Songfacts®:

• Also known as "They Call Her Frivolous Sal," this 1905 song by Paul Dresser has the distinction of being the first song ever performed in a motion picture film. This was of course The Jazz Singer which was released October 6, 1927.
  
  Dresser died in 1906 so had no idea his work would be so honored. In the film it is sung briefly (and ostensibly) by the teenage Robert Gordon, although it is dubbed by an unknown singer.
• Since its first publication at New York in 1905, "My Gal Sal" has been republished a number of times including around 1960, and has also been fairly widely recorded. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 2
• In 1942, a musical film based on Paul Dresser's life called My Gal Sal was released. Victor Mature played Dresser.
• This an upbeat song about a guy who is looking forward to seeing his girl again. He sings her praises, calling her a "wild sort of devil, but dead on the level."
  
  The song is usually performed with one verse sandwiched between two repetitions of the chorus, but Dresser wrote a second, rarely heard verse, which reveals that Sal is dead:
  
  Brought her little dainties just afore she died
  Promised she would meet me on the other side
  Told her how I love her, she said,
  "I know Jim, just do your best, leave the rest to Him"
  
  Gently I pressed her to my breast
  Soon she would take her last, long rest
  She looked at me and murmured, "Pal"
  And softly I whispered "Goodbye, Sal"
• Bobby Darin covered this song on his 1960 album This Is Darin. Benny Goodman did a popular instrumental version of the song.