At just 15 years old, Peggy March made music history with “I Will Follow Him,” becoming the youngest female singer to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The 1963 hit spent three weeks atop the chart and launched March’s career in music.
More than six decades later, March still holds that record. But before “I Will Follow Him” made her a star, her first RCA single had failed to become a hit.
“Little Me” was released when she was 13 and came from the Broadway musical of the same name. March says she wasn't discouraged by its lack of chart success.
“No. The funny thing is, it didn’t bother me because I knew that if I found it difficult to sing, then everybody else was going to find it difficult to sing along with,” she told Billboard. “It was a Broadway song, not a pop song.”
March was beginning her freshman year of high school when she was taken to Newark, New Jersey, to meet producers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, who had already worked with successful pop acts.
“They produced the Tokens and they had big hits, several of which they wrote and several of which they didn’t,” March recalled. One of those songs was “I Will Follow Him.”
“It’s one they did not write,” she said. March remembers walking into their office and seeing the sheet music sitting on a desk. Her first thought? Not exactly a fan. “My sister tells me to this day, ‘You didn’t like that song at all. You thought it was too repetitive.’”
Before March recorded “I Will Follow Him,” the song had already gone through a few versions. In 1961, it began as “Chariot,” a French instrumental composed by Paul Mauriat and Franck Pourcel. After French and English lyrics were added, March’s 1963 recording became its biggest U.S. hit.
March cut “I Will Follow Him” in early January 1963. It was the only song she recorded during a three-hour session. “They had me in an isolation booth, because my voice was too loud,” she said. “The strings were picking my voice up, so they had to isolate me.”
As the song climbed the charts, March followed its progress every week while listening to WABC radio at home.
“It continued to go up and it was No. 2 for three weeks,” she recalled. “And this particular week, when they played the No. 2 song, it was not ‘I Will Follow Him.’ I remember thinking, ‘Well, I guess it flew off. It’s no longer there. That’s disappointing.’ And then they played the No. 1 song and it was ‘I Will Follow Him.’ I stood there totally mesmerized, listening to me sing.”
Decades after March's version became a No. 1 hit, “I Will Follow Him” found a new generation of fans when it appeared in the 1992 film Sister Act.
“I understand they looked for me for some time to be part of the film,” she said. “I could’ve been a nun but they couldn’t find me. And then there was a whole resurgence of ‘I Will Follow Him,’ which was a wonderful thing.”
March still sings the song at her shows, and fans regularly tell her how much it means to them. “People tell me, ‘I fell in love with that song.’ Or, ‘I had my first date with that song.’ And, ‘We danced to it at the prom.’”
March never expected the record she set as a teenager to last this long. “I’m surprised the h*** out of me that the record is still there,” she said. “I thought it would’ve been broken long before now.”
At the time, she wasn't thinking about making history. “I don’t think I gave it a second thought,” March added. “It wasn’t until years later when it became a thing that I thought, ‘Oh wow, isn’t that interesting?’ Because we were all teenagers at that time. Some were just older than others.”
Related: 1964 Folk Song, Written by Bob Dylan, Launched a 19-Year-Old Singer’s Solo Career
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