Right is the word of the week at Word and Song, and I’m going to go out on a limb with yet another song of complaint. Well, Sometimes a Song lifts your spirits by singing you the blues — and all that jazz.
I’ve written before about Benny Goodman, the King of Swing. His influence on music, particularly in the big band style, cannot be overstated. One feature of big band music which I haven’t focused on too much on these pages is that of the band singers, who played a great part in the success of many a great song. Frank Sinatra was catapulted to fame as one of The Pied Pipers, the ever-evolving and rotating quartet who brought the words to the music for Tommy Dorsey. (That catapult, by the way, created a sometimes uncomfortable rise to stardom for Sinatra. See here.) For a band leader like Benny Goodman, the vocalists he employed were “canaries” — girl singers! — and they were sweet songbirds all. And it was as a vocalist with Goodman that our features singer for the day got her push to the top, musically.
Peggy Lee replaced the great Helen Forrest as Benny’s girl vocalist in 1941, and immediately scored her first top 10 hit with a song called, “Somebody Else is Taking My Place.” (More than a few of you may recall that sad ballad. I recall it from childhood, as a great hit for Connie Francis). Just a hop and a skip later, Peggy recorded this week’s selection, “Why Don’t You Do Right?” for her first million seller, also with Goodman, and she was flying high. I guess she was flying very high, because she dared to break a fast rule with Benny’s band: no fraternizing between the band members and the canaries. Oops! Peggy fell in love with Benny’s guitarist, Dave Barbour. Benny fired Dave, who nevertheless married Peggy … and I guess that Goodman was happy to keep his canarie on the job. But she was going to fly the coop one way or another, because “Do Right”’s success was the big break of her career, and so many offers followed that she couldn’t keep up with them all. She left Benny Goodman’s band in 1943, after making the wartime movie, “Stage Door Canteen” with him and an all-star cast. After that she was her own “property,” and she sold not only her voice and acting talent, but her gifts as a songwriter.
Did anyone here know that Peggy Lee wrote songs? Raise your hand! I sure didn’t know it. Over her career, Peggy wrote or co-wrote some 270 songs. That’s no small number. But I guarantee you that most of our readers know at least a few of her songs. These included ALL the songs in the Disney animated film, “Lady and the Tramp.” Peggy was the voice actor/singer for many characters in the film, including the cats, Si & Am, whose song “We are Siamese if You Please” she wrote and sang. The songs for the film were a co-written by Lee and big band leader, arranger, and composer Sonny Burke. I am including “We are Siamese” also today, just for fun.
And don’t forget to “Do Right,” everyone!
Word & Song is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. To support this project, please join us as a subscriber.
Sitting here in Spain among wildfires, corrupt socialists and invading Moroccan teenagers, Peggy Lee was just the trick. Thanks!!
Great tune! I have it on my MP3 player! Part of a Benny Goodman live album. The Siames cat song was hilarious. Disney cartoonists certainly could capture animal behavior. Cats will cause mayhem and then look at you as if to say, "Who? Me? I had nothing to do with that broken dish!".