Peggy Lee

The Peggy Lee Songbook: A Gallery

I'm Gonna Go Fishin'

Image 33 of 54

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Peggy recorded several songs by the great Duke Ellington throughout the 1940s and 1950s, dating back to 1941’s “I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good” from one of her first sessions with Benny Goodman. In 1959 she had the opportunity to write lyrics for Ellington. “I remember him bringing me the tape with the theme music from the movie Anatomy of a Murder,” she recalled in her autobiography. “He just said, ‘Here you are, Your Highness – write this.’ (Duke had nicknamed me ‘The Queen.’) It seemed like challenge to write a lyric about a murder, but for those of you who write lyrics… I just got lucky and found the poetic symbol: the fisherman. Jimmy Stewart played the detective who liked to go fishing and think about solving a case. The man who committed the crime, the one who will be caught, was the trout.… When I gave Duke Ellington the lyric he liked it all, and that was enough for me.” Peggy’s studio recording for Capitol Records was made July 26, 1960, earning her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Vocal Performance. A live 1961 recording from New York’s Basin Street East was released in 2002. She performed the song on the 1973 television special Duke Ellington: We Love You Madly that also featured Ellington, a year before his death. This is one of six Lee lyrics selected by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball for inclusion in their anthology Reading Lyrics (Pantheon Books, 2000). The song has also been recorded by Jeanie Bryson, Ray Charles, Chris Connor, Connie Evingson, Ella Fitzgerald, the Four Freshmen, Jane Harvey, Dr. John, Maria Muldaur, Tish Oney, Annie Ross, the Singers Unlimited, Billy Stritch, Mel Tormé and Carol Welsman.