Peg o' My Heart

"Peg o' My Heart" is a popular song written by Alfred Bryan (words) and Fred Fisher (music). It was published on March 15, 1913 and it featured in the 1913 musical Ziegfeld Follies.

For other uses, see Peg o' My Heart (disambiguation).
Sheet music cover, 1913 with image of Laurette Taylor in her title role in the play.

The song was first performed publicly by Irving Kaufman in 1912 at The College Inn in New York City after he had stumbled across a draft of sheet music on a shelf at the Leo Feist offices.

The song was inspired by the main character in the very successful Broadway play of the time, Peg o' My Heart, that debuted December 20, 1912 at the Cort Theatre in NYC. The play was written by J. Hartley Manners and starred Laurette Taylor in the title role.[1] Taylor appeared on the cover of early published sheet music.[2]

Notable recordings

Notable recordings of the song include:

In other media

"Peg o' My Heart" featured in the 1959 film Oh, You Beautiful Doll, a fictionalized biography of Fred Fisher, a German-born American writer of Tin Pan Alley songs. (Mark Stevens) turns serious composer Fred Breitenbach (S. Z. Sakall) into songwriter Fred Fisher. Fred Fisher is his assumed name in real life and Breitenbach is his birth surname. In the film, many Fisher songs were given a symphonic arrangement that was performed at Aeolian Hall. Among the other Fisher songs heard were "Chicago," "Dardanella," and "Who Paid the Rent for Mrs. Rip Van Winkle". Mark Stevens (dubbed by Bill Shirley) and June Haver (dubbed by Bonnie Lou Williams) sing "Peg o' My Heart" as a duet.[10] The film was released on November 11, 1949.

The song, performed by Max Harris and his Novelty Trio (based on the Harmonicats' 1947 version), was used as the theme of the BBC miniseries The Singing Detective (1986). When recording engineer Bill Putnam recorded the Harmonicats' version of the song, he utilized the bathroom of Universal Recording as an echo chamber and became the first person to use artificial reverberation creatively on a pop recording.[11][12]

In the 2010 ITV drama Downton Abbey, episode 4 season 1 features William, the second footman, playing "Peg o' My Heart" on the piano in the servants' hall.

References
  1. "Internet Broadway Database". ibdb.com. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
  2. "Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame". cshf.ca. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
  3. "The Online Discographical Project". 78discography.com. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
  4. "The Online Discographical Project". 78discography.com. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
  5. Whitburn, Joel (1986). Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories 1890-1954. Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin: Record Research Inc. p. 430. ISBN 0-89820-083-0.
  6. "The Online Discographical Project". 78discography.com. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
  7. Gilliland, John. (2020-03-23). "Pop Chronicles 1940s Program #17 - All Tracks UNT Digital Library". Digital.library.unt.edu. Retrieved 2021-01-19.
  8. Whitburn, Joel (2013). Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Singles, 14th Edition: 1955-2012. Record Research. p. 548.
  9. "Bruce Springsteen Guests on Dropkick Murphys Album". Gibson.com. 2011-01-24. Archived from the original on 2011-07-01. Retrieved 2013-05-20.
  10. "Internet Movie Database". imdb.com. Retrieved March 23, 2020.
  11. Weir, William (2012-06-21). "How humans conquered echo". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-08-24.
  12. Cogan, Jim; Clark, William (2003). Temples of Sound: Inside the Great Recording Studios. San Francisco, California, United States: Chronicle Books. p. 127. ISBN 0-8118-3394-1.
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