#37: My Man by Peggy Lee
City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: March 1959
Peak Position in Hull ~ #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ did not chart
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #81
YouTube: “My Man”
Lyrics: “My Man”
Norma Deloris Egstrom was born in 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota. Her family later moved to Wimbledon (ND). In Wimbledon, Lee was the female singer for a six-piece college dance band with leader Lyle “Doc” Haines. She traveled to various locations with Haines’ quintet on Fridays after school and on weekends. Lee first sang professionally over KVOC radio in Valley City, North Dakota, in 1936. She later had her own 15-minute Saturday radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her salary in food. Both during and after her high-school years, Lee sang for small sums on local radio stations. In October 1937, radio personality Ken Kennedy, of WDAY in Fargo, (the most widely heard station in North Dakota), auditioned her and put her on the air that day, but not before he changed her name to Peggy Lee.
Lee left home and traveled to Hollywood, California, at the age of 17 in March 1938. Her first job was seasonal work on Balboa Island, Newport Beach as a short order cook and waitress at Harry’s Cafe. When the job ended after Easter, she was hired to work as a carnival barker at the Balboa Fun Zone.
In 1940, she took a job singing at The Doll House in Palm Springs. Here, she developed her trademark sultry purr, having decided to compete with the noisy crowd with subtlety rather than volume. In her 1989 biography, Lee wrote, “I knew I couldn’t sing over them, so I decided to sing under them. The more noise they made, the more softly I sang. When they discovered they couldn’t hear me, they began to look at me. Then, they began to listen. As I sang, I kept thinking, ‘softly with feeling’. The noise dropped to a hum; the hum gave way to silence. I had learned how to reach and hold my audience—softly, with feeling.”
While performing at The Doll House, Lee met Frank Bering, the owner of the Ambassador East and West in Chicago. He offered her a gig at the Buttery Room, a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel West. There, she was noticed by bandleader Benny Goodman. According to Lee: “Benny’s then-fiancée, Lady Alice Duckworth, came into the Buttery, and she was very impressed. So the next evening, she brought Benny in, because they were looking for a replacement for Helen Forrest. And although I didn’t know, I was it. He was looking at me strangely, I thought, but it was just his preoccupied way of looking. I thought that he didn’t like me at first, but it just was that he was preoccupied with what he was hearing.”
In 1941, she joined the Benny Goodman Orchestra. In 1942, Lee had a number-one hit, “Somebody Else Is Taking My Place”. In 1943, “Why Don’t You Do Right?” climbed to #4 on the Billboard pop chart and sold over a million copies, making her famous. She sang with Goodman’s orchestra in two 1943 films, Stage Door Canteen and The Powers Girl. That year she married guitarist in the band, David Barbour.
In late 1945, Peggy Lee had her first solo hit titled “Waitin’ for the Train to Come In”, which climbed to #4. And in 1946, she was back in the Top Ten twice, with “I Don’t Know Enough About You” being her biggest hit that year. In 1947, “Golden Earrings” reached #2 on the American pop charts. The following year, she had her second number-one record with “Mañana”. Then in 1949, Peggy Lee had another smash hit peaking at #2 with “Riders in the Sky (A Cowboy Legend)”.
In the 1950s, Peggy Lee was frequently on the pop charts. However, she had fewer Top Ten hits. In 1950, she had a successful duet with Mel Tormé titled “The Old Master Painter”. Then in 1952, Peggy Lee took “Lover” to #3. It took six more years before she cracked the Top Ten again with “Fever”, which climbed to #8.
She also appeared in the film The Jazz Singer in 1952. In 1954, Peggy Lee sang the title song “Johnny Guitar” which she wrote for the Joan Crawford film Johnny Guitar. In 1955, Peggy Lee appeared as an alcoholic jazz singer in Pete Kelly’s Blues. For her performance she was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She lost out to Jo Van Fleet in East of Eden. As well, in 1955 Lee provided speaking and singing voices for several characters in the animated film Lady and the Tramp. She co-wrote all the songs. Disney didn’t pay her any royalties, and in 1992 she won a lawsuit and was awarded $3.8M.
In 1959, Peggy Lee received three Grammy Award nominations, two in the Best Vocal Performance – Female category for “Fever” and for “Alright, Okay”. She also received a Grammy Award nomination for “Fever” in the Record of the Year category.
“My Man” was translated into English by Channing Pollock. The original in French, “Mon Homme”, was written by Jacques-Charles and French librettist Albert Willemetz (born 1887). Channing Pollock was born in 1880 in Washington DC. He wrote over twenty Broadway musicals. His first Broadway musical was a Chicago-themed story in 1904 titled The Pit. Subsequent Broadway musicals include In The Bishop’s Carriage (1907) which was made into a silent movie starring Mary Pickford in 1913, The Zigfeld Follies of 1911, Zigfeld Follies of 1921, and Mr. Moneypenny (1928). His last Broadway musical was The House Beautiful in 1931.
The music for “Mon Homme” was composed by Maurice Yvain who was born in Paris in 1891. After serving in the French military service from 1912 to 1919 (including during WWI), he began to compose operettas, and other songs. “Mon Homme” was recorded in 1920 by French singer Mistinguett and became an instant hit. Between 1919 and 1958, he wrote over 40 hit recordings on the French pop charts. Numbers of these were for Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier, André Barde, Georges Milton, and others. “My Man” by Fanny Brice in 1921 was a hit in America. It was featured in the 1936 film The Great Zigfeld.
“My Man” is a song about a woman who considers the man in her life her primary focus. There are a lot of qualifications just the same. 1) “he’s not much for looks,” 2) “no hero out of books,” 3) “two or three girls has he, that he likes as much as me,” 4) “he ain’t good,” 5) “he isn’t true,” 6) “he beats me too”, 7) “he’ll never know all my life is just despair.”
Books have been written about why some women, when they are physically abused – “he beats me too” – choose to stay in the relationship. Others about why some women choose to stay in a relationship when their man is playing the field out in the open. In the case of “My Man”, it doesn’t seem he’s a family man. But in any event, he’s the best she’s found, or so she thinks. The trauma of World War I, just ended in November 1918, may have added another layer of complexity to the song. Soldiers were returning from the brutality of war in late 1918. And in 1918-1919, very few of these soldiers were getting any help with what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder. And part of the fallout for brutalized soldiers lent itself to anger management problems. These resulted in fathers not knowing how to discipline their children without doing it severely, and beating their wives and girlfriends.
Despite lots of reasons to dump the guy, she rebounds with this attestation that she “loves him so”. Moreover,
“When he takes me in his arms, the world is bright.
Alright, what’s the difference if I say I’ll go away.
When I know I’ll come back on my knees someday
For whatever my man is, I am his forever.”
In 2014, when NFL linebacker Ray Rice knocked his fiancée Janay Palmer unconscious in an elevator, it didn’t initially get much attention. He was accused of domestic violence and suspended from playing with the Baltimore Ravens for two games. After a few weeks, he was formally charged. Yet Rice and Palmer were married the next day. Things changed when a security video of the event surfaced and immediately went viral. Seeing Palmer be knocked out and dragged out of the elevator by Rice in caveman style, had a visceral effect on viewers. There was widespread outrage. It led the NFL to increase their punishment of Ray Rice and conduct an internal review of their domestic violence policies.
Nonetheless, Janay Palmer spoke out in defense of her husband. At a press conference she told the press, with Ray Rice seated beside her, “I deeply regret the role I played that night.” Days later she asked people to stop reaching judgments and making accusations. On Instagram she wrote, “Just know we will continue to grow and show the world what real love is.” Palmer asked others to not take anything from the man she loves.
In a Psychology Today article, Jason Whiting Ph.D., describes eight factors that lead abused women to stay in a relationship.
1) Distorted thoughts: Being physically hurt and beaten in traumatizing. It leads to confusion, self-doubt and self-blame.
2) Damaged self-worth: many women who have been physically beaten have low self-worth and assume they have done something wrong to deserve the severe punishment from their partner.
3) Fear: women in an abusive relationship feel exhausted at the thought of leaving, and are afraid of what their man may do to make things unbearable, raise the temperature, and force them to stay.
4) Wanting to be a savior: Despite the pattern of bullying and abuse, many women who stay in the relationship tell themselves that if they love their man enough they can change them.
5) Children: If there are children, the woman reasons that staying in the abusive relationship is best for the children; That it is better to stay in a broken home than to leave one.
6) Family expectations and experiences: Some women watch their fathers beat their mothers, and find themselves drawn to boyfriends who turn out to be abusive, just like their dads.
7) Financial constraints: Often (though not always) a woman with little feelings of self-worth has not found a lucrative career. If she has paid employment, it is in a modest position that won’t threaten her overbearing boyfriend or husband who typically views himself as the ‘breadwinner,’ the one who ‘brings home the bacon.’
8) Isolation: Often the abusive partner doesn’t want the girlfriend or spouse maintaining close relationships with other girlfriends, parents, siblings, etc. Over time, the physically, mentally and emotionally abused woman finds herself without the support system she enjoyed before her man came into her life.
Since the 2014 NFL season, Ray Rice’s football career was sidelined and eventually derailed. In the years that followed, no team would sign with him. Subsequently, Ray Rice became a motivational speaker warning about domestic violence, and learning life lessons. Subsequently, Rice and Palmer were married.
“My Man” peaked at #3 in Hull (PQ), and #7 in Schenectady (NY).
On February 8, 1960, Peggy Lee was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the Recording category at 6319 Hollywood Blvd.
In 1961, Peggy Lee received a Grammy Award nomination in the
In 1969, Peggy Lee had her last Top 40 hit with “Is That All There Is?”, which peaked at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100. The recording won her a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Vocal Performance. The song also earned her a second nomination in the Record of the Year category.
In 1989, she was nominated in the
Peggy Lee graduated from Wimbledon High School, in Wimbledon (ND). The Wimbledon depot building, where she and her family lived and worked, became the Midland Continental Depot Transportation Museum, featuring The Peggy Lee Exhibit, in 2012. The upper floor of the museum, where the Egstrom family once lived, features exhibits that trace Lee’s career and her regional and state connection.
August 30, 2024
Ray McGinnis
References:
“Singer Peggy Lee dead of heart attack at 81,” CNN, January 22, 2002.
“Channing Pollock Dies in 67th Year: Famous Playwright Was Also Critic, Lecturer and Press Agent,” Montreal Gazette, August 19, 1946.
Jason Whiting Ph.D., “8 Reasons Women Stay in Abusive Relationships,” Psychology Today, January 8, 2020.
“Ray Rice – Press Conference,” YouTube.com, May 23, 2014.
“Ray Rice Spoke to the Florida State Football Team About How He Derailed His NFL Career,” Complex.com, August 21, 2016.
Maura Hohman, “Ray Rice Says He Got a ‘Second Chance’ with Wife Janay After Domestic Violence Incident,” People, December 19, 2018.
CKCH 970-AM Hull (QC) Top 15 | March 28, 1959
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