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Ghost Canyon

Title - Fever: A Peggy Lee Celebration!
Artist - Ann Hampton Callaway

For those unaware, with her artist legacy series, pop/jazz vocalist and songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway paid homage to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan on two critically-acclaimed CDs while staying true to her artistic aesthetic.

Callaway continues that series withFever: A Peggy Lee Celebration!, which highlights the songwriting talents of Lee, who wrote or co-wrote over 270 songs in her lifetime, and features two of Lee’s compositions that have never before been recorded.

One, a poem written by Lee titled Clair De Lune, Callaway composed music for; the other, a premiere of The Other Part of Me, a song written by Lee and Paul Horner for the 1983 autobiographical Broadway musical, Peg.

Featured on two tracks is special guest John Pizzarelli, another connection to Lee, whose favorite guitar player, after her husband, Dave Barbour, was John’s father, Bucky Pizzarelli.

The recording came on the heels of Callaway’s show, Fever: The Peggy Lee Century, 100th birthday celebration of the singer, at the New York City supper club 54 Below for which she just received a BroadwayWorld nomination for Best Celebrity Show.

1. Fever
2. Til There Was You
3. The Glory of Love (feat. John Pizzarelli)
4. The Folks Who Live on the Hill
5. Sing a Rainbow
6. I Don’t Know Enough About You
7. Clair de Lune
8. Black Coffee
9. I Love Being Here With You (feat. John Pizzarelli)
10. The Other Part of Me
11. Johnny Guitar
12. Where Can I Go Without You?
13. This Is a Very Special Day / It’s a Good Day
14. Angels On Your Pillow

This highly-intoxicating, and warmly-heartfelt new album opens on a deeply-grooved piano track, the titular Fever and the bossa nova imbibed Til There Was You and then follows those up with the quietly perky The Glory of Love (featuring John Pizzarelli), the Kern/Hammerstein ballad The Folks Who Live on the Hill, the dulcet Sing a Rainbow, and then come the low slung swing of I Don’t Know Enough About You and the impassioned Clair de Lune (which was inspired by Lee’s fascination with the love affair between French composer Claude Debussy and a woman named Gabrielle Gaby DuPont).

Along next is, perhaps, one of the greatest torch songs ever written, Callaway has since mused, the spirited Black Coffee and the effervescent I Love Being Here With You (featuring John Pizzarelli) and they are in turn backed seamlessly by the enthused The Other Part of Me, the veritably rhapsodized Johnny Guitar (a Victor Young-Peggy Lee collaboration written for the 1953 film of the same name), the album rounding out on the beautiful Where Can I Go Without You?, the elegant medley This Is a Very Special Day / It’s a Good Day, coming to a close on the stoically embodied Angels On Your Pillow.

Ann Hampton Callaway comes from an artistic background, her parents were John Callaway, a legendary TV and radio journalist, and Shirley Callaway, a pianist, performer and revered voice teacher. She writes in her liner notes: I like to say I was raised on milk, and Fever, because Peggy’s iconic hit came out the year I was born and pulsed through our little Chicago walk-up like a welcoming heartbeat.

Lee’s many records were spinning on her parent’s turntable, sparking Callaway’s lifelong love of the pop/jazz icon.

As Callaway matured, she especially appreciated how Lee’s less-is-more approach to her singing lent her songs beauty, mystery and vulnerability. And, when she discovered what a brilliant and prolific songwriter Lee was, she became an even more defining inspiration to her.

Curious and genetically-inclined to do her research like her father, who knew more about the people he interviewed than the people themselves, according to Callaway, she was inspired to explore beyond Lee’s world-facing persona and the hit songs such as Fever.

She was also fortunate to have access to the deeply personal stories behind the music through her friendship with Holly Foster Wells, sole granddaughter of Peggy Lee and administrator for the estate.

Their friendship led to the enviable once-in-a-lifetime creative opportunity for Callaway, bestowed upon her by Wells, resulting in the recording debut of the two new Lee works, hidden gems entrusted by Wells to Callaway, that make this legacy project unique.

With these 14 spellbinding tracks on Fever: A Peggy Lee Celebration, Callaway provides a deeper look into the prodigious songwriting talent of Lee, who some regard as the first female singer-songwriter, burnishing her legacy as a trailblazer for women in the music business.

To me, Ann is helping to finish some of the work that my grandmother started, Wells says. She chose all of the songs for the album, and I think my grandmother would love how Ann focused so much on her songwriting, something she was very proud of.

Fever - Ann Hampton Callaway (Official Video)

www.annhamptoncallaway.com

Ann Hampton Callaway @ Facebook

Ann Hampton Callaway @ Instagram

www.palmetto-records.com





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