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."
Let's Fall In Love
Peggy Lee Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Starts to sing, "Spring, spring"
When the little blue bell in the bottom of the dell
Starts to ring, "Ting, ting"
When the little blue clock in the middle of his work
Sings a song to the moon up above
It is nature that's all
And that's why birds do it
Bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love
In Spain, the best
Upper sets do it
Lithuanians and letts do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love
The dutch in old Amsterdam do it
Not to mention the fins
Folks in Siam do it
Think of Siamese twins
Some Argentines
Without means, do it
People say in Boston even beans do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love
Sponges
They say, "Do it"
Oysters down in oyster bay do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love
Cold cape cod clams
Against their wish, do it
Even lazy jellyfish, do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love
Electric eels I might add do it
Though it shocks 'em I know why ask if shad do it
Waiter bring me bring me shad roe
Come on and bring me, bring me shad roe
In shallow shoals
English soles do it
Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love
Now if the birds and the bees and the trees do it
The monkeys and the birds, bees do it
In, in water gates they quarrel but they do it
And if they can make up and still do it baby, how about me and you?
Hey let's do it now
Let's do it, let's fall in love
The song "Let's Fall In Love" by Peggy Lee is a romantic song that expresses a love that is both natural and universal. The lyrics depict the various creatures of nature that fall in love, such as the little blue bird who sings about spring, the blue bell in the dell, and the little blue clock. The song suggests that it is nature's way of telling us to fall in love. The second verse of the song continues with the theme of universality, as it lists people from different countries and cultures who also fall in love - the Spanish, the Dutch, the Lithuanians, etc. It even mentions animals such as oysters, jellyfish, and electric eels.
The lyrics are lively, sweet, and a little humorous. The song is composed in such a way that it lifts the spirits of the listener and makes us feel happy and romantic. The verses talk of both the natural world and man-made objects falling in love, which gives the song a fun and playful tone. The message conveyed through the lyrics is one of hope, the possibility of love being universal and that there's a chance for everyone to find love.
Line by Line Meaning
When the little blue bird who has never said a word
When even a bird which has never spoken before starts to sing about the coming of spring
Starts to sing, "Spring, spring"
Singing about the arrival of spring
When the little blue bell in the bottom of the dell
When even a small flower begins to signal about spring
Starts to ring, "Ting, ting"
Announcing the arrival of spring
When the little blue clock in the middle of his work
When even a small clock begins to signal about the arrival of spring
Sings a song to the moon up above
As if to tell the moon about the coming of spring
It is nature that's all
These are all natural signs of the arrival of spring
Simply telling us to fall in love
All of these natural signs indicate that it's time to fall in love
And that's why birds do it
Birds fall in love to mate and raise their young
Bees do it
Bees too, mate to continue their species
Even educated fleas do it
All creatures, big or small fall in love for the same reasons
Let's do it, let's fall in love
We, as humans should also fall in love
In Spain, the best
Even the most refined people in Spain fall in love
Upper sets do it
The wealthy and aristocratic people also fall in love
Lithuanians and letts do it
Even people from Lithuania and Lettland fall in love
The dutch in old Amsterdam do it
Even the Dutch in Amsterdam fall in love
Not to mention the fins
Also, the people from Finland fall in love too
Folks in Siam do it
The people of Siam fall in love as well
Think of Siamese twins
Even the Siamese twins could fall in love with separate people
Some Argentines
Even people from Argentina fall in love;
Without means, do it
Even those who don't have much fall in love
People say in Boston even beans do it
Even the beans, the crop that is being grown in Boston, seems like it falls in love
Sponges
Even sponges, the simplest creatures, fall in love
They say, "Do it"
They fall in love in their own way
Oysters down in oyster bay do it
Even oysters, that live in Oyster Bay, fall in love
Cold cape cod clams
Even the clams in Cape Cod fall in love
Against their wish, do it
Even the clams who don't want to fall in love, do it anyways
Even lazy jellyfish, do it
Even the laziest of creatures like jellyfish, fall in love
Electric eels I might add do it
Even the electric eels, who shock everyone around them, fall in love
Though it shocks 'em I know why ask if shad do it
Although it may surprise people that even shad fish can fall in love, there is no reason for it not to happen
Waiter bring me bring me shad roe
The singer seems to want to eat some shad roe
Come on and bring me, bring me shad roe
Repeated request to bring shad roe
In shallow shoals
Even fish like English soles fall in love
Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it
Even the goldfish we keep as pets fall in love
Now if the birds and the bees and the trees do it
Since all of these creatures are falling in love
The monkeys and the birds, bees do it
Referencing the earlier lines and saying that monkeys also fall in love
In water gates they quarrel but they do it
Even those involved in scandals fall in love
And if they can make up and still do it baby, how about me and you?
If those involved in scandals can patch up and still fall in love, why can't we?
Hey let's do it now
Invitation to fall in love now
Let's do it, let's fall in love
Conclusion of the entire song which urges people to fall in love
Lyrics © TuneCore Inc., Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc., Actual Music, S.L.
Written by: Cole Porter
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@carmelgleeson6077
'Let's do it' is one of the many Cole Porter songs that never dates.
@NiallMor
If Sex had a singing voice, it would sound like Peggy Lee.
@guywithasukapfp7835
2021 anyone?
@MC-qc9gp
Yes, great song and vocal. Get over the so called slurs snowflakes!
@hank9tube
The lyrics of the song needs to be taken in its historical context relative to when it was released, (1928). It would be considered quite racially derogatory nowadays.
@nanak9
***** It was quite racially derogatory then too. It's just that too many people were ok with that at the time.
@nanak9
Ain't that America.
@joseguilhermebarbozadesouz4175
PC culture is just bull. "Jap" is offensive? Really? I mean, for real, this noun has offended someone across History? Jeez.
@WYCD
Ouch. Love the tune, but can't sit through the slurs, even if no harm was intended.
@KevinWeatherwalks
Jake Alexander ouch indeed. Great musical arrangement and tempo, bad lyrics.