Out of the Past

Peg O' My Heart

I love you,

Don't let us part . . .*

After 34 years, during which Peg had been done wrong by innumerable tenors, she was once again deep in the U.S. heart and high on the hit parade. Last week, for the second week, the late Fred Fisher's 1913 sentimental tune was the nation's jukebox favorite. Its revival had started with the Harmonicats, a Midwest mouth-organ trio, who recorded it, and a Chicago disc jockey named Eddie Hubbard, who plugged their recording into popularity.

Peg O' My Heart was grown in the same fertile Tin Pan Alley patch as Dardanella, Fifty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong, Blue Is the Night, Ireland Must Be Heaven, and Come, Josephine, in My Flying Machine. But Peg O' My Heart grew more slowly than Fred Fisher's other hits, did not reach full bloom until the doughboys came home whistling it in 1919.

Born in Germany of U.S. parents, Composer Fisher spoke English with an accent that rhymed "love" with "enough," was the Irving Berlin of his day. His Dardanella (he wrote the lyrics) sold an alltime high of six million records and almost two million copies of sheet music. He organized the Fred Fisher Music Co., grossed nearly $1,000,000 in his first year. Later, as a manager of another Tin Pan Alley firm (Harms), Fred Fisher had such hopefuls as George Gershwin and Jerome Kern on his staff.

He was one of the first and most unabashed tune thieves, once told Movie-man Irving Thalberg, "When you buy me, you're buying Chopin, Liszt and Mozart. You're getting the very best." His most successful steal was Chasing Rainbows from Chopin's Fantasie-Impromptu. He got the title for Peg O' My Heart from the play (1912) starring Laurette Taylor, which had been a hit before Fisher borrowed its well-plugged name for his song. Fisher once sued Jerome Kern, accusing him of stealing the theme of his Kalula from the rumbling bass part of Dardanella. The jury awarded him 6-c-.

By last week, a dozen record companies had rushed new versions (by Ted Weems, Clark Dennis) of Fisher's old tune onto wax to cash in on the great revival. Alfred Bryan, 75, who wrote the lyrics, will get some return from it, but Fred Fisher's share will go to his heirs. Sick and no longer able to turn out hit tunes, he hanged himself five years ago.

* Copyright, 1947, Leo Feist, Inc.

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