Peggy Lee (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002) was an American
jazz and traditional pop singer and songwriter and
Oscar-nominated performer. She was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North
Dakota. Widely recognized as one of the most important musical influences of the 20th century, Lee has been cited as a mentor to
such diverse artists as Paul McCartney, Bette Midler, Madonna, k.d. lang, Elvis Costello, Dr. John, and numerous others. As a
songwriter, she collaborated with her late husband Dave Barbour, Sonny Burke, Victor Young, Francis Lai, Dave Grusin, John
Chiodini, and Duke Ellington who stated, "If I'm the Duke, then Peggy's the Queen." As an actress, she was nominated for an
Academy Award for her role in Pete Kelly's Blues.
Frank Sinatra, Ellla Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong all cited Lee as one of their
favorite singers.
Biography
Early life
The youngest child of seven, Lee found music to provide an escape from the abusive rampages of her mentally ill stepmother,
Meg, who tormented and beat the young girl. She first sang professionally with KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She soon landed her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local
restaurant that paid her "salary" in food. Both during and after her high school years, she took whatever jobs she could find,
waitressing and singing for paltry sums on other local stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy (actual name: Ken Sydness), of
WDAY in Fargo (the most widely listened to station in North Dakota) changed her name
from Norma to Peggy Lee. Tired of the abuse from her stepmother, she left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17.
She returned to North Dakota for a tonsillectomy and, while there, lined up a gig at
The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel West in Chicago, home
of Benny Goodman, the jazz clarinetist and band leader. According to Lee, "Benny's
then-fiance, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into the Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening she brought Benny in,
because they were looking for replacement for Helen Forrest. "And although I didn't know,
I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn't
like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing." She joined his band in 1941 and stayed for
two years, with the band then at the height of its popularity.
Recording career
In early 1942, Lee had her first # 1 hit, "Somebody Else Is Taking My Place," followed by 1943's "Why Don't You Do Right?," which sold over a million copies and made her famous. She sang with
Goodman in two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl.
In March 1943, Lee married Dave Barbour, the guitarist in Goodman's band. Peggy said, "David joined Benny's band and there was
a ruling that no one should fraternize with the girl singer. But I fell in love with David the first time I heard him play, and
so I married him. Benny then fired David, so I quit, too. Benny and I made up, although David didn't play with him anymore. Benny
stuck to his rule. I think that's not too bad a rule, but you can't help falling in love with somebody."
When Lee and Barbour left the band, the idea was that he would work in the studios and she would keep house and raise their
daughter, Nicki. But she drifted back towards songwriting and occasional recording sessions for the fledgling Capitol Records in 1944, for whom she produced a long string of hits, many of them with lyrics and music
by Lee and Barbour, including "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "It's a Good Day" (1946). With the release of the smash-hit
#1-selling record of 1948, "Mañana," her "retirement" was over.
In 1948, she joined Perry Como and Jo Stafford as one
of the rotating hosts of the NBC musical radio program Chesterfield Supper Club.
She left Capitol for a few years in the early 1950s, but returned in 1957. She is most famous for her cover version of the Little Willie John hit "Fever", to which she added her own, uncopyrighted lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet," "Captain Smith and
Pocahontas") and her rendition of Leiber and Stoller's "Is That All There Is?" Her relationship with the Capitol label spanned almost three decades, aside
from her brief but artistically rich detour (1952-1956) at Decca Records, where she
recorded one of her most acclaimed albums Black Coffee (1956). While
recording for Decca, Lee had hit singles with the songs "Lover" and "Mr. Wonderful."
Songwriting
She was also known as a songwriter with such hits as the songs from the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp, for she also
supplied the singing and speaking voices of four characters. Her many songwriting collaborators, in addition to Barbour, included
Laurindo Almeida, Harold Arlen, Sonny Burke, Cy Coleman, Gene DiNovi,
Duke Ellington, Dave Grusin, Dick Hazard, Quincy Jones, Francis
Lai, Jack Marshall, Johnny Mandel,
Marian McPartland, Willard Robison,
Lalo Schifrin, Hubie Wheeler, and Victor Young.
She wrote the lyrics for "I Don't Know Enough About You", "It's A Good Day", "I'm Gonna Go Fishin'", "The Heart Is A Lonely
Hunter", "Fever", "The Shining Sea", "He's A Tramp", "The Siamese Cat Somg", "There Willl Be Another Spring", "Johnny Guitar",
"Sans Souci", ""What's New?", "Things Are Swinging", "Don't Smoke in Bed", "I Love Being Here With You", and numerous others.
During a time when youths began turning to rock'n'roll, she was one of the mainstays of
Capitol recordings. She was the first of the "old guard" to recognize this new genre, as is evident in her recordings of the
Beatles, Randy Newman, Carole King, James Taylor and other up-and-coming songwriters. From 1957 until her final disc for the
company in 1972, she routinely produced a steady stream of two or three albums per year which usually included standards (often
arranged in a style quite different from the original), her own compositions, and materiall from young artists.
Acting career
Lee also acted in several films. In 1952, she played opposite Danny Thomas in a remake
of the early Al Jolson film, The Jazz
Singer. In 1955, she played a despondent, alcoholic blues singer in
Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), for which she was nominated for an
Oscar.
