Postscript; Peggy Lee.(The Talk of the Town)(Obituary)

All entertainers have, to use Noel Coward's phrase, a talent to amuse, but Peggy Lee, who died last week at the age of eighty-one, had something else as well: a talent to be amused. She swung with a sense of humor, and handled lyrics with an uncynical knowingness, letting you in on the little secret of whatever song she happened to be singing, or, at least, letting you know that she had a secret. Unlike Frank Sinatra, her peer in musical intelligence, she had a voice that didn't command you to pay attention; it suggested that you might have a lot of fun if you did. There was something about Peggy Lee that didn't invite a listener all the way in, though that quality, instead of being off-putting, made the intimacy she did allow feel special. In one of the songs she wrote for the Disney movie "Lady and the Tramp," two cats (Lee provided their voices) lay out the facts of their existence: "We are Siamese if you please. We are Siamese if you don't please." A famous perfectionist when it came to her performances -- she controlled the technical as well as the musical elements of her shows -- Peggy Lee knew what she was about, and that purring self-containment and sureness of footing make even her earliest recordings, which are now sixty years old, sound distinctive and mature. Her voice wasn't big, but it was womanly -- it had hips. She told Whitney Balliett in 1985, "People say my voice is thin or small, but I have a lot more voice than I ever use. I ration it, and it's lasting very nicely." By that time, she had become the rather grand Miss Peggy Lee, and had sheathed herself in a weird casing of extraterrestrial glamour -- the platinum wig, the beaded headdress, the heavy makeup, the ...