Born Margaret Annemarie Battavio in Pennsylvania, Peggy began singing at the age of two and was heard at a cousin’s wedding when she was 13 by a friend who introduced her to Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore at RCA who suggested she should record the French song, Chariot once English lyrics had been added by Arthur Altman and Norman Gimble.
As ‘Little Peggy March’, she was a few days past her fifteenth birthday when I Will Follow Him went to #1 on the American charts in April 1963 making her the youngest female artist ever to achieve that accolade.
Although she is remembered 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, with the latter also reaching #29 on the UK Singles Chart.
Recording for RCA Victor, March made 18 singles from 1964 to 1971. She also cut several albums, none of which sold well in the United States.
She moved to Germany in 1969 where she had local hits with songs like Mit 17 hat man noch Träume (At 17 you still have dreams), In der Carnaby Street, and Der Schuster macht schöne Schuhe (The Cobbler Makes Beautiful Shoes).
She tried representing Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969, but was placed second in the national final with the song Hey! Das ist Musik für mich. March made another Eurovision attempt in 1975 when she performed Alles geht vorüber in the German national contest. Again she was placed second.
March returned to the US in the 1980s.
