I first heard the late Peggy Lee on the radio when I was a kid — she was probably singing her big 1948 hit, "Mañana," which she wrote with her then-husband, Dave Barbour (nine weeks at #1). I suppose it’s politically incorrect — she even sang it with a slightly Spanish accent ("The window she is broken/And the rain is coming in./If someone doesn’t fix it/I’ll be soaking to my skin./But if we wait a day or two/The rain may go away./And we don’t need a window/On such a sunny day"). But was that ethnic stereotyping or just playing with an ethnic stereotype — because, after all, doesn’t everyone at some time feel that "mañana is soon enough for me"? Lee was one of the few singers who could be absolutely sincere and ironic at the same time. You knew she was pulling your leg, and you knew that she knew you knew. And with that droll, whispery voice, she was irresistible.

Her image of deadpan sultriness had begun earlier in the ’40s, when she was singing with Benny Goodman. I think my all-time favorite song of hers is still the pouty "Why Don’t You Do Right?" ("Get out of here, and get me some money, too"), which she sings with Goodman in the 1943 film Stagedoor Canteen (in 1955, she got an Oscar nomination for her dramatic performance in Pete Kelly’s Blues). Her most famous recording, "Fever" (1958), is still hot because it’s so hot and so cool at the same time. She was a pussycat’s pussycat, and that’s why she’s so effective singing/whining/purring "The Siamese Cat Song" on the soundtrack of Disney’s Lady and the Tramp: "We are Siamee-eese if you plee-ease,/We are Siamese if you don’t please." Even kids got the joke.

I saw her a lot on television, but in person only once, at the Round Table in New York, in the ’70s. Her face had hardened into a mask, and she hardly moved a muscle of it — hardly moved at all. She was an American Nefertiti. But everything worked for her because she was also a real musician. In the introduction to the section of her lyrics in Robert Gottlieb & Robert Kimball’s Reading Lyrics, the editors call her "by far the most successful" of the pop singers who also wrote songs — several of which have become standards, like "I Don’t Know Enough About You" (1940) and "It’s a Good Day" (1946), both with Barbour. She also wrote songs with Duke Ellington, Cy Coleman, and Harold Arlen. If you’re going to rush out for a Peggy Lee disc, see whether you can find Love Held Lightly: Rare Songs by Harold Arlen (Angel, 1993), which shows her remarkable variety — and musicality — even with the little voice she had left. Right now I think I’ll put on the delicious "Buds Won’t Bud," the softly swinging "Happy with the Blues" (with her own lyric), and "My Shining Hour," which was never sung more poignantly. I can’t think of a better way to honor her memory.