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."
The Boy From Ipanema
Peggy Lee Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Tall and tan and young and handsome
The boy from Ipanema goes walking
And when he passes
Each girl he passes goes - ah
When he walks
That swings so cool and sways so gentle
That when he passes each girl
He passes goes - ah
Ooh, but I watch him so sadly
How can I tell him I love him
Yes I would give my heart gladly
But each day when he walks to the sea
He looks straight ahead, not at me
Tall, and tan, and young and handsome
The boy from Ipanema goes walking
And when he passes me, I smile
Oh, I watch him so sadly
Can not tell him I love him
I would give my heart gladly
But each day when he walks to the sea
He looks straight ahead, not at me
Tall, and tan, and young and handsome
The boy from Ipanema goes walking
And when he passes me, I smile
He so cool and calm and so collected
Makes a girl feel a bit neglected
That boy from Ipanema doesn't see
The lyrics of Peggy Lee's The Boy from Ipanema is a tale of unrequited love for a young handsome boy from Ipanema. The first verse describes the boy's physical appearance as "tall and tan and young and handsome" and how he walks like a "samba" that swings "so cool and sways so gentle," causing every girl he passes to take notice of him with an "ah." The singer is one of these girls, watching him as he walks to the sea each day, but he never looks her way.
The second verse reveals the singer's innermost feelings. She watches him "so sadly" because she cannot tell him that she loves him. She would give her heart "gladly," but the boy never notices her. The third verse repeats the first two verses with the same theme but with a change in lyrics. Instead of the singer sighing in sadness, she smiles when the boy passes her. The final line of the song reveals that the boy from Ipanema makes girls "feel a bit neglected" because he is so "cool and calm and so collected" and doesn't notice them.
Overall, the song describes the pain and longing of unrequited love and how it feels to watch someone you love from a distance, knowing they will never return your affection. It captures the essence of the Brazilian culture and its beautiful landscapes.
Line by Line Meaning
Tall and tan and young and handsome
The boy from Ipanema is tall, tan, young, and handsome.
The boy from Ipanema goes walking
The boy from Ipanema is seen walking around.
And when he passes, each girl he passes goes - ah
Every girl he passes by can't help but to admire him.
When he walks, he's like a samba
While he walks, he moves like a samba dancer, which is impressive.
That swings so cool and sways so gentle
He moves with a relaxed and smooth style, it's an attractive thing to see.
That when he passes each girl, he passes goes - ah
Once again, girls can't resist the sight of him.
Ooh, but I watch him so sadly
The singer watches him with sorrow, because they can't have him.
How can I tell him I love him
The artist wishes they could tell the boy they love him.
Yes I would give my heart gladly
The artist would do anything to be with this boy they love.
But each day when he walks to the sea
The boy goes to the sea on a daily basis.
He looks straight ahead, not at me
Even though the singer loves him, he doesn't even know they exist.
And when he passes me, I smile
Despite the pain the artist feels, they smile when the boy passes by.
He's so cool and calm and so collected
The boy is composed and collected.
Makes a girl feel a bit neglected
The boy's presence might make a girl feel unimportant or left out.
That boy from Ipanema doesn't see
The boy from Ipanema doesn't notice the singer's love for him.
Contributed by Makayla T. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Julia McClellan
the definitive version, Peggy Lee owns it.
Kay M
The tempo is perfect. Feels as sunny as a tropical day at the ⛱
Imani M
Didn't know there was a version called the BOY From Ipanema! 😂 But I am so glad. I am also glad I can hear Peggy sing it, I love her music 🎶💗🎶💗
greenfaerie61537
Awesome, love Peggy's take on this, but Sarah vaughn's recording is my favorite. I also adore Ella Fitzgerald's rendition...
Bernard Rubin
Very cool version by Miss Peggy Lee.
Up The Down Escalator
I'd always heard it, Girl From Ipanema! But I love it!!
listeningtoit
Jobim´s beauty was astonishing when he was young. He was a feast for the eyes! He married very young and and lived with the same woman for years. He divorced, remarried and had 3 sons. One of them perished in a horrible car crash. Alcohol destroyed Jobim´s looks but not his talent, artistry and creativity. One of the greatest pop composers ever. For sure.
Benedito Alvarenga Júnior
Guys, the melody is by Tom Jobim and the lyrics are by Vinícius de Moraes in the original version Garota de Ipanema (The Girl from Ipanema), but the lyrics were reworked in English by Tom in the USA, except for my mistake, in partnership with Norman Gimbel .
What I found surprising is that instead of "girl", as it is in the original, she switched to "boy". This version of her is pure jazz ... very beautiful her version, by the way!
But the story of this song ... what a story! There is the legend, and there is the real story of how this beautiful song was created. It was never in the style of the duo Tom Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes to write songs on bar tables, although they have invested in them the best hours of their lives. Tom meticulously composed the music at his home in Rio de Janeiro and Vinícius, in turn, wrote the lyrics in Petrópolis, which is now 65 km or 42.5 miles away, giving more or less 1h20 of travel, going up the mountain.
As for the girl from Ipanema, she did exist, and she was a beautiful girl with green eyes, flowing black hair and the daughter of a hardline general. The only truth of the legend is that they both saw her pass several times near the Veloso bar (which later became Bar Garota de Ipanema), and not always on the way to the sea, but also on the way to the school, the seamstress and even the dentist. Helô Pinheiro was 19 years old, lived in a street near this bar that Tom and Vinícius frequented, and is already admired by everyone in this bar, not least because she used to come in to buy cigarettes for her mother and leave under a symphony of "fiu" -fius ".
Only in 1965, when Helô Pinheiro was engaged, at 22 years of age and with a marked marriage, did Tom and Vinícius reveal - to the accuracy of the press - that she was the muse who inspired this song. (I have Ruy Castro's book, "Chega de Saudade", which tells just how Bossa Nova's history and stories were. In fact, this information I extracted from this book that I already read, and was published here in Brazil, the best, in my humble opinion, about Bossa Nova, with pleasant and fun passages and others, not so much ...).
I really liked Peggy Lee's version, she paid tribute to Bossa Nova with her music. Thanks for sharing!
Joeboy Agriam
There was a time in my young life I thought I was really the boy from Ipanema -:)
listeningtoit
Actually the song was composed for a girl named Helo Pinheiro, who is now in her seventies, still atractive and active. Her daughter recently married one of the richest Brazilian busenessmen. Jobim watched her walking to the beach every morning in Ipanema (Rio de Janeiro) and based the rythm on the movement of her hips. Peggy makes a great rendition of this charming Brazilian samba. Jobim never fucked her, for sure, she was a virgin in those days - although he declared he wanted to.