Growing up in Philadelphia, Spider Saloff didn’t listen to pop music like her classmates did, she said.
“I was listening to my Dad’s ‘Benny Goodman’ records. This is what spoke to me,” she said.
Today, Saloff, a Chicago-based jazz vocalist tours the world performing shows including a one-woman tribute to George Gershwin and her latest, “The Cool Heat of Peggy Lee,” coming May 11 to the Lumber Center in Grayslake.
The audience will not only hear some of Lee’s most famous songs, including “Fever,” but also discover that despite her subtle singing style, Lee was a strong woman who successfully sued Disney for breach of contract in the late 1980s, Saloff said.
In “The Cool Heat of Peggy Lee,” Saloff strives to reveal to the audience “why she was so fascinating, that she was a great jazz singer and she had an incredible recording career. She had 13 Grammy nominations and four wins. She was a movie star and she was nominated for an Oscar. She also was a trail blazer.”
“The Cool Heat of Peggy Lee,” which debuted last summer, has “really taken off,” said Saloff.
Saloff, who also has performed at Ravinia Musical Festival, Chicago’s Auditorium Theater and the Smithsonian Institution, said she always wanted to be a singer and ambitiously took on “I’m The Greatest Star” from “Funny Girl” to perform in a junior high school variety show.
She studied theater in London and appeared in many musicals — but she found her niche when she was living in New York and started checking out jazz clubs.
“I love improvisation,” she said. “It’s never the same twice — and it’s so alive in that way. It’s just so lively and exciting, you never know what’s coming next … In musical theater, you have to sing it the way it was written. I was getting in trouble with directors for changing notes (when performing in musicals),” she said.
Saloff began creating her own shows, for example, her one-woman tribute to George Gershwin. She researches these jazz icons by reading books, listening to their music and trying to discover what made them click.
“Peggy Lee was very subtle in her whole approach but there’s also lot of depth to it, it has a lot of focus. It’s very direct and very real,” Saloff said. “She was actually very different from other singers of that time. She started out as a big band singer. A lot were brassy and perky and loud, and Peggy was subtle and cool … She would purr and make the audience come to her.”
And she had “a strong personality. She was self-made. She came from the most horrible dirt place in North Dakota you could imagine.”
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Lee performed the role of Pekinese Peg and twin Siamese cats in Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp,” produced in 1955, and also greatly influenced the story line. When Disney released the movie in 1987 on VHS, Lee sued the firm for breach of contract to receive royalties and won, according to James Gavin’s recent biography of Lee, “Is That All There Is: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee.”
Saloff devoured that book and others to prepare for her one-woman Lee tribute show. One tune she’ll definitely sing is “Fever,” which Lee made famous.
“It’s the high point of the show,” Saloff said. “The song had only been recorded once by an unknown person when Peggy Lee was offered the song. She was the one who tweaked it and wrote additional lyrics. Her arrangement is one of the reasons it won the Grammy.”
Saloff will perform many of Lee’s songs with the original arrangement and in the original key. She’ll sing with a piano and bass as Lee did when she toured, she said.
A few songs she said she takes liberties with, but she’ll always “keep the Peggy Lee vibe going. “
Saloff said the show appeals to many generations. “It will be a unique experience and a feel-good time and a totally feel-good story,” she said.
‘The Cool Heat of Peggy Lee’
When: 7:30 p.m. May 11
Where: Lumber Center, 19351 Washington St., Grayslake
Tickets: $15-$28
Information: 847-543-2300; jlcenter.clcillinois.edu/
Sheryl DeVore is a freelance reporter for the News-Sun.