Why Don't You Do Right

Peggy Lee, with the song that made her famous:

I fell for your jiving and I took you in
Now all you've got to offer me is a drink of gin...

 

It's not the earliest version though. Here she is with Benny Goodman in 1943 (from 'Stage Door Canteen'). This version, above, is a few years later, maybe 1950, and leaner, less busy. She looks older, but happier, more in control. For a start she doesn't have the over-bearing presence of Goodman with his big clarinet standing right behind her as she sings. 

The guitarist is her husband - the first of four - Dave Barbour. They met when they were both with the Benny Goodman orchestra, but romance between band members wasn't allowed so they left.

The song was composed by the great Kansas Joe McCoy, husband of Memphis Minnie. It appeared originally as "The Weed Smoker's Dream", recorded by The Harlem Hamfats in 1936. The lyrics aren't easy to make out, but the first verse goes something like this:

Sittin’ on a million
Sittin’ on it every day
Can’t make no money givin’ your
stuff away
Why don’t you do now
like the millionaires do?
Put your stuff on the market
And make a million too.

That may be referring to drug dealing, but it sounds more to me like the singer's suggesting his woman sell what she's sitting on instead of giving it away - ie prostitute herself. A real weed smoker's dream.

Wisely, McCoy changed the lyrics to present the other side of the battle of the sexes, and a different intoxicant, for the 1941 version by Lil Green, with guitar by Big Bill Broonzy. It's one of the great overlooked blues classics of the time. For all that Peggy Lee has the reputation as a great original stylist, she pretty much copied Lil Green all the way on this one.

[The Peggy Lee connection inspired by this.]

Comments

[grassmarket]

What's interesting about the Benny Goodman version is that she still has a light Scandinavian accent - she was born in the US but brought up in an isolated community.

[Mick H]

Indeed - I hadn't picked up on that.