Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920-January 21, 2002), known professionally as Peggy Lee, was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress, over a career spanning seven decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, Lee created a sophisticated persona, writing music for films, acting, and recording conceptual record albums combining poetry and music.
Lee recorded over 1,100 masters and composed over 270 songs.
Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, United States, on May 26, 1920, the seventh of the eight children of Selma Emele (née Anderson) Egstrom and Marvin Olaf Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad. Her family were Lutherans. Her father was Swedish-American and her mother was Norwegian-American. After her mother died when Lee was four, her father married Minnie Schaumberg Wiese.
Lee and her family lived in several towns along the Midland Continental Railroad (Jamestown, Nortonville and Wimbledon). She graduated from Wimbledon High School in 1937. The Wimbledon depot building, where she and her family lived and worked, became the Midland Continental Depot Transportation Museum, featuring The Peggy Lee Exhibit, in 2012. The upper floor of the museum, where the Egstrom family once lived, features exhibits that trace Lee's career and her regional and state connection.
In Wimbledon, Lee was the female singer for a six-piece college dance band with leader Lyle "Doc" Haines. She traveled to various locations with Haines' quintet on Fridays after school and on weekends.
Lee first sang professionally over KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota in 1936. She later had her own 15-minute Saturday radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her salary in food. Both during and after her high-school years, Lee sang for small sums on local radio stations.
In October 1937, radio personality Ken Kennedy, of WDAY in Fargo (the most widely heard station in North Dakota), auditioned Egstrom and put her on the air that day, but not before he changed her name to Peggy Lee.
Lee left home and traveled to Hollywood, California at the age of 17 in March 1938. Her first job was seasonal work on Balboa Island, Newport Beach as a short order cook and waitress at Harry's Cafe. When the job ended after Easter, she was hired to work as a carnival barker at the Balboa Fun Zone. She wrote about this experience in the song, The Nickel Ride, which she composed with Dave Grusin for the 1974 film of the same name.
More information: Peggy Lee
Later in 1938, Lee returned to Hollywood to audition for the MC at The Jade. Her employment was cut short when she fainted onstage due to overwork and an inadequate diet. After she was taken to the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center she was told she needed a tonsillectomy. Lee returned to North Dakota for the operation.
The following year, remaining in North Dakota, she was hired to perform regularly at The Powers Hotel in Fargo, and toured with both the Sev Olson and the Will Osborne Orchestras.
When Lee returned to California in 1940, she took a job singing at The Doll House in Palm Springs. Here, she developed her trademark sultry purr, having decided to compete with the noisy crowd with subtlety rather than volume.
While performing at The Doll House, Lee met Frank Bering, the owner of the Ambassador East and West in Chicago. He offered her a gig at the Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel West.
She joined his band in August 1941 and made her first recording, singing Elmer's Tune. Lee stayed with the Benny Goodman Orchestra for two years.
In 1942, Lee had her first number-one hit, Somebody Else Is Taking My Place, followed in 1943 by Why Don't You Do Right?, which sold more than one million copies and made her famous. She sang with Goodman's orchestra in two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl.
Mañana, written by Lee and Barbour, was her eleventh solo hit recording, and remained on the charts for twenty-one weeks, nine of which were in the number one position. The song sold over a million copies, and earned the Top Disc Jockey Record of the Year award from Billboard magazine.
From 1946 to 1949, Lee also recorded for Capitol's library of electrical transcriptions for radio stations. An advertisement for Capitol Transcriptions in a trade magazine noted that the transcriptions included special voice introductions by Peggy.
In 1948, Lee joined vocalists Perry Como and Jo Stafford as a host of the NBC Radio musical program The Chesterfield Supper Club. She was a regular on The Jimmy Durante Show and appeared frequently on Bing Crosby's radio shows during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Her relationship with Capitol spanned almost three decades aside from a brief detour (1952–1956) at Decca. For that label, she recorded Black Coffee and had hit singles such as Lover and Mister Wonderful.
In 1958, she recorded her own version of Fever by Little Willie John, written by Eddie Cooley and John Davenport.
Lee created a new arrangement for the song, and added lyrics (Romeo loved Juliet, Captain Smith and Pocahontas), which she neglected to copyright. Her new version of Fever was a hit, and was nominated in three categories at the First Annual Grammy Awards in 1959, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
While Lee was in London for a 1970 engagement at Royal Albert Hall, she invited Paul and Linda McCartney to dinner at The Dorchester. At the dinner, the couple gifted Lee with a song they had written entitled, Let's Love.
In July 1974, with Paul McCartney producing, Lee recorded the song at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, and it became the title track for her 40th album, her first and only on Atlantic Records.
More information: Jazz History Online
Lee starred opposite Danny Thomas in The Jazz Singer (1952), a remake of the Al Jolson film, The Jazz Singer (1927). She played an alcoholic blues singer in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Lee provided speaking and singing voices for several characters in the Disney movie Lady and the Tramp (1955), playing the human Darling, the dog Peg, and the two Siamese cats, Si and Am. She also co-wrote, with Sonny Burke all of the original songs for the film, including He's A Tramp, Bella Notte, La La Lu, The Siamese Cat Song, and Peace on Earth.
In 1987, when Lady and the Tramp was released on VHS, Lee sought performance and song royalties on the video sales. When Disney refused to pay, she filed a lawsuit in 1988. After a prolonged legal battle, in 1992, Lee was awarded $2.3 million for breach of contract, plus $500,000 for unjust enrichment, $600,000 for illegal use of Lee's voice and $400,000 for the use of her name.
Peggy Lee also wrote the lyrics for Johnny Guitar, with music composer Victor Young, the title track of the 1954 film, Johnny Guitar, which she sings partially at the end of the movie.
During her career, Lee appeared in hundreds of variety shows, and several TV movies and specials.
Lee continued to perform into the 1990s, sometimes using a wheelchair. After years of poor health, she died of complications from diabetes and a heart attack on January 21, 2002, at the age of 81. She was cremated and her ashes were buried with a bench-style monument in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
More information: UDiscover Music
I have no plans to stop singing.
What are you going to do when you love music?
It's a terrible disease. You can't stop.
Of course, I'd like to get off the road.
Peggy Lee
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