Peg o' My Heart


"Peg o' My Heart" is a popular song written by Alfred Bryan and Fred Fisher. It was published on March 15, 1913 and it featured in the 1913 musical Ziegfeld Follies.
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. Taylor appeared on the cover of early published sheet music.

Notable recordings

Notable recordings of the song include:
Peg O' My Heart featured in the film: "Oh, You Beautiful Doll" - a fictionalized biography of Fred Fisher, a German-born American writer of Tin Pan Alley songs. turns serious composer Fred Breitenbach 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 Fisher songs heard were "Chicago," "Dardanella," Peg 'O' My Heart, and "Who Paid the Rent for Mrs. Rip Van Winkle". Mark Stevens and June Haver sing "Peg o' My Heart" as a duet. The film was released on November 11, 1949.
The song, performed by Max Harris and his Novelty Trio, was used as the theme of the BBC miniseries The Singing Detective. When recording engineer Bill Putnam recorded The Harmonicats version of the song, he became the first person to use artificial reverberation creatively on a pop recording, with the use of the first reverb chamber, which had been set up in the studio's bathroom.
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.