Peggy Lee Sings Bye Bye Blackbird in King Kong

I really liked King Kong when I saw it opening day last year. It was a good movie, by no means perfect, but the visuals and story were great. I'll watch anything that Peter Jackson puts out.

There was one scene in King Kong that sealed the deal for me. Towards the end, Naomi Watt's character is dancing in a show and the song "Bye Bye Blackbird" was being sung in the background, almost mournfully. It's been forever since I heard that song. Probably 10 years at least. The mood of the performance somehow clicked with an old memory, and the movie became a great.

I immedately went home to buy the soundtrack. It was a no-brainer. After Billy Boyd's moving performance in Return of the King, I bought the soundtrack straightaway. But this time when I got home, the song I was looking for was nowhere to be found on the official soundtrack. I was willing to buy the entire album for this woman's voice, but she was decidedly absent. So I went searching for her. And she wasn't easy to find. The movie was brand new, and Google hadn't really caught up yet.

Eventually, I discovered this performance to be by Peggy Lee, a singer from the '50s. But none of the soundtracks available in the United States had the song, not anywhere. I even broke down and looked to download it illegally. But to no avail. I had been thwarted. It's not often these days that I get thwarted in a search for something like this. Google comes through. But not this time.

But this last week, I looked again. It's been a while since the movie was out, and I thought maybe I might find something. Still, I couldn't find any of the albums the track is on. However, on the third page of Google results, I found a link to eMusic. Apparently they had one of Peggy Lee's more obscure albums that is out of print on CD.

Let me pause here to tell you guys a bit about eMusic. They're one of the newfangled ways to buy digital music, sort of like Apple's iTunes Store. But there's one thing that sets eMusic apart - no restrictions whatsoever. Normally, legal digital music these days has what's called Digital Rights Management, or DRM. This is sort of a funny name, as it's only the record companies that get any "Rights" out of it. DRM means you can't play the music wherever you'd like. But eMusic is the one place that I am aware of that is perfectly legal and has no DRM whatsoever. Just regular ole MP3s, the same kind you get when you rip a CD yourself to a computer. eMusic even has a deal where you can get 25 free songs to start with, then cancel the account. But I like them. They seem to have a good bit of indie music, like everything Sufjan Stevens has put out. Not bad.

So this story has a happy ending. I finally found Peggy Lee's version of Bye Bye Blackbird from the movie King Kong for absolutely free on eMusic. And it was good.

Entry posted by byscuits on September 21, 2006 02:57 PM

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