Song artist 266 - Peggy Lee

Previous Comments (newest first)

23 Mar 2013

Peggy Lee was a band singer until 1943

Please note that Somebody Else Is Taking My Place, My Little Cousin, I Got ItBad, We'll Meet Again, Full Moon, and Winter Weather are by BENNY GOODMAN and his Orchestra. The Way You Look Tonight was by the Benny Goodman Sextet. They are NOT Peggy Lee records. Goodman discovered Norma Eggstrom, and gave her this new name. Goodman liked her so much that he even threw a chair at his producer, John Hammond, when he insisted that Peggy couldn't sing. So Peggy was merely an underpaid (If you worked for B.G., that is) Band Singer. She was not a big name yet, nor was she a solo artist at the time. In 1943 she married B.G.'s guitarist, Dave Barbour, and they left Goodman and formed their own musical group and recorded some great music for Capitol Records. After achieving some fame as a solo artist, Columbia Records then reissued some of her earlier work with Goodman, (How Deep Is The Ocean, and others), and some of these songs charted for a second time, creating some confusion for discographers. In 1947, Goodman also jumped over to Capitol, and these two artists were reunited on several records, so they are actually collaborations. In 1999, Columbia reissued the Complete Peggy Lee/ Benny Goodman recordings on CD.

Needless to say, that some of their best work together were not hits?

As you say there are different ways to assign the songs and there is "some confusion for discographers". We welcome your interpretation. The fact is that the focus on sheet music, the relaxed approach to crediting artist taken by most charts from this period and the confusion between band leaders, soloists and singers makes it impossible to be definitive.

6 Sep 2011

6 & 78 Manana

These two listings are the same recording - Peggy Lee backed by her husband Dave Barbour's orchestra.

Indeed there are a number of songs that fall into the same group, they have all been assigned to Peggy Lee. Thanks for the fix

5 Sep 2011

19 & 67 Somebody Else is Taking My Place

These two entries are the same recording - Benny Goodman with Peggy Lee doing the vocal. It charted at # 1 in 1942 then was reissued in 1948 and charted at # 30.

For a confirmation of these two listings being the same recording see The Big Band Discography 1917-1942 by Brian Rust. He only lists recordings made up until the Musician's Union strike in 1942, but lists all known reissues of each recording as of the date of his research. Pop Memories 1890-1954 by Joel Whitburn also states that the Columbia is a re-issue of the Okeh recording.

You are clearly correct. We would normally list this under Peggy Lee, however the reissue in 1948 makes it more complex, we'd like to note the reissue in some way (rather than adding its weeks on to the 1942 release).

So we think the best course is to change the 1942 entries to Peggy Lee and the 1948 ones to Benny Goodman and make sure this note is posted on both artist's pages so interested users can see what we've done.

An interesting case, thanks for bringing it to our attention.

5 Jul 2011

Probable Duplicate

#19 and #67 Are probably the same song. Peggy Lee sang vocal on Benny Goodman's 1942 "Somebody Else is Taking My Place" if my memory serves me.

In the Bullfrog list there are two separate songs (with Prefx numbers of 1948_211 and 1942_033) one has a label of "Okeh 6497" the other has "Columbia 38198". We suspect that your suggestion that Peggy Lee sang vocals on both is correct (the 1948 release explicitly mentions her but, in the Bullfrog list the 1942 version only has "Benny Goodman & His Orchestra" listed).

As you know the informal Billboard charts before 1958 often listed songs without crediting artists (because the focus was Sheet music sales rather than records) or they list band leaders without vocalists or vocalists without band leaders. This has led to a number of confusing situations where the same song is credited to different combinations in different charts. Unfortunately every way to fix this challenge causes some other issues, we try and keep as close to the true history as possible while being as consistent as we can be in our approach. We've added a note to Benny Goodman's and Peggy Lee's page to mention this, however after reviewing the original Bullfrog list we decided that the best option is to leave the data as it is.

Despite the fact that on this occasion we're not going to make the alteration you suggest we would like to thank you for your input. It is the vigilance of users like you that helps improve the quality of data on this site.