Peggy Lee's Pre-recording Career, 1934-1941
Peggy Lee (born Norma Deloris Egstrom on May 26, 1920) began singing professionally in 1934, when she was 14 years old. For the next seven years, the budding vocalist performed extensively in diverse music venues and with various types of backing, including piano and organ accompaniment, trios, small combos, and big bands. Lee had thus acquired solid experience in the "minor leagues" when she hit "the big time," as the vocalist of Benny Goodman's nationally famous orchestra, in 1941. The teenager had pursued her profession of choice with an unflinching resolve that paid off for the rest of her long career.
In The Beginning
Peggy Lee spent her childhood and adolescence in North Dakota, moving from Jamestown (1920-1928) to Nortonville (1928-1934) and Wimbledon (1934-1937). In her late pre-teens and in her early teens, the young Norma Deloris was employed in a variety of temporary jobs -- most frequently, as a farm hand, sometimes also as a babysitter. While in high school, she took the role of editor of the school paper, and she often helped her father, a railway station agent, with tasks such as filling per diem reports and lugging lignite for the station's stoves. Decades later, people who had known her from childhood would recall that she "sang all the time" and tried to write tunes, too. According to the vocalist herself, singing had become her dream by the age of 10.
The High School Years
In the early 1930s, Norma Deloris Egstrom was an aspiring though professionally untested vocalist. In public, Norma's singing experience had been limited to the school's glee club, the church choir, and a few assorted special occasions, such as the occasional recital, talent contest, or PTA meeting.
A professional opportunity arose some time after she turned 14 and was hired as the girl singer of a five-piece college dance band whose leader was named Doc Haines. This gig elicited concerns that her ongoing education would suffer, but the young girl and her school's superintendent promptly came to a satisfactory arrangement. Miss Egstrom was permitted to take makeup tests and to do course workload in advance, so that her weekends could be freed for traveling and singing with Haines' band in nearby Valley City. The band's performing schedule involved mostly appearances at parties and in programs broadcast by Valley City's KVOC radio station, where Norma Deloris was also given a 15-minute sponsored radio show on Sundays. Lee writes in her autobiography that Haines used to refer to her as his "little blues singer," a moniker that may give an indication of early leanings toward bluesy and melancholy ballads.
Some biographical accounts state that Norma next sang with The Jack Wardlaw Orchestra, at the age of 16. Neither the singer nor banjoist Wardlaw are known to have verified this alleged collaboration. If it truly happened, their involvement may have been too short to merit extensive mention. (Perchance one or two performances, as Wardlaw's traveling band was passing through town?)
Norma Deloris graduated from high school in 1937, merely one day after she had turned 17. Now that high school was no longer an obstacle, she fully set her sights on a singing career. To pursue her long-held dream, Norma immediately moved to the region's bigger city, Jamestown, where she had actually been born but had not previously resided. Therein, the teenager divided her time between working at a coffee shop and singing in the airwaves. She was heard on radio station KRMC, which was actually located in the same Gladstone Hotel where Norma had found a job as the coffee shop's relief girl.
Fargo, Chapter 1
Norma Deloris' next move was to an even bigger city. In Fargo, she again combined radio work with manual labor, this time as a bread slicer and as a waitress -- with barely a few hours allocated for sleeping.
Ken Kennedy, program manager of radio station WDAY, hired the teenager on the same day in which she auditioned. Since he also decided to put her on the air on that very day, Kennedy came up with a professional name for her on the spot: Peggy Lee.
The newly christened Peggy Lee was heard daily for fifteen minutes during WDAY's Noonday Variety Show. In conjunction with the radio station's musicians, she formed a quintet billed as Four Jacks And A Queen. Lee also became part of the station's Hayloft Jamboree, a dance-barn spectacle that traveled around town on a weekly basis, and for which Peggy assumed a farmgirl persona known as Freckled-Face Gertie. On the Hayloft Jamboree shows, she sometimes sang with another local ensemble, which went by the name of Lem Hawkins And The Georgie Porgie Breakfast Food Boys. In addition to singing, she also took on tasks such as regularly filing the radio station's music materials, an untertaking that familiarized her with the work of the great songwriters of the American songbook.
Hollywood, Chapter 1
In early 1938, Lee made an even more ambitious move: a trip to Hollywood. Results were mixed. She initially found jobs only of the white collar type: as a seller of gardenia flowers, short-order cook, waitress, even carnival barker. Eventually, the teenager was hired to sing at the Jade Supper Club in Hollywood Boulevard. Nevertheless, throat problems forced her to return to her hometown later that year and to undergo a tonsillectomy that was incompetently performed. The surgical procedure caused hemorrhaging and required hospitalization, but fortunately her vocal chords were not damaged.
Fargo, Chapter 2
After a short period of recuperation, Lee spent well over a year back at Fargo, working for WDAY again. She also began singing daily at The Powers Hotel's Coffee Shop, accompanied by a young organist named Lloyd Collins.
Minneapolis
In 1939, Peggy Lee moved to another big city. In Minneapolis, she regularly sang at the Radisson Hotel's Flame Room (and non-regularly at other venues) with the local Sev Olsen Orchestra, a nine-piece band. Lee was also heard on radio shows sponsored by Standard Oil and broadcast over the city's KSTP station.
When the nationally-known Will Osborne Orchestra came to Minneapolis, Peggy Lee auditioned for them and got the job. She and the touring band left town on the second week of November, 1939. During late 1939 and early 1940, the Fox Theatre in St. Louis was their regular performance venue. In Lee's estimation, she spent about three months with the Osborne orchestra.
In early 1940, while still in St. Louis, Peggy Lee received a job offer from Raymond Scott, who had just assembled a touring band. (Best known as the composer of "Mountain High, Valley Low" and of oddly titled instrumentals such as "Dinner Music For A Pack Of Hungry Cannibals," Scott would go on to host the popular show Hit Parade, and in time would also become an inventor of various electronic devices. Much of his musical oeuvre became immortalized thanks to its use in Warner Brothers' classic cartoons of the late 1930s and 1940s.)
Recurrent throat problems forced Peggy Lee not only to decline Scott's offer but also to take a leave of absence from her job with the Osborne orchestra. She had to undergo surgery once more. (The ailment was, in her own words, "a lump in my throat.") By the time that she had recovered, Will Osborne's orchestra had temporarily disbanded.
Hollywood, Chapter 2
The Peggy Lee Style, Take 1
Later in 1940, Lee went back to Hollywood. She quickly resumed work at The Jade. After a short while at the Jade, she moved to the tonier Doll House, where she sang with the house's Guadalajara Trio. Lee claims to have developed her fondness for soft singing at this establishment in Palm Springs: paradoxically, softness proved effective in dealing with the dinner place's typically noisy audience. Her personalized brand of relaxed, subtly-delivered singing compelled customers to quiet down and pay closer attention.
Chicago
At the Doll House, Lee's performances were seen by Frederick and Lois Mandel, a couple of visiting Chicagoans. He was one of the owners of Chicago's Mandel Brothers department chainstore, and had recently bought the Detroit Lions franchise. After seeing Lee perform, the Mandels talked to their friend Frank Bering, who was also in town with them. Bering co-owned Chicago's Ambassador East and West Hotels. Located in the facilities of the Ambassador West was an ideal venue for Lee: The Buttery Room, which specialized in romantic, intimate-sounding music.
After an audition, Frank Bering asked Peggy Lee to travel to Chicago and work at the Buttery on a regular basis. Lee and the quartet with whom she had auditioned (The Four Of Us) moved to the Windy City in 1941. She also signed with a managing agency.
At the Buttery in the summer of 1941, Peggy Lee's act was seen by a couple of well-known bandleaders who were playing in town: Glenn Miller and Claude Thornhill. Miller personally complimented Lee on her singing. Thornhill (and/or his agency) wanted her to join his band, but nothing came out of this plan. (Lee surmised that her managing agency did not approve of the idea because Thornhill was signed to a different agency.)
Benny Goodman
Another bandleader who came to see Peggy Lee at the Buttery was Benny Goodman. He did so at the request of his fiancée, Lady Alice Duckworth, who had attended one of Lee's previous performances. Mindful of Goodman's imminent need to hire a new canary for the band (his canary Helen Forrest had recently given a few weeks' notice), Lady Duckworth thought of Lee as a possible choice. In August of 1941, Goodman personally phoned Lee to offer her the job, which she accepted immediately.
The Goodman years (1941-1943) provided an "advanced learning experience" for Lee. It was with the clarinetist's band that Peggy Lee began on a definitive path toward national recognition. It was also with Goodman that Lee made her first recordings.
Still, Peggy Lee's formative years had begun long before she joined The Benny Goodman Orchestra -- as shown in the paragraphs above. This long gestation period (1934-1941) is too often obscured in biographical accounts of the singer, which tend to overstress the significance of her apprenticeship with the Goodman band.
The Peggy Lee Style, Take 2
Granted that it proved enormously important for the progress of her career, Peggy Lee's year and a half with Benny Goodman was nonetheless a step backwards in one important area of professional growth: the evolvement of a personalized style of interpretation. Most of the singer's vocals with The Benny Goodman Orchestra project little of her individual style -- little of the intimacy and bluesiness for which she would become known as a solo artist. The exceptions are the ballads that she did with Benny Goodman's small combos, "Where Or When" (December 24, 1941) and "The Way You Look Tonight" (March 10, 1942). Her soft, bluesy approach in both of those numbers probably exemplifies the style that she had previously cultivated in nightclubs, supper clubs, and smaller venues.
Peggy Lee's overall work as Goodman's canary can be best described as an adaptation to the demands that big bands and their audiences made on singers. Audiences tended to expect a danceable tempo for most numbers, ballads included. Furthermore, vocals were secondary to the instrumental parts. Some concertgoers are said to have moaned, "What's with all this balladry?" in reaction to Goodman's inclusion of slow, romantic vocals in live concerts. Music collector Dave Weiner tells the following anecdote, which refers to an Goodman gig that extended from late December, 1942 to January, 1943:
My uncle saw the [Benny Goodman] band there [at The Paramount Theatre, in New York] and was unimpressed by [Frank] Sinatra, whom he had seen previously with Dorsey. He remembers that Peggy Lee sang a very slow "Where or When" with Benny Goodman, and was booed by some hecklers who yelled, "You stink!" Goodman stopped playing, stepped to the mike and told the audience to be quiet - then he swung into "Why Don't You Do Right" and cheers erupted for her and the band.
"These Foolish Things"
Also indicative of Peggy Lee's early stylistic leanings is a bluesy-sounding 1942 version of "These Foolish Things" performed with The Benny Goodman Orchestra and preserved only on a radio broadcast. "These Foolish Things" was in fact the song that Lee had chosen years earlier for her audition at Fargo's WDAY radio station. It was moreover the number that she sang at The Buttery Room on the night when Goodman came to see her act. Hence "These Foolish Things" qualifies as a fundamental tune from the early years of Peggy Lee's career.
Songs From Peggy Lee's Pre-Recording Period
Among the numbers that Peggy Lee herself confirmed to have sung (or implied to have sung) before her days with The Benny Goodman Orchestra were:
1. "Body And Soul"
audition number for The Sev Olsen Orchestra
2. "Deep In A Dream"
frequent request at The Powers Hotel Coffee Shop; accompanied by organ
3. "Goody Goody"
Lee implied to have sung it at WDAY
4. "I Can't Give You Anything But Love"
audition number for The Will Osborne Orchestra
5. "I Never Had A Chance"
a favorite as a child
6. "The Glory Of Love"
amateur contest, around 1935
7. "Heaven"
a favorite as a very young child
8. "I Thought About You"
Lee implies to have sung it at The Powers Hotel Coffee Shop, and to have considered it a favorite
9. "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen"
semi-classical Sunday matinee at the Powers Hotel Coffee Shop
10. "The Man I Love"
probably at WDAY; also as an audition number for Frank Bering
11. "Moonglow"
a favorite as a child; also with The Doc Haines Orchestra, 1934
12. "The Music Goes Round And Round"
frequent request at The Powers Hotel Coffee Shop; accompanied by organ
13. "Solitude"
a favorite as a child
14. " 'Tain't What You Do"
At The Powers Hotel Coffee Shop; accompanied by organ
15. "These Foolish Things"
audition song (see comments in this page's previous sub-section)
16. "Twilight On The Trail"
amateur contest, around 1935
17. "Wishing (Will Make It So)"
an avowed favorite of Lee's; thus I am presuming that she sang it
18. "Would God I Were A Tender Apple Blossom"
semi-classical Sunday matinee at the Powers Hotel Coffee Shop
19. "You Oughtta Be In Pictures"
audition for KVOC and The Doc Haines Orchestra, 1934
20. "Thanks For The Memory"
another avowed favorite of Lee's; probably sung around 1937 or 1938, when the song was brand new, and in ensuing years
21. "Deep Purple"
probably sung in 1939, when the lyric became a hit, and in the ensuing two years
Regrettably, none of the singer's vocals from the 1934-1940 period are preserved. Peggy Lee's earliest extant performances date from her period with The Benny Goodman Orchestra (1941-1943).
Nota Bene
Not all sources agree on the order and chronology of the above-listed events. When confronted with discrepancies, I have put my trust in the sources with the best track record of reliability.