Fred Fisher (September 3, 1875 – January 14, 1942) was a German-born American songwriter and Tin Pan Alley music publisher. Fisher founded Fred Fisher Music Publishing Company in 1907. He was born as Albert von Breitenbach in Cologne. After visiting the United States in 1892, he immigrated in 1900, where he assumed the name Fred Fischer — Friedrich for its Germanic strength and Fischer from a sign he read on a passing truck. With the onslaught of World War I, he decided Fischer was too Germanic so he modified it to Fisher.^[1]

Selected compositions [link]

• If the Man in the Moon Were a Coon, by Fred Fischer, Will Rossiter (pub) (1905) OCLC 497077685 (this was his first hit; it combined two then-popular song themes, Moon songs and Coon songs)
• Come Josephine In My Flying Machine, by Fred Fischer, Shapiro (pub) (1910) OCLC 6586232
• Peg O' My Heart, words by Alfred Bryan, music by Fred Fisher, Leo Feist (pub) (1913) OCLC 11149171
• Who paid the rent for Mrs. Rip Van Winkle? words by Alfred Bryan, music by Fred Fischer, Leo Feist (pub) (1914) OCLC 49782832
• They Go Wild, Simply Wild, Over Me, words by Joe McCarthy (1885–1943), music by Fred Fisher, McCarthy & Fisher (pub) (1917) OCLC 17811063
• Dardanella, words by Fred Fisher, music by Felix Bernard (1897–1944) & Johnny S. Black (1895–1936), McCarthy & Fisher Inc. (1919) OCLC 10206915
• Chicago, by Fred Fisher, Fred Fisher (pub) (1922) OCLC 20597644
• That's When Your Heartaches Begin, by William Raskin, George Brown (Billy Hill), and Fred Fisher, Fred Fisher Music Co. (1940) (an Ink Spots tune recorded in 1957 by Elvis) OCLC 46387847
• Your Feet's Too Big, by Ada Benson, Fred Fisher, The Four Ink Spots (1936) OCLC 497463463
• I'd Rather Be Blue, words by Billy Rose, music by Fred Fisher, Irving Berlin (pub) (1928) OCLC 25122790
• Whispering Grass, words by Fred Fisher, music by Doris Fisher, Mills Music Inc. (pub) (1940) OCLC 26008157

Filmography [link]

• My Man (1928) – Fanny Brice sang the Fisher-Billy Rose collaboration I'd Rather Be Blue. That song was later covered by Barbra Streisand.

• Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949) – This film is a fictionalized Hollywood biography featuring many of Fisher's songs. A Tin Pan Alley promoter (Mark Stevens) turns serious composer Fred Breitenbach (S.Z. Sakall) into songwriter Fred Fisher.

Death [link]

Fred Fisher died in Manhattan, New York^[2][3] and was interred at Maimonides Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Honors [link]

• 1970 — Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
• Fisher made it into Ripley's "Believe It or Not" column for writing more Irish songs than anyone else.^[4]

Family [link]

In 1914, Fred Fisher married Ana Fisher (née Davidovitch, later Anglicized as Davis; born 1896). Their sons and daughter – Daniel ("Danny"; 1920–2001), Marvin (1916–1993), and Doris (1915–2003) – also wrote songs professionally.^[5]

External links [link]

• Fred Fisher at the Songwriters Hall of Fame

References [link]

General references Source Citation:

• American National Biography. 24 volumes. Edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999
• American Popular Songs. From the Revolutionary War to the present. Edited by David Ewen. New York: Random House, 1966
• American Songwriters. By David Ewen. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1987
• The ASCAP Biographical Dictionary. Third edition. New York: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, 1966
• ASCAP Biographical Dictionary. Fourth edition. Compiled for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers by Jaques Cattell Press. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1980
• Biographical Dictionary of American Music. By Charles Eugene Claghorn. West Nyack, NY: Parker Publishing Co., 1973
• Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 1: January 1946 - July 1949. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1949
• Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 6: September 1961 - August 1964. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1965
• Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 15: September 1986 - August 1988. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1988
• Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and magazines. Volume 16: September 1988 - August 1990. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1990
• The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz, 1900-1950. Three volumes. By Roger D. Kinkle. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House Publishers, 1974. Biographies are located in Volumes 2 and 3
• Dictionary of Pseudonyms. Third edition. By Adrian Room. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1998
• The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Third edition. Eight volumes. Edited by Colin Larkin. London: MUZE, 1998. Grove's Dictionaries, New York, 1998
• The Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music. Composers and their music. Supplement. By William H. Rehrig. Westerville, OH: Integrity Press, 1996
• The New American Dictionary of Music. By Philip D. Morehead with Anne MacNeil. New York: Dutton, 1991
• The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Four volumes. Edited by H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan Press, 1986
• Notable Names in the American Theatre. Clifton, NJ: James T. White & Co., 1976. Earlier edition published as The Biographical Encyclopaedia and Who's Who of the American Theatre
• The Oxford Companion to Popular Music. By Peter Gammond. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1991
• Popular American Composers. From Revolutionary times to the present. A biographical and critical guide. First edition. Compiled and edited by David Ewen. New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1962
• Songwriters. A biographical dictionary with discographies. By Nigel Harrison. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1998
• Sweet and Lowdown. America's popular song writers. By Warren Craig. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978. Biographies appear in the 'After Tin Pan Alley' section, beginning on page 91
• Tin Pan Alley. An encyclopedia of the golden age of American song. By David A. Jasen. New York: Routledge, 2003

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