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."
Just The Way You Are
Peggy Lee Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Quoting what poets have said
Why talk in circles around it
Why not be simple instead
Let's hit the nail on the head
I love you, I love you
There's no other way
I love you
I love you, I love you
And try as I may
That's all I can say
I love you
Much more could be said if I thought with my head
But I only can think with my heart
I love you, I love you
And yearn for the day
The day when you'll say
"I love you"
I could be oh, so indiff'rent
With very little success
I could continue pretending
But I'm afraid you would guess
So why not simply say, "Yes"?
I love you, I love you
There's no other way
Just one way to say
I love you
I love you, I love you
And try as I may
That's all I can say
I love you
Much more could be said if I thought with my head
But I only can think with my heart
I love you, I love you
And this is the day
The day when we'll say
"I love you"
In this song, Peggy Lee sings about how sometimes people try to overcomplicate things, especially when it comes to love. She questions why people feel the need to use flowery language and speak in circles around their feelings instead of simplifying things and speaking directly from the heart. She suggests that rather than overthinking and overanalyzing, one should simply hit the nail on the head and express their love straightforwardly.
Despite admitting that she could be "oh, so indifferent" and continue pretending, Peggy Lee chooses to be honest and transparent about her feelings. She acknowledges that she could say more if she thought with her head, but at its core, love is a matter of the heart. She yearns for the day when her love will be reciprocated, and they can both assert their love for each other without any hesitation or fear.
Overall, the song expresses the idea that love doesn't need to be complicated, that sometimes the most direct and simple expressions are the most powerful.
Line by Line Meaning
Why search for flowery phrases
Why bother trying to find fancy words
Quoting what poets have said
Or repeating what poets have already expressed
Why talk in circles around it
Why not just be straightforward
Why not be simple instead
And express our feelings in the most basic way
Let's hit the nail on the head
Let's speak honestly and directly
I love you, I love you
There's no other phrase to convey
There's no other way
My love for you is all-encompassing
Just one way to say
I can only express it like this
And try as I may
Although I may make an effort
That's all I can say
This is the extent of my expression
Much more could be said if I thought with my head
I could analyze and explain further by using logic
But I only can think with my heart
But I'm only able to feel with my emotions
And yearn for the day
I crave a time in the future
The day when you'll say
The day when you will express the same sentiment to me
I could be oh, so indiff'rent
I could act like I don't care
With very little success
But that would hardly work
I could continue pretending
I could keep up the charade
But I'm afraid you would guess
But I'm scared you would figure it out
So why not simply say, "Yes"?
So, why not agree with my passionate declaration
And this is the day
Now is the moment
The day when we'll say
The day we will both openly express
"I love you"
Our affection for each other
Lyrics © DistroKid, Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: STAFFORD DOUGLAS, SYLFORD WALKER, MELBOURNE ANTHONY JAMES, IRVING BERLIN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Chris Morgan
Great song, Julie Garland did a better job than peggy
Hanisa Mohamed
:D