A Caffeinated Centennial

IN APRIL OF 1953, PEGGY LEE EMBARKED UPON a recording project that would produce a top-ten jazz vocal album of all time—her peerless and legendary collection Black Coffee. This album represented the crowning achievement of her Decca years, the most acclaimed album of her entire career, and one of the very first concept albums ever produced. Initially it appeared in a 10-inch, long-play record format with only eight songs. The enormous success of this modest recording compelled Decca executives to propose an expansion and rerelease of the album a few years later to include a total of 12 songs. The augmented album was crafted in the new 12-inch disc medium that remained prevalent in fans’ living rooms for nearly three more decades. Songs subsequently added to this project in 1956 included “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “You’re My Thrill,” “There’s a Small Hotel,” and “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You.”

began with the title track, an artistically unparalleled version of a classic standard whose origins hailed from a traditional blues phrase spun into a song by W. C. Handy, then passed along to Mary Lou Williams in her song “What’s Your Story, Morning Glory?” before being presented as a Sonny Burke composition on this was to opera—dream-burning realism. The progression of songs relayed the heartbreak, bliss, and pain of authentic, vulnerable love as well as the awareness and acceptance that this love was no paradise.