Peggy Lipton

Actress Peggy Lipton is best known as one of the most iconic hip chicks of the '60s and '70s, thanks to her role on the television series The Mod Squad, but Lipton also enjoyed a brief career in music. Born in New York City on August 30, 1946, Lipton was raised in a well-to-do family; her father was a lawyer while her mother pursued a career as an artist. Naturally photogenic, Lipton began working as a model when she was 15, and her mother encouraged her to study acting. When Lipton was 18, her family relocated to California, and she comfortably slipped into the burgeoning hippie lifestyle, taking up yoga and learning to meditate. Lipton also began making some headway as an actress, landing a contract with Universal Pictures and making guest appearances on such popular television shows as Bewitched, The F.B.I., Mr. Novak, and The John Forsythe Show. In 1968, Lipton was cast as Julie Barnes, a pretty hippie from a troubled home who was on the verge of a life of crime before she was recruited to be an undercover police officer, on the drama series The Mod Squad. The show was an immediate hit, running until 1973, and made her an overnight star. Lipton had long had an interest in music (and musicians -- she's said to have dated Paul McCartney, Elvis Presley, and Keith Moon), and as her star rose in 1968, she was signed to a recording contract with Ode Records, the label run by legendary producer and record man Lou Adler. Lipton's self-titled debut album, produced by Adler, appeared later the same year, and she had minor success with two singles, covers of Laura Nyro's "Stoney End" (later a major hit for Barbra Streisand) and Donovan's "Wear Your Love Like Heaven," but both fell short of cracking the Top 100. Lipton also made a musical appearance on The Mod Squad in an episode where Julie landed a job singing at a roadhouse as a cover for an investigation; she sang Carole King's "Now That Everything's Been Said" with Hal Blaine playing the drummer in the house band. In 1974, Lipton married legendary composer, producer, and instrumentalist Quincy Jones, and she retired from acting and singing to start a family, though she would help Jones write the song "L.A. Is My Lady," which became a hit for Frank Sinatra. After Lipton and Jones separated in 1988, she returned to acting, and was cast in recurring roles on the television shows Twin Peaks, Popular, and Alias. The world still waits for Lipton's second album, but in 2014 Real Gone Records released The Complete Ode Recordings, which reissued Lipton's 1968 album in full along with non-LP single sides and four unreleased tracks, including her Mod Squad performance of "Now That Everything's Been Said."
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