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 Siamese Cat Song
Peggy Lee Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
We are Siamese if you don't please
We are former residents of Siam
There are no finer cat than I am
Do you see what I see with my eyes?
People have been baking up some pies
Peeping jumping up upon their windowThough delicious spice we could get into
Who is that who is living in that wire house
It must be a bird because it's not a mouse
If we're sneakin' up upon it carefully
There will be some bird for you and some for me
Do you seeing that thing swimming round and round?
Maybe we could reaching in and make it drown
If we're sneakin' up upon it carefully
There will be some fish for you and some for me
The Siamese Cat Song is a playful tune from the Walt Disney movie Lady and The Tramp, sung by Siamese cats Si and Am. The song opens with the cats introducing themselves as Siamese and boasting about their exotic origins. They then take note of the room they are in and the pies that have been baked. Their curiosity is peaked by the scent of the delicious spices - they indicate their intention to explore the kitchen through the window. As they move towards the window, they discover a bird that has caught their attention. The cats make a plan to catch and eat the bird. Finally, they catch sight of fish swimming in a fishbowl and plan to catch that as well.
The song's lyrics are relatively straightforward, and the meaning is quite literal. It perfectly captures the playful and mischievous nature of the two cats. The melody is catchy, and the lyrics are simple yet effective. The song is an excellent addition to the movie's soundtrack, and it stands the test of time as the movie was released in 1955.
Line by Line Meaning
We are Siamese if you please
We are Siamese cats, and we will behave how we please
We are Siamese if you don't please
We are Siamese cats, and we don't care if you don't like it
We are former residents of Siam
We are cats originally from Siam, now known as Thailand
There are no finer cat than I am
There are no cats better than us, we are the best
Do you see what I see with my eyes?
Do you see the things that we see?
People have been baking up some pies
People are cooking pies, which we may be interested in
Peeping jumping up upon their window
We are curious and jumping up to look through people's windows
Though delicious spice we could get into
We are intrigued by the smell of spices, and may investigate further
Who is that who is living in that wire house
What kind of animal is living in that cage?
It must be a bird because it's not a mouse
It's not a mouse so it must be a bird
If we're sneakin' up upon it carefully
If we approach carefully and quietly
There will be some bird for you and some for me
We can both have some of the bird if we catch it
Do you seeing that thing swimming round and round?
Do you see that thing swimming in circles?
Maybe we could reaching in and make it drown
We are considering catching the swimming creature
There will be some fish for you and some for me
If we catch the fish, we can each have some
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Written by: SONNY BURKE, OLIVER WALLACE, PEGGY LEE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@Thalassobeam
In French we have "On est Siamois de père en fils,
On est Siamois qu'on se le dise,
On va vivre ensemble sous le même toit,
Car ce qui est à toi est aussi à moi.
[Parlé]
Vois-tu cette chose qui tourne, tourne en rond ?
Oui
Si on la sortait de son petit bouillon ?
On pourait s'en faire un bon petit plat.
On aurait la queue pour moi,
La tête pour moi !
Entends tu ce que j'entend ?
Un bébé cri !
Où il y a un bébé, il y a du lait pardis !
Si on allait voir le biberon du bébé?
La moitié pour toi, et pour moi un demi !
" The "ce qui est à toi est aussi à moi" means what belong to You belong to me or what belong to you belong to the siamese
@fluffieclover6182
when I was little, I realized that this movie doesn't really have a "villain", just a series of problems that make up the story.
@Neelbarun
yeh
@cityman2312
Antagonists, such as the Aunt, the cats and the rats.
@ferretfang5515
Yeah llike how is cars 3 storm was not a villain more like a rivel
@ChiNguyen-ze8oq
Have you ever realized that Dumbo may be a story without a main villain, just like Lady and the Tramp? I still barely even see the Ringmaster as villainous myself.
@MNTayler
kinda like real life? ;)
@golions13579
I like that they are still Siamese even if we don’t please.
@todo8328
🤣
@madisoncastle5138
Yeah!
@Meh4991z
Loll exactly