Duet with Peggy Lee - You were meant for me - Dragonfly Summer (1993)

Info from Peggy Lee's Website

Date: August, 1992
Location: New York
Label: REPRISE

Michael Franks (ldr), Ben Sidran (pdr), Chris Hunter (as), John Pisano (g), John Patitucci (b), Warren Bernhardt (p), Alex Acuña (d, per), Michael Franks, Peggy Lee, Other Individuals Unknown (v)

a.	Reprise Master	You Were Meant For Me - 4:40  (Michael Franks)
		REPRISE©Warner CS/CD: 9 45227 4/2 — [Michael Franks] DRAGONFLY SUMMER   (1993)

At The Recording Session

Interviewed over the phone for the aforementioned article, Michael Franks shared some impressions about the two voices heard in the duet:

"Considering the feminine voice and the male voice, there were moments I thought they were so close. And she came up with all those really pretty harmony parts at the end. She ad-libbed that. It was amazing to be there with her and just to observe at such close range how she worked."

Interesting if less gracious comments are offered by producer Ben Sidran in his biography On The Rim Of The Well: A Life In The Music. Sidran states that the session took place in the summer of 1992, when Lee arrived at the studio "in wheelchair, in such fragile health that she clearly could not sing the way she would have liked."

Sidran adds that Lee "insisted she wanted to sing the duet with Michael live," an idea that Sidran did not find worthwhile. He remembers telling Franks (presumably outside of Lee's listening range): "We are going to have to spend a lot of time getting her parts right, and Michael, you can do yours later. So I'm going to go out there and tell her I have some technical problem in here and that it isn't possible to do both vocals at once." Sidran then approached Lee, and allegedly told her: "Miss Lee, that was lovely but could I ask you to sing that live again because we're still having problems in here." The producer says that he kept repeating the same words "for an hour."

Sidran continues: "she was a real trooper and when it was over, we had the makings of a very poignant vocal track." He professes to have spent "the rest of the day [after lunch] sampling, timing and editing each of her words, syllables, and phonemes, taking extra care that none of the sutures would show, giving her vocal the greatest facelift known to man or woman. It was a prime example of what the technology was for: creating a new reality." The producer concludes this rather self-congratulatory account by calling the end result "tragic and bittersweet."


Dating And Masters

The basis for the dating that I have assigned to this session's master is a San Francisco Chronicle article, published on July 25, 1993, in which reporter Lee Hildebrand states that Michael Franks and Peggy Lee recorded their duet "in New York last August." As mentioned in the preceding session, there is also an Associated Press article published on September 14, 1992 in which it is mentioned that, during her stay in New York, Lee sang "a duet and made a video with Gilbert O'Sullivan and also recorded with Michael Franks, at their request, songs each of them wrote."

The Associated Press quote points to the possibility that Franks and Lee recorded not only his own composition "You Were Meant For Me" but also one or more of Lee's own lyrics. But, if Franks recorded any lyrics penned by Lee, whether with her or solo, the recording(s) must be unreleased, or must have been erased.


Personnel

1. Source
My only source of information for this session's personnel is the only issue to date (Reprise CD #9452274), in which there are, fortunately, separate personnel credits for the songs. Two of them are duets, and feature the same personnel. In addition to "You Were Meant For Me," the album's other duet is "Keeping My Eye On You," co-interpreted by Franks and Dan Hicks.

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Also read some info in Peggy Lee's Discography