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."
Love For Sale
Peggy Lee Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Is the heavy tread of the heavy feet
That belong to a lonesome cop, she opens shop
When the moon so long has been gazing down
On the wayward ways of this wayward town
That her smile becomes a smirk, she goes to work
Appetizing young love for sale
Love that's fresh and still unspoiled
Love that's only slightly soiled, love for sale
Who will buy?
Who would like to sample her supply?
Who's prepared to pay the price
For a trip to paradise? Love for sale
Let the poets pipe of love in their childish way
She know every type of love better far than they
If you want the thrill of love, she's been through the mill of love
Old love, new love, every love
But true love for sale
Appetizing young love for sale
If you want to buy her wares
Follow her and climb the stairs
Love for sale
The song "Love for Sale" by Peggy Lee seems to refer to a red light district where a woman sells love for money. The imagery of the "empty street" and the "heavy feet" of the "lonesome cop" sets the tone of a deserted and uninviting neighborhood. The moon has been "gazing down" on the town for so long that it seems to be mocking the situation, as her smile turns into a "smirk" and the woman sets up shop. The lyrics refer to her "wares" which are labeled as "appetizing young love" that is "fresh and still unspoiled" and only "slightly soiled". The singer asks who is willing to pay the price for a "trip to paradise."
The singer then turns to the poets who "pipe of love in their childish way" but points out that the woman selling love "know[s] every type of love better far than they". She has been "through the mill of love, old love, new love, every love." However, she concludes with the statement "true love for sale" which seems to suggest that she herself has not found true love or that she is somewhat disillusioned with the idea of love, hence why she is selling it for money.
Overall, the song has a slightly melancholic tone and depicts a world where love is commercialized and sold to the highest bidder. It serves as a commentary on the darker side of society where women are forced to sell their bodies and emotions for money.
Line by Line Meaning
When the only sound in the empty street
Is the heavy tread of the heavy feet
That belong to a lonesome cop, she opens shop
As the streets become silent, the only noise is that of a lone police officer walking, and at this moment the woman in question starts her business
When the moon so long has been gazing down
On the wayward ways of this wayward town
That her smile becomes a smirk, she goes to work
The woman waits for the moon to rise and reflect on the immoral conduct of the town, and as the smirk appears on her face, she starts her business
Love for sale
Appetizing young love for sale
Love that's fresh and still unspoiled
Love that's only slightly soiled, love for sale
She is selling love as a commodity, where it is fresh and unadulterated, or slightly tainted, or any other form, to attract potential buyers, making love sound less like an emotion and more like a transaction
Who will buy?
Who would like to sample her supply?
Who's prepared to pay the price
For a trip to paradise? Love for sale
She looks forward to customers who would be interested in trying her merchandise and are willing to pay the cost for some pleasure, with love being the gateway to the advertised paradise
Let the poets pipe of love in their childish way
She know every type of love better far than they
If you want the thrill of love, she's been through the mill of love
Old love, new love, every love
She dismisses the pure romantic vision of love that poets write about, claiming that she knows all forms of love, having experienced more than them, and if a customer desires love with the adventurous spirit of excitement, she knows how to provide it
But true love for sale
Appetizing young love for sale
If you want to buy her wares
Follow her and climb the stairs
Love for sale
She further emphasizes to potential customers that she is not just selling the physical aspects of love, but can provide a sense of genuine emotional connection, and to find her to indulge in her merchandise, willing to comply with her business model.
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Cole Porter
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?