Song:Oh! My Papa
Album:Greatest Hits
Eddie Fisher is best known for personal life, mostly his marriages. But he was one of the biggest singing stars of the early 50s. He had 22 top ten hits, seven gold records and four #1 hits including Oh! My Papa. Of course Rock & Roll killed his career by the late 50s. Fisher had the looks to be a Rock & Roll star but he didn't like the music. He was born Aug. 10, 1928 in Philadelphia to Russian Jewish immigrants. Fisher was likely an anglicized form of the name Fisch. He performed locally growing up and by 1946 he was singing in the big bands of Buddy Morrow and Charlie Ventura. His big break came in 1949 when Eddie Cantor saw Fisher perform in Grossinger's in The Catskills in New York and invited him to appear on his radio show. This led to a contract with RCA Records. His first top five hit was Thinking Of You in 1950. He was drafted into the US Army in 1951 but continued to record and frequently performed on TV in his uniform. His first #1 hit was the theme to the musical Wish You Were Here in 1952. And he had three best selling LPs. After Fisher was discharged from the Army in 1953, he got his own TV show Coke Time With Eddie Fisher. I'm Walking Behind You and Oh! My Papa were both #1 hits in 1953. For a couple of years, Fisher was the most popular pop singer in the US. Oh! My Papa is the German song O Mein Papa written by Swiss composer Paul Burkhard in 1939. It was adapted into English by British songwriters John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons. They specialized in adapting foreign songs into English. British trumpeter Eddie Calvert had a #1 hit with the song in England. No doubt RCA house producer and orchestra leader Hugo Winterhalter chose the song for Fisher. Connie Francis and Jim Nabors are among those who covered Oh! My Papa. Fisher's final #1 hit was I Need You Now in 1954. He married Debbie Reynolds in 1955 and with Rock & Roll becoming more popular, he tried acting and became a Las Vegas style singer. He tried some modern music but it didn't work for him. He had a new TV show in 1957. His 1959 affair with Elizabeth Taylor and subsequent divorce from Reynolds and marriage to Taylor didn't help Fisher. His records weren't selling anyway and RCA dropped him in 1960. He recorded on his own Ramrod label and then Dot and returned to RCA but was never able to reach the heights of songs like Oh! My Papa. After he divorced Taylor, he married Connie Stevens in 1967. Of course his daughter Carrie Fisher is a writer and actress and Joely Fisher is an actress. Eddie Fisher had drug problems and his attempt to return to music in the 80s was unsuccessful. Though he did recover from drug addiction. Some European record companies have released budget CDs of Fisher's RCA recordings. But they are not remastered. This 2001 RCA comp is remastered. It will have better sound quality. Eddie Fisher died on Sept. 22, 2010 at age 82 after he broke his hip and their were complications in surgery. Here's Eddie Fisher performing Oh! My Papa on the Colgate Comedy Hour 1953. This video is not on Youtube.
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