both Budimir and Howard Roberts.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Cavanaugh (pdr), Quincy Jones (con), Benny Carter, Bill Green (as), Buddy Collette, Justin Gordon (ts), Jack Nimitz (bar), Robert "Bob" Fowler, Conrad Gozzo, Al Porcino, Jack Sheldon (t), Vernon "Vern" Friley, Lewis "Lew" McCreary, Frank Rosolino (tb), Bob Knight (bt), Dennis Budimir (g), Max K. Bennett (b), James "Jimmy" Rowles, Frank Strazzeri (p), Stan Levey (d), Francisco "Chino" Pozo (cng, per), Peggy Lee (v)

The Blues Cross Country Album Sessions (Cross-references)

Dates: April 14, 15, 17 and 19, 1961. May 19, 1961.


Photos

In Japan, Blues Cross Country was released on LP at least three times. Red vinyl was used for the earliest of these editions, which bears catalogue number CP 7323. I do not have a release date, but believe it to have come out not long after the American original. Also pictured above is the last Japanese LP release of which I have knowledge. Ecj 60110 dates from 1976.


Arrangers And Arrangements

1. Quincy Jones
The credit to Quincy Jones for both of this session's arrangements is based on the existence of copies of such arrangements, under his name, in Peggy Lee's music sheet library.


Masters And Dating

1. "San Francisco Blues" [Master #35759]
In Capitol's session file, Lee's performance of "San Francisco Blues" appears under this session. Ditto for the discographical information provided by the Capitol Jazz CD Blues Cross Country. However, the Capitol Label Discography by Ruppli et al lists the song title under both this session and the next one, further clarifying that the April 19 master was a remake.

We can thus gather that Lee and company first attempted "San Francisco Blues" on April 17, and re-tried it next on the 19th. The master number of the April 17 performance (35759) was re-assigned to the April 19 remake. Since the Capitol documentation gives no indication that both days' performances are preserved, I have included the "San Francisco Blues" master only under the April 19 date.


Personnel, Sources And Cross-references

1. Sources For Personnel
See note under session dated April 14, 1961, where sources A, B, C, and D (to be mentioned below) are identified by name.

2. Trumpets: Source Divergences
Source A is the only one that lists Frank Beach and Manny Klein as participating in this session.

3. Trombones: Source Divergences
All sources but C list Bob Knight as a member of this session, either on bass trombone (A, D) or just in trombone (B). Source C lists instead George Roberts on bass trombone.

4. Tenor Saxes: Source Divergences
Source A is the only one that lists Plas Johnson and Bill Perkins on tenor saxes. The other sources list instead Buddy Collette and Justin Gordon.

5. Piano: Source Divergences
Source A refers to "Lou Levy or Jimmy Rowles" as the pianist. The other sources list both Rowles and Frank Strazzeri. If both pianists truly participated in the session, Rowles presumably did so throughout one of the performances, Strazzeri through the other.

6. Percussion: Source Divergences
See equivalent note under the April 14, 1961 session.