The one song that always gives Jeff Goldblum goosebumps: “So chilling”
They don’t come any more laid back than Jeff Goldblum. The man is practically the living human embodiment of a chaise lounge.
Add in his deep-toned laconic voice, and watching any Goldblum performance is like being softly stroked to sleep by a particularly relaxed leopard. It almost goes without saying therefore that the American actor’s favourite music is jazz, and it’s a genre he has immersed himself in even as a (presumably very chilled) kid growing up in Pennsylvania.
He credits his love of jazz to his late older brother and he began playing the piano as a child, religiously listening to the likes of Ray Charles, Thelonius Monk and Errol Garner. Goldblum says his father, who was in medicine but dreamed of being in show business, would often bring home records for him to listen to.
In the end it was acting that really captured Goldblum’s imagination and he moved to New York City at the age of just 17. After making an appearance on Broadway he got bit parts in the likes of Woody Allen’s classic Annie Hall and then spent several years acting in TV movies before his breakthrough role came in the gory sci-fi shocker The Fly in 1986.
Since then, via a legendarily horizontal performance in 1993’s Spielberg Dino-romp Jurassic Park, Goldblum has been an ever-present on movie screens, becoming more flamboyant and ebullient as the decades go by.
But he has used whatever little downtime he has to pursue that long-held love of jazz. He formed his own band, Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, who would play regular gigs around Los Angeles and released a debut album in 2018. They followed it up with another long player the next year named ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this’ and then this year rounded off the trilogy with the acclaimed ‘Still Blooming’.
But Goldblum still holds the hits of yesteryear that he grew up with dear, as he revealed to The Quietus when asked about his favourite songs of all time. One in particular has an especially emotional resonance for the actor, namely Peggy Lee’s ‘Is That All There Is?’ from 1969.
He says: “I had this song on a 45′ when I was a kid. It opened up something in me then because she is such a wonderful performer, and she sings so sadly with this deep melancholy and gravitas. It made me cry then, and it makes me cry now. It gives me goosebumps, so chilling.”
Written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the creative masterminds behind hits for Elvis and Dusty Springfield, the song won a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and has the questionable honour of being Donald Trump’s favourite song.
As for Peggy Lee, she was not only a singer of some fame and repute throughout the 1940s and ‘50s, but also an Academy Award-nominated actor, perhaps best known for her voices in Disney’s classic animation Lady and the Tramp and the 60s hit ‘Fever’.
Brilliantly, Lee is the inspiration behind not one but two things that have become part of popular culture. Firstly, it is believed that she helped in creating the Margarita cocktail when she walked into a Texas bar and asked for a drink similar to one she had just had in Mexico. Secondly, she happens to be the basis for none other than felt porcine superstar Miss Piggy, the muppet diva who initially carried the name Miss Piggy Lee.
Goldblum isn’t turning his back on acting any time soon, though. He’ll be seen later this year reprising his role as the Wizard of Oz in Wicked: For Good and in the Stephen Fry-penned spy thriller The Liar alongside Rupert Everett and David Walliams.
