The MacGregor Transcriptions
The Peggy Lee Bio-Discography And Videography
by Iván Santiago Mercado

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Peggy Lee recorded a total of 17 masters for MacGregor, a company that specialized in making recordings for radio airplay only. The 17 masters were performed over four sessions, and originally sent to radio stations in three transcription discs. Copies of those MacGregor discs are extant at the Library of Congress. For additional details about the company and about Lee's sessions, see this page's final notes.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Barbour and His Orchestra (acc), Henry J. "Heinie" Beau (cl), Herbert "Herbie" Haymer (ts), Billy May (t), Dave Barbour (g), Phil Stephens (b), Edwin "Buddy" Cole (p), Tommy Romersa (d), Peggy Lee (v)

Issues

1. MacGregor #130-#131 [ET]
MacGregor discs bear two numbers, one per side. In this date, l have listed alll five performances from side #130 of disc #130-#131. For the contents of the flip side, see next MacGregor session.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Barbour and His Orchestra (acc), Henry J. "Heinie" Beau (cl), Herbert "Herbie" Haymer (ts), Billy May (t), Dave Barbour (g), Phil Stephens (b), Edwin "Buddy" Cole (p), Tommy Romersa (d), Peggy Lee (v)

Songs

1. "September In The Rain"
MacGregor disc #130-#131 gives the unofficial title "That September in The Rain" to this song.


Issues And Sources

1. MacGregor #130-#131 [ET]
MacGregor discs bear two numbers, one per side. Under this date, I have listed the four performances from side #131 of disc #130-#131. For the contents of the flip side, see previous session.

2. Orthotone/United #490-#491 [ET]
Orthotone discs bear two numbers, one per side. Side #490 contains the Peggy Lee performances found in this session. Side number #491 features numbers by singer Ray Eberle.

3. The Henry King Show [CD]
4. King At Court [Radio Show]
The Above-listed CD from the label Nostalgia contains two episodes of The Henry King Show, for which no details are supplied. They must have been broadcast between 1948 and 1950, but their exact dates remain unknown. King's guests are The Les Paul Trio (episode #37) and Peggy Lee (episode #46).

I am not acquainted with Henry King's work, nor have I listened to any of his show's episodes, aside from the couple that are in the CD under discussion. Official known as King At Court, the show presumably had a connection with the similarly named King Cole At Court, hosted by Nat King Cole. Maybe the two were "brother versions" from the same franchise, or perhaps one was a later incarnation of the other.

At the end of the King At Court episodes, announcer Charles Arlington states that King's shows were "produced and transcribed in Hollywood, the cinema's showplace of the nation, by C. P. MacGregor." In other words, radio audiences were listening to a pre-recorded show that the MacGregor service had sent, on disc, to stations. Also, the Peggy Lee songs heard during the episode were pre-recorded MacGregor transcriptions, although Peggy Lee presumably met with announcer Charles Arlington to recorded their patter.

Peggy Lee's participation in the broadcast starts off with what what sounds like pre-written patter that she is reading: "This is Peggy Lee, ladies and gentlemen, and may I say, it's nice of you all to invite me over for the show. I always enjoy singing and naturally welcome the opportunity of being a part of any program where good music is the ordered thing. By way of contribution, however small, I'd like to review one of the old favorites that always seem to bring pleasant memories for me. Hope it will for you, too. Goes like this."

Once her recording of "I've Had My Moments" is heard in full, Lee and Arlington have the following conversation:

Arlington: Peggy, Peggy Lee, come back here, Peggy. You know that was swell, and you know we just got to have more.
Lee: Well, alright, I'm ready, you just say when.
Arlington: Well, Peggy, we'd kind of like to know what's going on with you and Dave Barbour, your husband, in the realm of music nowadays. New records, television, and so on I suppose?
Lee: Well, Charles, Dave and I are pretty much on the active side of things these days and very happy about it all, too. Our records are still coming off the presses with a certain amount of regularity and every now and then there is a television show and there's been a lot of personal appearances to take out any spare time from radio, records, and TV, you know.
Arlington: Ha, ha, say, that does make for a right active existence, doesn't it, Peg!?
Lee: Yes, I almost forgot we have to squeeze a little time for songwriting, too!
Arlington: Ha, ha, ha, for songs like "Mañana," huh?
Lee: Um-h-umm.
Arlington: Well, say, with a busy schedule like that I guess we better go on the move if we ever expect another song right now.
Lee: Always gonna make time for a song, Charles. What's you wish?
Arlington: Well, anything that meets with your approval, Peggy.
Lee: Closer not said than done. If the maestro will make with a little music I'd like very much to move in with this.

After her recording of "You Turned The Tables On Me" finishes playing, Peggy Lee bids adieu: "Thank you ladies and gentlemen, I've enjoyed being here with all of you very much, and I hope that we can take up here in the hall soon. Until then, goodbye." Since Lee's presence in the show is labeled a "return visit," some of her MacGregor transcriptions must have been played in previous episodes, during which she might have "stopped by" to "chat" with the announcer.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Barbour and His Orchestra (acc), Henry J. "Heinie" Beau (cl), Herbert "Herbie" Haymer (ts), Billy May (t), Dave Barbour (g), Phil Stephens (b), Edwin "Buddy" Cole (p), Tommy Romersa (d), Peggy Lee (v)

Issues

1. MacGregor #143-#144 [ET]
2. MacGregor #641-#642 [ET]
Discs from transcription companies such as MacGregor were given two catalogue numbers -- one per each side. The performances that I am listing in this session are all on side #144 of a disc whose other side (#143) contains performances by Thomas Peluso.

The exact same Peggy Lee performances were reissued in side #641 of MacGregor disc #641-#642. That flip side contains recordings by Les Paul with Trudy Williams on vocals.


Masters

1. Matrix Numbers
This session's songs have two matrix numbers. MMo 694, the original master number, is connected to MacGregor disc #143-#144. When these songs were reissued on MacGregor disc #641-#642, new matrix numbers (MMo 1198DS) were assigned.

Peggy Lee (ldr), Dave Barbour and His Orchestra (acc), Henry J. "Heinie" Beau (cl), Herbert "Herbie" Haymer (ts), Billy May (t), Dave Barbour (g), Phil Stephens (b), Edwin "Buddy" Cole (p), Tommy Romersa (d), Peggy Lee (v)

Issues

1. MacGregor #145-#146 [ET]
MacGregor discs bear different catalogue numbers on each side. All performances listed in this session are on side #145 of a disc whose flip side (#146) contains numbers by Stan Kenton And His Orchestra.

GENERAL NOTES

The MacGregor Company And Studio

The MacGregor Company And Studio was in the business of producing radio transcriptions -- i.e., discs leased exclusively to radio stations, and not intended for public sale. Owner Chick MacGregor spent a lifetime in the music industry. His involvement went back to the mid-1920s, when Brunswick Records hired him for a position as local manager in the San Francisco area. He moved on to the transcription business during the next decade, becoming the co-owner of MacGregor & Sollie Recording Laboratories (1930-1931) and MacGregor & Ingram Recording Laboratories (1932-1937).

He seems to have been the sole owner of MacGregor Company And Studio, whose operations started in 1944, if not a bit earlier. Paul Quon was the company's chief executive and his brother Victor the studio's recording engineer. (Victor Quon also worked as a musical director at CBS.) MacGregor continued producing transcriptions until at least the late 1960s, if not right into the 1970s.


The C. P. MacGregor Studios

The company's sources of revenue included not only its transcription service but also its studio facilities, which were available for leasing. According to Klaus Teubig, author of Straighten Up And Fly Right: A Chronology And Discography Of Nat King Cole, "MacGregor had Hollywood's largest and most modern recording studios during the early forties, which were used by many independent record producers such as Capitol Records, Exclusive, Dial, and AFRS (American Forces Radio Service)."

Further information about MacGregor's studio(s) can be found in the book Stan Kenton: The Studio Sessions, by Michael Sparke and Peter Venudor. The authors quote Audree Kenton, widow of Stan Kenton, who explains that "[w]e recorded in a very small studio, using the standard microphone set-up for those days. But Vic Qu[o]n had great technical expertise, and had developed a system whereby everything sounded live when he recorded it, a sort of early echo chamber idea."


The United (Orthotone) Transcribed System

According to a producer's note in the booklet of the CD The King Cole Trio: The MacGregor Years, 1941-1945 , "[m]any [MacGregor] transcriptions were licensed to a Canadian distributor, United Transcribed System [also known as Orthotone], which sometimes pressed direct from the original parts but which frequently dubbed the material onto new masters, sometimes changing the track sequence and invariably altering the sound quality, not for the better." Although this CD note refers specifically to Cole's transcription recordings, it probably applies to Peggy Lee's work for MacGregor, too. I assume that all of the singer's work for MacGregor was pressed anew by United, although so far I have located only one UTS transcription disc featuring Lee. (See above, 2nd MacGregor session.)


Types Of MacGregor Transcriptions. Radio Shows.

MacGregor sent various types of discs to the radio stations which subscribed to its service. One type of disc contained songs by just one singer. That's the type of transcription most frequently listed in this page. Take, for instance, MacGregor disc #CPM LB-145. When it was played by participating radio stations, listeners would hear a full four-song segment by Peggy Lee, beginning with "I Should Care" and ending with "Gone With The Wind."

Another type of MacGregor disc consisted of a pre-recorded radio show. As explained by Nat King Cole discographer Klaus Teubig: "[i]n addition to the normal 16" transcription discs, MacGregor offered complete 15-minute programs called King Cole Court with full announcements by Cole and a studio host with (guest) cuts from other MacGregor productions as Peggy Lee, Larry Stewart or Ray Eberle." The musical selections heard during the program, whether by Cole or by his guests, were actually the same transcriptions numbers that are found in the other type of MacGregor disc.

To illustrate, let's take episode #2 of King Cole Court. The episode contained 8 songs, all taken from MacGregor transcription sessions: seven songs by The Nat King Cole Trio, and the remaining one a "guest cut" by Peggy Lee ("September In The Rain," from her 2nd MacGregor session). The same format applies to all other King Cole Court episodes listed by Teubig (a total of six episodes, each with a guest vocal, by artists as diverse as Anita O'Day's and The Berrie Sisters). [n.b.: Klaubig does not give the airdate of the King Cole Court shows. Another source refers to it as a 1950s series.]

In addition to King Cole At Court, other examples of MacGregor's transcribed radio programs were The Sextet From Hunger Show and the aforementioned King At Court starring Henry King. There probably were others, although so far I have not come across information on them.


Dating of Peggy Lee's MacGregor Sessions

I have consulted two texts that supply recording dates for some transcriptions: Charles Garrod's MacGregor Radio Transcriptions and Stan Kenton: The Studio Sessions, by Michael Sparke and Peter Venudor. Unfortunately, Peggy Lee's sessions are not among those for which dating is provided in the texts by Garrod, Sparke and Venudor. Nonetheless, a look at the dating of other acts' MacGregor sessions (as given in those two texts) suggests that Peggy Lee's sessions date from January, 1945. Further corroboration for 1945 as the correct year comes from the files of the Library of Congress, which is said to own MacGregor's master-books. The identification of 1945 as the correct recording year should thus be considered reliable information. As for the identification of January as the right month, it is more of a hypothetical proposition, although one that has a high potential to be correct, too.


Recording Process And Alternate Takes

Sparke and Venudor explain the manner in which all MacGregor transcriptions were waxed: "titles were not recorded in separate acetates, but were cut a program at a time, directly onto a 16" transcription master. Matrix numbers, preceded by MM for MacGregor Music, were awarded to this block of titles at the time of recording." (The same basic method seems to have been used by most other transcription companies as well.)

Given the use of a direct-to-disc recording process, alternate takes may have never been waxed, or if they were, they may no longer exist. I certainly have not come across any indication of Peggy Lee alternates. That said, there is a modicum of hope: a few alternates are known to have been included in the master discs of another MacGregor artist (Stan Kenton).


Personnel Of Peggy Lee's MacGregor Sessions

The personnel of Peggy Lee's MacGregor transcriptions is identified in only one of the sources consulted: the Starline cassette I've Had My Moments. A collective personnel is listed for the tracks, which come from all four MacGregor sessions. Because Lee seems to have recorded all her MacGregor numbers during the same month (we may eventually discover that all 17 titles were made in one or two days), and because the musical backing sounds very similar throughout, this collective personnel might very well apply to the entire batch.


Commercial Issues Of Peggy Lee's MacGregor Transcriptions

Transcription discs were originally made for syndicated radio broadcast, not for retail. From their appearance in the 1920s to their decline in the 1950s, they were virtually unavailable to the general public, who would have needed special equipment to play them. Nevertheless, a few MacGregor transcriptions began to be transferred to commercial disc in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Peggy Lee's MacGregor recordings did not make their retail debut until the 1980s. During that decade, two mail order labels issued them to the public. Both labels had p.o. box addresses in Glendale, California. One of them, called Glendale Records, released 14 of the 17 numbers on a LP titled You Can Depend On Me in 1981. Glendale's LP includes the following statement in its record sleeve: "All selections released for the first time / Material licensed from the archives of C. P. MacGregor Library / Photos from the collection of Ron Towe." (Towe was the author of an unpublished bio-discography of Peggy Lee. He is said to have owned an extensive collection of Lee memorabilia.) The other company, Starline Records, released 10 of the 17 numbers in a cassette titled I've Had My Moments (1987).

In 1991, the record label Laserlight made Lee's MacGregor songs part of the compact disc era. Laserlight's CD Peggy Lee With The Dave Barbour Band is actually a reissue of the aforementioned Glendale LP, with the same tracks but different title, artwork, and notes.

In the years that followed the Laserlight release, an ever-growing number of public domain labels appropriated and re-released the MacGregor material. Their CDs often mix the transcriptions with Peggy Lee's studio recordings, and with performances taken from various radio sources.

During the ongoing twenty-first century, Peggy Lee With The Dave Barbour Band still remains the most adequate choice for fans who want to own the bulk of Lee's MacGregor output. The CD contains 14 of her MacGregor transcriptions in unobjectionable sound quality. It is, nevertheless, an unattractive budget issue, and by now no longer in print. Despite the rapid shrinking of the CD market, I am still hoping for a future release of all 17 MacGregor numbers in a CD with informative liner notes and appealing artwork.

The 3 songs absent from both the Laserlight CD and the Glendale LP can be found piecemeal only. To wit:

1. "You Turned The Tables On Me" is available in two rare issues released by online mail order companies (as shown in the second session above).

2. "I Get The Blues (When It Rains)" was issued in the cassette I've Had My Moments, which has been out of print for decades. (A different version of "I Get The Blues" is also commercially available. See page for War & Government Transcriptions, once it opens for viewing.)

3. "Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea" has never been commercially available. It can be heard only on MacGregor 16" transcription discs. (Numerous public domain CDs contain a Peggy Lee version of "Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea," but that's a different version, recorded by Lee for another transcription service, World Records.)


Capitol Records And MacGregor Services

From 1944 to 1945, Capitol Records seems to have had a contractual agreement with MacGregor. Capitol's artists would come to C. P. MacGregor Studios to record not only commercial material (for Capitol) but also radio transcriptions (for MacGregor).

In his book Straighten Up And Fly Right: A Chronology And Discography Of Nat King Cole, Klaus Teubig quotes a relevant article from a Downbeat issue, published on February 1, 1945. The magazine reports that "Capitol Records, which has used the facilities of C. P. MacGregor sound studios exclusively for recording purposes and for a time had a deal under which the sound firm's commercial phonograph facilities were available only to Capitol, has 'split' with MacGregor for unrevealed reasons."

"With Capitol so rapidly increasing its recording activities the single studio at C.P. MacGregor had proved inadequate to meet the company's growing requirement for studio time. In 1945, Capitol moved to Radio Recorders, the West Coast's leading independent," add Michael Sparke and Peter Venudor, authors of Stan Kenton: The Studio Sessions.

Whereas Capitol apparently stopped using the MacGregor studio for commercial recording, Capitol artists such as Nat King Cole and Stan Kenton still continued to record transcriptions for MacGregor during the entire year of 1945. (Cole recorded a few around July; Kenton did same as late as December 28, 1945.)

Capitol also set up its own transcription service, which began operations in May 1945. During that first year, the service held only 10 transcription sessions, but thereafter it went into full swing. Hence, from 1946 onwards, Capitol artists such as Nat King Cole, Stan Kenton, and Peggy Lee would record only for Capitol's transcription service. Meanwhile, MacGregor continued its transcription program with artists who were not affiliated to Capitol at recording time, such as Matt Dennis, The Milton DeLugg Quartet and, in 1947, Mel Tormé.

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