Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong all cited Lee as one of their favorite singers.
Peggy Lee had Norwegian and Swedish ancestry. She was the seventh of eight children born to Marvin Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad. Her mother died when she was four years old. Music provided her an escape from the abusive rampages of her cruel stepmother, Min, who tormented and beat young Norma. 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 eventually made her way to Chicago for a gig at The Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel West in Chicago, where she drew the attention of Benny Goodman, the jazz clarinetist and band leader. According to Lee, "Benny's then-fiancée, 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.
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?" (originally sung by Lil Green), 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 1947, 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" (1948). With the release of the smash-hit #1-selling record of 1942, "Mañana", her "retirement" was over.
In 1948, she joined Perry Como and Jo Stafford as one of the rotating hosts of the NBC Radio musical program Chesterfield Supper Club. She was also a regular on NBC's Jimmy Durante Show during the 1938-48 season.
She left Capitol for a few years in the early 1940s, but returned in 1943. 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."
She was also known as a songwriter with such hits as the songs from the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp, for which 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, guitarist Johnny Pisano and Victor Young.
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.
Peggy won a Grammy in 1969 as best contemporary female vocalist (for her recording of Is That All There Is?) and was awarded a Doctor of Music Honoris Causa degree from North Dakota State University, in 1975.
In the early 1990s, she retained famed entertainment attorney Neil Papiano, who, on her behalf, successfully sued Disney for royalties on Lady and the Tramp. Lee's lawsuit claimed that she was due royalties for video tapes, a technology that did not exist when she agreed to write and perform for Disney.
Never afraid to fight for what she believed in, Lee was passionate that musicians be equitably compensated for their work. Although she realized litigation had taken a toll on her health, Lee often quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson ("God's will will not be made manifest by cowards.")
She also successfully sued MCA/Decca with the assistance of noted entertainment attorney, Cy Godfrey.
She continued to perform into the 1990s, sometimes in a wheelchair, and still mesmerized audiences and critics alike.[citation needed]
In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
After years of poor health, Lee died of complications from diabetes and heart attack at the age of 81. She is survived by Nicki Lee Foster, her daughter with Barbour. She is buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California. On her marker in a garden setting is inscribed, "Music is my life's breath."
Didn't Want To Have To Do It
Peggy Lee Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Didn't wanna have to break your heart
Didn't wanna have to do it
I kept a-hopin' from the very start
But you kept on a-tryin'
And I knew that you'd end up a-cryin'
And I knew I didn't wanna have to do it at all
Didn't wanna have to be the one to say it
Didn't wanna have to do it
I kept a-hopin' there'd be somethin' to delay it again
Yeah, but then
No, I didn't wanna have to be the one to say "The end"
Was a time that I thought our love could fly
and never never fall
Why should I suppose we were never really meant
to be close to each other at all
No, I
Didn't wanna have to do it
Didn't wanna have to be the one to say it
Didn't wanna have to do it
I kept a-hopin' there'd be somethin' to delay it again
Yeah, but then
No, I didn't wanna have to be the one to say "The end"
No no, not the end, no no no
The song "Didn't Want to Have To Do It" is a heart-breaking ballad sung by Peggy Lee, about a painful decision that had to be made. The singer is expressing her reluctance to end a relationship, despite recognizing that it is not working out. The chorus repeats the phrase "Didn't wanna have to do it" to emphasize the difficulty of the decision, while the verses explain the reasons behind it.
The lyrics suggest that the singer had hope in the beginning that the relationship would work out, but over time, it became clear that the couple was not meant to be. The lines "Was a time that I thought our love could fly and never never fall" refer to the initial optimism and promise of the relationship. However, the singer realizes that their compatibility was limited and that they were "never really meant to be close to each other at all." Despite this realization, it was still hard for her to end things because of the emotional investment and care for her partner's feelings.
Overall, the lyrics of Peggy Lee's "Didn't Want to Have To Do It" are a poignant portrayal of the anguish and difficulty of ending a relationship. It speaks to the universal experience of love lost, and the pain that comes with breaking someone's heart.
Line by Line Meaning
Didn't wanna have to do it
I didn't want to take this action
Didn't wanna have to break your heart
I didn't want to cause you pain or sorrow
Didn't wanna have to do it
I didn't want to take this action
I kept a-hopin' from the very start
I had hope from the beginning
But you kept on a-tryin'
But you wanted to continue trying
And I knew that you'd end up a-cryin'
And I knew that you would eventually cry
And I knew I didn't wanna have to do it at all
And I knew I didn't want to take this action at all
Didn't wanna have to do it
I didn't want to take this action
Didn't wanna have to be the one to say it
I didn't want to be the one to voice it
I kept a-hopin' there'd be somethin' to delay it again
I kept hoping for another interruption
Yeah, but then
However
No, I didn't wanna have to be the one to say "The end"
No, I didn't want to be the one to end it
Was a time that I thought our love could fly
There was a time I believed our love could thrive
and never never fall
And that it would never end
Why should I suppose we were never really meant
Why should I believe that we were never meant
to be close to each other at all
To be near each other at all
No, I
No, I
Didn't wanna have to do it
I didn't want to take this action
Didn't wanna have to be the one to say it
I didn't want to be the one to voice it
I kept a-hopin' there'd be somethin' to delay it again
I kept hoping for another interruption
Yeah, but then
However
No, I didn't wanna have to be the one to say "The end"
No, I didn't want to be the one to end it
No no, not the end, no no no
No, it's not the end, no, no, no
Lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing, BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: JOHN BENSON SEBASTIAN, JOHN SEBASTIAN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Anonymous
on Why Don't You Do Right (Get Me Some Money Too)
Why Don't You Do Right - Casey Abrams - Lyrics
You had plenty money 1922
You let other women make a fool of you
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here and get me some money too?
You're sitting there wondering what it's all about
You ain't got no money, they will throw you out
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here and get me some money too?
Musical Interlude
You had plenty money 1922
You let other women make a fool of you
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here and get me some money too?
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?