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-fiancรฉe, 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, "Maรฑana", 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 for a Thrill
Peggy Lee Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You changed the sunshine to rain
Just for a thrill
You filled my heart with pain
To me, you were my pride and joy
But to you, I was merely a toy
A plaything, you could toss around at will
Just for a thrill
You made my life one sad song
Just for a thrill
You just led me along
Although you're free and having your fun
To me, you're still the only one
You made my heart stand still
And it was just for a thrill
The thought of you gave my heart wings
But to you, it was one of those things
You made my heart stand still
And it was just for a thrill
The Peggy Lee song "Just for a Thrill" explores the pain and heartbreak of being used for a fleeting moment of entertainment. Through the lyrics, the singer frames her ultimate experiences of heartache as caused by someone who toyed with her emotions for his or her amusement. That person moved on once the game was over, but the song's protagonist was left to pick up the pieces of her broken heart.
The opening lines of "Just for a Thrill" set the bleak tone for the rest of the song, as the singer describes how the person she loved played with her feelings. The lyrics "you changed the sunshine to rain" suggest that this individual caused a dramatic shift in the singer's emotional state, bringing her joy to despair. The line "you filled my heart with pain" reinforces the notion that the singer was at the mercy of someone else's whims.
While the singer sees herself as devoted to this person, it's clear that she was never more than a plaything. The line "but to you, I was merely a toy," implies that the other person never took the relationship as seriously as the singer did. By emphasizing the dullness of her existence without the other person, with the line "you made my life one sad song," the singer highlights the depths of her disappointment. In the end, "Just for a Thrill" captures the agony that comes from being used as a temporary source of entertainment by someone who never intended to invest any genuine emotion or commitment.
Line by Line Meaning
Just for a thrill
You purposely hurt me and caused chaos in my life for your own personal enjoyment.
You changed the sunshine to rain
You ruined the happy and positive moments in our relationship with your actions and behavior.
You filled my heart with pain
Your actions caused me immense emotional distress and suffering.
To me, you were my pride and joy
I held you in high regard and cherished you as my source of happiness.
But to you, I was merely a toy
You saw me as a disposable object to use for your own pleasure and discard when you were done.
A plaything, you could toss around at will
You treated me as an object with no value or worth, subject to your whims and desires.
You made my life one sad song
Your actions turned my life into a melancholy and depressing experience.
You just led me along
You strung me along with false promises and hope, knowing you had no intention of following through.
Although you're free and having your fun
You are free to do as you please and enjoy your life without any remorse or guilt for what you did to me.
To me, you're still the only one
Despite everything, I still hold strong feelings for you and cannot let go.
You made my heart stand still
Your actions caused me so much pain and heartache that it felt like time was standing still.
And it was just for a thrill
You did all of this simply for your own entertainment and amusement, without any care for the consequences for me.
Lyrics ยฉ BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Don Raye, Lillian Hardin Armstrong
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@kevinhays2142
A lot of good female singers at that time. Peggy was the best. She was the female Sinatra.
@Sideways_Singh
๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ
@georgerenton965
Suite yourself Charlie, sheโs got me hanging on every nuance. Look her up in the dictionary under โ sultry โ.
@humblecharlie4383
there's a differnce between sultry and sleepy tired. and "suit" does not have an "e" at the end of the word; with an "e" at the end of the word would be pronounced "sweet". and if that's what you meant, then - why thank you for calling me sweet!
surprisingly, you spelled "sultry" right.
@billyblais
Superb
@kojisato8985
ใใฎไธใฎๆ้ซโผ๏ธ
@humblecharlie4383
i feel no "thrill" in the vocal. she's walking through the song. no energy. same as with "i'll be seeing you" from the same album. no wonder capitol dropped her after this album.
@MrAlexsegal
But no one has paid more attention to the words of this song than Peggy Lee. It is utterly amazing.
@humblecharlie4383
@@MrAlexsegal you can pay attention to the words of the song and still have no energy to deliver what you want to deliver to the listener. she had an off day or off year. she should have scrapped these sessions if she didn't have the energy to do what had to be done. where's the thrill? more like "just for a mope".
@MrAlexsegal
But her performance is superb!