Little Peggy March is 66 years old today. Born Margaret Annemarie Battavio in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, March was primarily known for her 1963 million-selling song I Will Follow Him.” She was discovered at age thirteen singing at her cousins wedding and was introduced to the record producer partnership Hugo & Luigi. They gave her the nickname Little Peggy March because she was only 4 foot, 9 inches tall, she was only 13, the record she did with them was Little Me, and her birthday was in March. On April 24, 1963, her single I Will Follow Him soared to number one on the U.S. charts. Recorded in early January 1963 and released January 22, March was only 14 at the time. March became the youngest female artist with a number one hit, at 15, in late April 1963, a record that still stands for the Billboard Hot 100. Marchs success also came with financial trouble. She was a minor and the Coogan Law prevented her parents from managing her money. The responsibility was placed on her manager, Russell Smith. It was discovered in 1966 that he had squandered the fortune away, leaving her with $500. Peggy graduated from Lansdale Catholic High School in 1966. She soon had a new manager, Arnie Harris, who later became her husband. They had one daughter, Sande, born in 1974. Although she is remembered by some as a one-hit wonder, her singles I Wish I Were a Princess and Hello Heartache, Goodbye Love made the Top 30 in the United States. Working with RCA Victor, she made 18 singles from 1964 to 1971. She also cut several albums, none of which sold well in the United States. She began having a strong presence in the European and Asian music markets and moved to Germany in 1969. Her commercial success in Germany continued through much of the 1970s. By 1981, record companies did not renew her contracts, and she moved back to the United States. In 1984, however, Jermaine Jackson and Pia Zadora achieved a major European hit single with the track When the Rain Begins to Fall, co-written by March. It went to #1 in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. In March 2010, March went into the recording studio to record her first album of new, original material in English in over 30 years. A collaboration with Scandinavian songwriter and producer Soren Jensen, the album Always and Forever was released on October 13, 2010. It was followed by a special edition for the German-speaking countries in April 2012, including two duets with the Dutch singer José Hoebee, one of them being a cover version of I Will Follow Him; which had also been a #1 single in the Netherlands and Belgium for Hoebee in 1982. Here, March performs “I Will Follow Him” in 2002.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 05:06:13 +0000
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