Margit Lorenz – born in 1930 in Bohemia, Czechoslovakia – is better known as pop and schlager singer Peggy Brown. She attended the Music Academy in Erfurt, Germany, where she pursued her love of jazz music and studied voice and several instruments. During this period, she sang for a Gera, Germany-based big band. By 1949, she was performing in clubs all around Germany, finally settling in Munich, where she performed in American clubs and made her first recordings in 1950. She spent the ‘50s performing cover versions of popular German hits but found it difficult to achieve nothing more than regional success. In 1960, Margit Lorenz signed a deal with Telefunken Records and she went into the studio with producer Wolf Kabitzky, who gave her the stage name Peggy Brown. Her single “Denn Sie Fahren Hinaus Auf Das Meer” (1960) was a huge hit, winning her several awards and making her one of the biggest pop stars in Germany. Peggy Brown appeared on many TV and radio shows, which lead to her appearances in the films Ramona (1961) and Café Oriental (1962). She recorded several more hits – including the Number 6 hit “Das Lexikon d’Amour” – but never achieved the same amount of success that “Denn Sie Fahren Hinaus Auf Das Meer” brought her. By the early 1970s, she had left her record label and formed the Peggy Brown Choir and provided backing vocals for several artists. By the end of the decade, she retired from show business.
