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."
Till There Was You
Peggy Lee Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
But I never heard them ringing
No I never heard them at all
Till there was you
There were birds in the sky
But I never saw them winging
No I never saw them at all
Then there was music and wonderful roses
They tell me in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and you
There was love all around
But I never heard it singing
No I never heard it at all
Till there was you
Then there was music and wonderful roses
They tell me in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and you
There was love all around
But I never heard it singing
No I never heard it at all
Till there was you
Till there was you
The lyrics of Peggy Lee’s “Till There Was You” describe the transformative effect that falling in love can have on someone’s perspective. The first two stanzas contrast the singer’s limited sensory experience with the world before they met their lover. They describe bells and birds, natural elements that were presumably always present, but went unnoticed until the singer’s heart was opened by love. The implication here is that love has the power to make one more attuned to the beauty of the world, to make life feel more vibrant and meaningful.
The chorus of the song then describes the arrival of music and “wonderful roses” once the singer is in love. These symbols further reinforce the idea that love is transformative, by creating sensations of beauty, sensory richness, and romantic imagery where none existed before. The chorus ends with a repetition of the idea that “there was love all around,” a reference to the idea that love can be present everywhere, but it may take a special person to help us see it. The final lines of the song simply repeat the title, a poetic simple declaration of how central the lover has become to the singer’s life.
Line by Line Meaning
There were bells on a hill
I used to be unaware of the beauty that surrounded me, like the sound of bells on a hill.
But I never heard them ringing
Despite the presence of lovely sounds, I was not in a position to recognize their beauty.
No I never heard them at all
I had no inclination towards the lovely tunes that surrounded me, so I never understood their beauty.
Till there was you
When you arrived in my life like a beacon of light, it opened my eyes to the beauty that surrounded me.
There were birds in the sky
Although there were beautiful creatures like birds flying above me, I lacked the ability to appreciate them.
But I never saw them winging
I was unaware of their existence, even though they were always there in plain sight.
No I never saw them at all
The loveliness of nature that surrounded me was lost on me as I didn't have any appreciation for it.
Then there was music and wonderful roses
But when I met you, the world around me became more beautiful, and it was like suddenly hearing delightful music and seeing lovely roses.
They tell me in sweet fragrant meadows of dawn and you
You opened my eyes to the beauty around me, and now I can see how the world is fragrant and full of wonder.
There was love all around
People around me were experiencing love and other intense emotions, but I was too preoccupied with something else and never took notice of it.
But I never heard it singing
Despite love being all around me, I was completely oblivious to its presence.
No I never heard it at all
I was too distracted and uninterested, so I never paid any attention to it or recognized its existence.
Till there was you
Finally, when you came into my life, you opened my senses to the beauty of the world and the intense emotions that people experience.
Till there was you
Only after you came into my life did I begin to truly appreciate the world around me.
Contributed by David B. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
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?