Peggy Lee

The Peggy Lee Songbook: A Gallery

Little Fool

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Peggy never recorded her first published song (1941), and no recordings by others are known to exist. She recalled it in a 1984 interview with Interview magazine: “Actually, I was writing when I was in high school, just for my own amusement. But Benny [Goodman] got me into songwriting as a kind of contest. I remember writing a ‘brilliant’ song called ‘Little Fool,’ and it was published in a newspaper. It was a big publicity thing. It didn’t get very far at all.” The song is also mentioned in a 1959 Downbeat article: “One tune she didn’t get a chance to record was one of her own: her first published ditty, ‘Little Fool.’ But Benny did put it in the book, and played it occasionally.”