Black Coffee

WHAT NYMITH SAYS

Peggy Lee was a truly phenomenal singer but the remarkable thing about this album is that it showed she was still viable in the 50s - a rare thing for a 40s singer. It's true her best years were behind her but her best years were with Benny Goodman. Talk about an unbeatable accompaniment!

Black Coffee was Lee's first album, released in 1953 as a ten inch record just a year before the record companies gave up on that idea. In 1956 it got reissued in the new format with four newly recorded tracks to fill out the space ('You're My Thrill,' 'There's a Small Hotel,' 'It Ain't Necessarily So' and 'Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You'). By this time, rock and roll and hot jazz had reduced all singers like Lee to the status of Mom and Pop Entertainment. Unfairly, for Lee and her arrangers were better than that. The original sessions were remarkably stripped down with piano, trumpet, bass and drums and the new additions made only sparing use of harp and vibraphone. This is classy stuff, fitting for a lady of Lee's calibre, yet the producer never got a credit.

'Black Coffee' is a total classic. Pete Candoli's trumpet sells the seedy, run-down atmosphere and Paul Francis Webster's lyric is a gem of despondency. However, it's Lee's performance that settles the matter. There's an edge to her singing such that when she starts in on how "man is born to go a-lovin' / a woman's born to weep and fret" you can hear the irony in it yet she still sings it in an intensely moody manner. A perfect performance - one of her best.

What else is on offer? Plenty of sultriness both on the playful 'Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You?' and the dirge like intensity of 'You're My Thrill' (which is powerful enough to make the harp fall in line). There's her sly, wonderful take on the Porgy and Bess number 'It Ain't Necessarily So.' Her rendition of 'Love Me or Leave Me' has plenty of zest. She also does two Cole Porter numbers - 'I've Got You Under My Skin' and 'My Heart Belongs to Daddy.' Peggy Lee had the playgirl persona necessary to do a good Cole Porter rendition (more on that when I review Ella Sings the Cole Porter Songbook) and 'My Heart Belongs to Daddy' revves up to become the most energetic and dramatic performance on this setlist.

Bad news is, as always, more obvious showtunes are included. In this case, 'I Didn't Know What Time It Was' is vaguely irritating while 'There's a Small Hotel' is cloying and cutesy. Both are Rodgers & Hart gingerbread fluff with typical singsong melodies. Both are rather tiresome. Neither should be on this record.

More interesting is 'When the World was Young,' which is more of a recital than a song. In it a Parisian coquette looks back on her life and rues her lost innocence. It's kind of hokey but it is trying to say something and, teetering on the brink of the new school of popular music, it makes one realise just how depressing it must have been for the loyal Songbook performers to watch standards (in both senses of the word) fall by the wayside. For about ten years rock would exist for teenagers only - it would be democratic, experimental, full of energy and over time would gain sophistication but it was not in a hurry to put on adult shoes. The folk traditions, blues and country would hold a monopoly until Dylan went electric. On the other side of that gap we got songs like 'A Day in the Life,' 'The Needle and the Damage Done,' 'Waterloo Sunset' and 'The Bewlay Brothers' but if for some reason you're approaching music in a chronological order ... that's a long time coming (and perhaps my overlong response to this song is a clue I've been in the 50s TOO. DAMN. LONG).

Verdict: Black Coffee shows that Peggy Lee was still at the top of her game during the early-to-mid 50s, offering sophisticated entertainment, keeping the Songbook viable and, like Lena Horne with Stormy Weather the following year, keeping her edge and remaining an icon. It's got a bit of filler and could probably be boiled back down to a ten inch, but it's definitely strong enough to get a firm recommendation and is an essential listen for Peggy Lee fans.

WHAT TICHARU SAYS

Black Coffee is a near perfect record by a near perfect singer. Pretty close anyway! The band is great, it's tasteful, it swings and there aren't any syrupy strings. Peggy finds emotional content in everything and somehow it's believable. Great record.

So why are we only giving it 8 stars? Well, maybe it's not a perfect selection of songs and perhaps because Peggy doesn't really push the envelope. She sings standards better than anyone but is that enough? It's enough for 8 stars out of 10 in the Cold Coffee Library that's for sure.

The copy I have of this record (on CD) includes the album Songs From Pete Kelly's Blues. Great combination, a personal favourite, listened to it many times. If you're looking for a great record in this genre you've arrived. If you've never heard Peggy Lee, well suffice to say, she was the best. Well, she was among the best. Hard to say exactly why that is, maybe because she had a rough childhood or maybe it was the botched throat surgery. The knock on the head couldn't have helped.

Black Coffee... check it out!