Peggy Lee

At 81 years old, Peggy Lee physical status not available right now. We will update Peggy Lee's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Peggy Lee, an American jazz and popular music singer, composer, and actress, had a career spanning six decades. Norma Deloris Egstrom (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002) better known as Peggy Lee (1978–2002).

She started off as a vocalist on local radio to playing with Benny Goodman's big band, developing into a multi-faceted artist and performer.

During her career, she wrote music for films, acted, and released experimental record albums that mixed poetry and music.

Early life

Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad in Jamestown, North Dakota, United States, on May 26, 1920, the seventh of Selma Emele (née Anderson) Egstrom and Marvin Olaf Egstrom's eight children. Her relatives were Lutherans. Her father was Swedish-American and her mother was Norwegian-American. Minnie Schaumberg Wiese's father married Lee Mamberg Wiese after her mother died when she was four.

Lee and her family grew up in several towns along the Midland Continental Railroad (Jamestown, Nortonville, and Wimbledon). She graduated from Wimbledon High School in 1937. In 2012, the Wimbledon depot building, where she and her family lived and worked, became the Midland Continental Depot Transportation Museum, which included The Peggy Lee Exhibit. On the upper floor of the museum, where the Egstrom family once lived, there are exhibits that trace Lee's life and her regional and state links.

Lee began singing at a young age. Lee, the female singer for a six-piece college dance band led by Lyle "Doc" Haines, was born in Wimbledon. After school and on weekends, she travelled to various places with Haines' quintet on Fridays.

In 1936, Lee performed first on KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She then appeared on a local restaurant that paid her salary in food for 15 minutes. Lee performed on local radio stations throughout and after her high school years.

Ken Kennedy, a radio broadcaster from Fargo, formerly known as the nation's most popular station, auditioned Egstrom and landed her on the air the day, but not before she changed her name to Peggy Lee.

At the age of 17, Lee left home and moved to Hollywood, California. She began working on Balboa Island, Newport Beach, as a short order cook and waitress at Harry's Cafe. She had been hired to work as a carnival barker at the Balboa Fun Zone after Easter. She wrote about her encounter with "The Nickel Ride," a film of the same name that she produced with Dave Grusin in 1974.

Lee returned to Hollywood in 1938 to appear as the MC at The Jade. When she fainted onstage due to overwork and an ineffective diet, her performance was cut short. After being admitted to the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, she was told she needed a tonsillectomy. Lee had to return to North Dakota for the operation.

She was recruited to perform regularly at The Powers Hotel in Fargo and toured with both the Sev Olson and the Will Osborne Orchestras in North Dakota the following year.

As Lee returned from California in 1940, she performed at The Doll House in Palm Springs. Here, she developed her signature sultry purr, choosing to perform with the raucous crowd through subtlety rather than volume.

According to Lee:

She formed "Elmer's Tune" in August 1941 and made her first album. Lee was a member of the Benny Goodman Orchestra for two years.

Personal life

Lee was married four times: to guitarist and composer Dave Barbour (1943-1951), actor Brad Dexter (1953), actor Dewey Martin (1956-1968), and drummer Jack Del Rio (1964). Both of the marriages ended in divorce.

Nicki Lee Foster, her mother, gave birth to her first child at the age of 23, on November 11, 1943. Nicki's father, Dave Barbour, was Peggy's first husband.

Lee learned Transcendental Meditation and said she had been taught "by the Maharishi personally, and that was a great honor."

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Recording career

"Some Else Is Taking My Place" became Lee's first number one hit in 1942, followed by "Why Don't You Do Right?" in 1943. "Western is a Christian magazine that has sold more than one million copies and made her popular. In two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl, she appeared with Goodman's orchestra.

Lee said:

She returned to songwriting and occasional recording sessions for Capitol Records in 1944, many of which included lyrics and songs by Lee and Barbour, such as "I Don't Know Enough About You" and "It's a Good Day." "Golden Earrings," the title tune of a 1947 film, was a hit during 1947-1948. Lee and Barbour's "Maana" was her 11th solo hit record, and it remained on the charts for twenty-one weeks, nine of which were in the top-one position. The album has over a million copies and has been named as the Best Disc Jockey Record of the Year by Billboard magazine. Lee performed for Capitol's library of electrical transcriptions for radio stations from 1946 to 1949. The transcriptions contained "extra voice introductions by Pepe," according to an advertisement for Capitol Transcriptions in a trade journal.

Lee began performing in 1948 with vocalists Perry Como and Jo Stafford as a host of the NBC Radio musical program The Chesterfield Supper Club. She appeared on The Jimmy Durante Show and appeared on Bing Crosby's radio shows in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Her liaison with Capitol spanned almost three decades before she debuted (1952–1956) at Decca. She sang of Black Coffee and had hit singles including "Lover" and "Mister Wonderful" for the brand.

Little Willie John's "Fever" abridged version of "Fever," written by Eddie Cooley and John Davenport in 1958, she recorded her own version of "Fever" by Little Willie John. Lee arranged a new arrangement for the song, as well as lyrics ("Romeo loved Juliet"), "Captain Smith and Pocahontas," which she refused to copyright. In 1959, her new version of "Fever" was a hit, and she was nominated in three categories, including Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

Although Lee was in London for a 1970 visit to Albert Hall, she welcomed Paul and Linda McCartney to dinner at The Dorchester. The couple gifted Lee with a song they had written entitled, "Let's Love" at the dinner. Lee recorded the song at the Record Plant in Los Angeles in July 1974, her first on Atlantic Records, and her first one on Atlantic Records.

Acting career

In The Jazz Singer (1952), a remake of Al Jolson's film The Jazz Singer (1927), Lee appeared opposite Danny Thomas. She appeared in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Si and Am, Lee provided speaking and singing voices for many characters in the Disney film Lady and the Tramp (1955), including the dog Peg and the two Siamese cats Si and Am. She co-wrote all of the original songs for the film, including "He's A Tramp," "Bella Notte," "La Siamese Cat Song," and "Peace on Earth," alongside Sonny Burke. Lee requested fame and song royalties on the video sales when Lady and the Tramp first appeared on VHS in 1987. She filed a lawsuit in 1988 after the Disney corporation refused to pay. Lee was given $2.3 million for breach of employment, plus $500,000 for unfair use of Lee's name, 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," in which she appears briefly at the end of the film.

Lee appeared in hundreds of variety shows, as well as several television shows and specials throughout her career.

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