Category: Love Poetry

I fell in love with Peggy Lee in 1955. It was love at first sight. She was a tall, blonde bombshell. Thirty-five years old.

Me, I was nine. And short for my age.

Some kids get a crush on a teacher. Never happened to me though. Why? Because all my teachers up to that point were wrinkly, mean, old bats who didn’t even like kids, especially boys!

So… I got a crush on sex symbol instead.

And so how did I ‘meet’ the famous Ms. Lee? Well, I’d seen the animated Walt Disney movie The Lady and the Tramp earlier that year. Of course, I had no idea who Peggy Lee even was, let alone that she’d played some part in that film’s production.

However, one night a couple months later, The Wonderful World of Disney aired a half-hour documentary on the making of that movie. And part of that program focused on the producing of that film’s soundtrack, with clips showing some of the behind-the-scenes work going on in the sound studio.

And there she was.

Now see, in the movie there are a pair of villainous, female Siamese cats named Si and Am. And together they sing this catchy little duet called “We Are Siamese, If You Please.” I was fascinated!

And I learned from the documentary that both of their voices were recorded by the same person: one Peggy Lee. And me being only nine, and it being way back in the mid-fifties when just about nobody had a clue about anything technological, I was confused as to how she could possibly have sung both of those voices at the same time! I mean, one person, yet two harmonizing voices? At the same time?

That she could do that seemed… magical… so (along with the fact that she was obviously some beautiful fairytale princess) she beat out Roy Rogers’ wife, Dale Evans, and Superman’s Lois Lane in the pageant of my current, preadolescent heart throbs.

Very soon after, I went to work pestering my parents to buy me the set of little, yellow, plastic, 78 rpm Disney records featuring the music from The Lady and the Tramp. And they’d succumbed. Then I practically wore out the single with Ms. Lee singing “We are Siamese.”

Plus… I used to think about her a lot of the time. I mean a lot of the time. Like I said, I had a crush.

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OK. So, time went by, as it always does. Well, only a year, actually. And then, suddenly, there she was again in my life. Only this time as a disembodied voice coming over the radio! And it wasn’t some silly little ditty she was crooning this time. No sir!

By 1956, I’d become quite the little radio head. Mom and Dad had got me this small blue AM radio, and that had become my lifeline to the phantom Boy Friend-and-Girl Friend World that I was aspiring to enter. And with an extension cord, I’d snaked it right in under my bed, so at night I only had to lean down over the bedside and work the magic of the dial. So many stations. So many pop love songs. And yeah, I was learning fast that… there was a lot to BE learned by paying close attention to what the popular artists were actually crooning about in between the lines of the lyrics.

Now unfortunately Mom harbored some very repressive holdover-tendancies from her early, churchy, holy-roller-days’-upbringing, especially where the subject of ‘the birds and the bees‘ were concerned. So that meant that there were often fragments of mysterious (to me) conversations I’d overhear from the big people talking in the next room, say– topics that I quickly learned I hadn’t better show any interest in finding out about, not if I knew what was good for me.

For instance, one day I stopped the family dinner-table chitchat cold in its tracks by just innocently asking, right in front of God and everybody, “Uhhmmm, hey, what’s sex, anyway?” Man oh man, did I ever get rousted right out of my chair and summarily dragged straight into my room! “You know very well what it is!” she accused, just before slamming my door and leaving me, the new prison inmate, lost and confused… and contemplating, I do? I already know what it IS? How can I already know what it is when…I don’t KNOW what it is?

But radio broadcasts? They didn’t give one rat’s patooty about absolute censorship, at least like Mom did. Oh it was still the repressive 50’s and all so, yeah, they didn’t actually spell everything right out or anything (like that), but there were hints all through the music everywhere. So yes, you could get… hints… and then your job was to try your darndest to imagine what they must be singing about in between those lyrics’ lines…

It was like trying to crack a secret code. But– enquiring minds needed to know. At least mine did. So that was a mission I was usually on.

So one day I bought Johnny Otis’s 1958 hit 45, “Willie Does the Hand Jive.” And when Mom first heard me playing it, she got as prickly as some old wet hen. She just assumed it just had to be referring to something deliciously naughty. (Turns out it really wasn’t though.)

“I know a cat named Way Out Willie…

Got a cool little chick named Rocking Millie…

He can walk and stroll and Susie-Q

And do that crazy hand-jive too…

Hand jive! Hand jive! Hand jive…

Doin’ that crazy hand jive!”

“Don’t think I don’t know what that’s about!” she growled.

“What?! Jeez, Ma! I think it’s just some new dance they’re doing!”

She definitely wasn’t crazy about that song! Which meant I really liked it, even though I didn’t have clue #1 about what the hand jive might even look like. But, since any message it contained (which it actually didn’t) appeared too crafty for even her to figure out or put her finger on (i.e., it didn’t contain any blatant “blaspheming” like, you know, the actual word “SEX”), her argument was too weak to even get off the ground. So I got to keep that 45.

But you can see what I was up against…

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So one day in the steamy summer of ‘1958, Peggy Lee’s signature new siren song came a-wafting right over the old WABI AM airwaves. Yes, I’m talking about that sweaty, hypnotic, little finger-snapping number. You know the one: Fever.” And boy, did I ever do a double-take first time I heard that song! (Actually I pretty much continued doing double-takes every time I heard it after that.) And whenever that song played on the radio (which was just about every hour on every station across America!), I’d just find myself ever-so-slowly swaying back and forth in time to its slow rhythm. I couldn’t help it. It just seemed to happen on its own. The song had me in its thrall every time.

And oh, those were some pretty intriguing lyrics for a ten-year old little monk locked in his monastery cell, like I was. And for the first time in my little life, I was listening to a song that projected… atmosphere! I mean “Fever” took me somewhere. Somewhere else. Somewhere dark and delicious and private. Somewhere (I had no doubt) that I wasn’t supposed to be. But somewhere I perversely… liked.

I listened to that song over and over and over. And my inquisitive, prurient little mind worked tirelessly on decoding its coded secrets.

“They give you fever… when you kiss them
Fever if you live and learn…
Fever! Till you sizzle!
And what a lovely way to burn...”

My brain talking to me: Fever? When you kiss them? Fever if you live and learn…? Sizzle…? Oh please… let me ‘live and learn’ and ‘sizzle!‘ But… BURN…? In what way could burning ever be… lovely? I sorta wanted to find out, you know? And… would I ever… catch that particular “fever’?

(I really kinda hoped I would.)

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And then fourteen more years passed. And in 1969, Peggy Lee recorded another blockbuster. And just like “Fever,” this one too locked right onto me and wouldn’t let go. But by then I was a college senior, and the attraction had nothing to do with a physical or romantic crush. This time, oddly, it was purely… philosophical.

It was a dark song titled, “Is That All There Is?” Please listen and follow along:

I remember when I was a little girl
Our house caught on fire
I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face
As he gathered me up in his arms and
Raced through the burning building out to the pavement
And I stood there shivering in my pajamas and
Watched the whole world go up in flames
And when it was all over, I said to myself
“Is that all there is to a fire”

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

And when I was twelve years old
My daddy took me to the circus
“The Greatest Show on Earth”
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads
And as I sat there watching
I had the feeling that something was missing
I don’t know what
But when it was all over, I said to myself
“Is that all there is to the circus?”

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

And then I fell in love
With the most wonderful boy in the world
We’d take long walks down by the river
Or just sit for hours gazing into each other’s eyes
We were so very much in love
And then one day, he went away
And I thought I’d die, but I didn’t
And when I didn’t, I said to myself
“Is that all there is to love?”

Is that all there is
Is that all there is
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep…

I know what you must be saying to yourselves
“If that’s the way she feels about it
Why doesn’t she just end it all?”
Oh, no, not me
I’m not ready for that final disappointment
‘Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you
That when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath
I’ll be saying to myself…

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all… there is…

So, when I first listened to this song, I remember thinking, Wow! Your house burns down around you and you’re, what, not even impressed?

I could understand not being enthusiastic about a circus, because, personally, I wasn’t much of a fan of those things anyway.

But, Jeez! Your lover drops you and moves away? I couldn’t believe that anyone could just blow off that pain. I mean, I’d had that experience. And it had been a killer.

And then, to top it off, guessing that your own suicide just might be… yeah, right, too boring to even bother with? I mean, she actually laughed that off in the song. How jaded was she?

But then again, after listening to it over and over (which I did) and dwelling on it… well, after a while, I sort of got it. I could see how for some people that could be possible. Because looking within, I realized that if I were honest with myself (which I hardly ever was) well, it wasn’t as if I wasn’t exactly unfamiliar with depression, was it. I mean, I’d harbored some pretty dark thoughts myself, hadn’t I. And written some very dark and depressed poetry as a result. And in fact, philosophically I was really no stranger to the sense of meaninglessness in the world I saw myself living in.

So for me, the effect of this song was actually like merely slipping two or three extra shots of cappuccino into my mug of already pretty-rugged black coffee. And small wonder. Turned out the song was inspired by, and directly based on, a famous existential short story titled “Disillusionment,” written in 1896 by the famous existential philosopher Thomas Mann (1875-1955)– a man for whom Shakespeare’s quotation, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” pretty much summed up his take on life.

And me at that time? I was already (in my angry-young-college-man-youth-days) a budding little existentialist myself. Partly, I admit, because I was young and callow, and because existentialism was in vogue at that time with the college set, and like a little kid in a candy shop I guess I just wanted to try everything going. But then it had really caught on. Because my existentialism had actually gotten its first jump-start when I was a freshman back in ’64. I had enjoyed a well-acted performance of the play, “No Exit,” by the even more famous existentialist, Jean Paul Sartre. And alas, for me “No Exit” was a gateway drug.

I suddenly couldn’t get my sweaty little hands on enough Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre after that. And there’s an atheistic side of Existentialism, quite evident in “Is That All There Is?” So of course I flirted with atheism, but that outlook never really took complete root in my life, though I give it credit for having tried. But throughout the rest of college and for a fairly long while after that, I was just one more dark, little, agnostic, run-of-the-mill, wannabe-card-carrying “existentialist.”

Today at 77, I yam what I yam. I’m what I’ve eaten, what I’ve read, what I’ve watched, what I’ve listened to, and… the sum-total of everything I’ve ever experienced. And those old experiences? Man oh man, didn’t they just keep on barreling down the pike at me like cars and trucks the opposite lane, imperceptibly chipping away, nickel and dime-ing the reshaping of my overall personality and psyche a day at a time.

Today, each little chip is just a faded, barely-remembered memory-scar in my rearview mirror.

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So yeah, looking back it was hardly any biggie that I just happened to catch The Lady and the Tramp, and then discover that documentary with Peggy overdubbing her voice-overs in the sound studio.

It’s just something that happened. Something that managed to get my attention when I was at a very impressionable age. And… inadvertently pinned the soon-to-become-influential Ms. Lee on my map.

And then as things do, one thing (my little Peggy Lee crush) led to another little thing (my bigger little Peggy Lee fever) and Hey, Presto! my sexual awareness got a precocious little jump-start. Which eventually did lead me down the road to…

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is, my friends
Then let’s keep…

… and then, perhaps, on to my own, honorary, self-awarded, red-neck ‘PHD’ in ‘Philosophy.’

In the meantime, there have been busloads of other regular people and other celebrity artists rolling down my highway as well. And some of the latter and their works have sort of saved my ‘sanity’ from time to time. Looking back at the lowest points of the depression in my life and remembering how the arts and the artists have unwittingly served me as my phantom medical staff, I’ve often said that I’ve had to rely on ‘the kindness of strangers’…on the virtual anesthesia of the Dead Poets and Living Artists Society… on the spiritual transfusions of the Leroi Jonses, the Kurt Vonneguts, the Leonard Cohens, Janis Joplins & Lawrence Ferlinghettis and all those brothers and sisters of mercy moonlighting as my tireless, albeit unwitting, personal psychiatric staff, keeping me on spiritual ‘life’ support, and dosing me with their daily regimens of music, cinema, fiction, & poetry…“

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OK. All that aside, I’ve always really loved “Is That All There Is?” and I always will.

But on another note, a radically different and almost completely unrelated note, I can’t help but say that there is something… funny about how this song secured its foothold in the top-100 charts (I’m talking ‘odd-funny’ here, not ‘funny-funny’). And it’s this:

I mean, c’mon, way back in that decade where most of the other pop-recording-singer/songwriters were dreaming up successful pap like “Sugar, Sugar,” “The Yellow Polka-dot Bikini” and “Who Wears Short Shorts”??? Like who back then … who in their right mind… would ever even think to come up with a dark, existential, and atheistic piece like “Is That All There Is?” and then push it as a candidate for a top-40 hit song?

I mean, this song is from far out in left field, isn’t it? Like… you can’t dance to it. Well… I guess you could waltz to it, if you really tried. There is an orchestra in the background. But it’s mostly a spoken-word ‘song.’

And yet… a hit song it became. It actually peaked at #11 on the pop charts, which means at one time or another it was edging out the likes of its very strange bedfellows, Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie” and “Gitarzan” by Ray Stevens. And surprising as this might be, Peggy Lee and her “Is That All There Is?” took the Grammy in 1970 for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance, beating out Helen Reddy, Carole King, and Dionne Warwick.

I mean, according to Google, its success was reportedly “even a surprise for Capitol Records who, despite publishing it, predicted the song was too odd and esoteric to ever make it as a hit.”

So I’m asking rhetorically, Who woulda thunk it?? Besides me, I mean. Because… hey, I LOVE the song. It’s been a life-long favorite.

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And now here you are, asking, “Is that… all there is…?”

Yep.

That’s it.

That’s all there is.