“Fever when you hold me tight…” Without exaggeration, the sultry singing of Peggy Lee (1920–2002) remains one of the most recognizable voices in recorded music.

Peggy Lee

Born Norma Deloris Egstrom, she got her break as a vocalist in Benny Goodman’s big band in the early 1940s. However, Peggy Lee was much more than a master of sensuous sophistication: in a career stretching over six decades, she wrote more than 270 compositions for the likes of Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, and Paul McCartney, and is widely considered one of the first female singer-songwriters in American pop and jazz history