Peggy puts more sex into a song than most girls could into a strip tease

epub, with thanks to the original sharer

Leiber considered Peggy Lee “the funkiest white woman alive”; and it was no surprise that a woman whose style had sprung out of the blues would connect with his and Stoller’s work. Lee had included their very first collaboration, “Kansas City,” on Blues Cross Country. The partners had sent her their songs ever since, to no response. In the autumn of 1962, they were startled to read in the paper that “I’m a Woman” had found its way into Lee’s act at Basin Street East. They made a reservation. There at the club, their song, arranged by Benny Carter, stopped the show. Lee growled and purred it like a tough mama who ruled the bedroom and the kitchen. Lee didn’t know that “I’m a Woman” was Leiber and Stoller’s response to Bo Diddley’s aggressively macho number-one R&B hit, “I’m a Man.” The low-down vamp that ran through “I’m a Woman” had been lifted straight from Diddley’s record.