CoronaVinyl Day 15 (Oldest Record You Own): Rendezvous with Peggy Lee by Peggy Lee

For an explanation of CoronaVinyl, click here.

Today's CoronaVinyl category is "oldest record you own."  This was a little challenging for a few reasons.  Not all records have a copyright date on the album cover, which means I have to look it up.  Even then, some records have been reissued several times (including within several years of each other), so many times, there's no telling if the version I have was the oldest version of a record or not.  And on top of that, I have several 10-inch records and 78s, the latter of which I don't have the capacity to play on my turntable.  So, I did the best I could.  I excluded 10-inch records and 78s, as well as non-musical records (I have acquired a couple story LPs over the years, as well as General MacArthur's Farewell Address, which I don't feel the need to bore you or me with.)

With that, I settled on Peggy Lee's Rendezvous with Peggy Lee.  It was originally released in 1948 as a set of 78s with six songs, and I believe the version I have was released in 1955 as a 12-inch LP.  

Probably most famous to those of us born after the Greatest Generation for her 1958 Top 10 hit -- and COVID-19-relevant song -- "Fever," Peggy Lee was a highly successful jazz and pop music singer in the '40s and '50s, as well as a very accomplished songwriter and a both a live and voice actress.  For instance, in addition to writing the songs for Disney's Lady and the Tramp, she voiced four characters (Darling, Peg, Si, and Am).  She was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 1955's Pete Kelly's Blues.  Unlike many of her contemporaries, she embraced rock and roll when it came around, and she often recorded albums that included covers of rock songs (along with standards and her own songs).  All in all, Lee had 47 Top 40 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 (or its predecessors) between 1941 and 1969, including 12 Top 10s and two #1s.

My version of Rendezvous with Peggy Lee seems to be a compilation of songs that she released between 1946 and the early '50s.  It has 12 songs, including the six from the 1948 release.  The songs are pretty standard loungey jazz and pre-rock-and-roll pop fare that you would expect your grandparents (or possibly great grandparents, depending on how old you are) to have been listening to post-war.  Lee has a great voice.  It can be sultry, haunting, or playful, depending on what the mood of the song.  The Spotify version looks like it's only the six songs on the original 1948 release, so I limited my song selections to those six songs.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Why Don't You Do Right (Get Me Some Money Too)"
This is a jazzy song where Lee tells her man to get the hell out of her face "and get me some money too."  I guess not much has changed in 72 years.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Don't Smoke in Bed"
I chose this one not because of its music, but because of its message of fire safety and prevention.  It hit #22 on the charts in 1948.  It also makes me think of how much everything must have stank of smoke in the '40s.