Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis

DESCRIPTION: Louis returns from work to find Flossie not at home. Her note says that life is too slow, and tells him to "Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, Meet me at the fair; Don't tell me the lights are shining Any place but there." A despondent Louis prepares to move
AUTHOR: Words: Andrew B. Sterling / Music: Kerry Mills
EARLIEST DATE: 1904 (sheet music)
KEYWORDS: love travel separation abandonment
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1904 - St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair), for which Kerry Mills wrote this song
FOUND IN: US(So)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Randolph 514, "Meet Me at the Fair" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 255, "Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis" (1 text)
Geller-FamousSongsAndTheirStories, pp. 241-244, "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Robert A. Fremont, editor, _Favorite Songs of the Nineties_, Dover Publications, 1973, pp. 191-194, "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" (1 text, 1 tune, the 1904 sheet music)
Margaret Bradford Boni, editor, _Songs of the Gilded Age_, with piano arrangements by Norman Lloyd and illustrations by Lucille Corcos, Golden Press, 1960, pp. 16-18, "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #7597
RECORDINGS:
Billy Murray, "Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis" (Victor 2850, 1904)
NOTES [458 words]: Although the song pronounces the name of the town "St. Louie", no St. Louis resident ever uses that pronunciation, and we look upon it with disdain. - PJS
Andrew B. Sterling is best known for writing the words to this song and "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie"; also "On the Shores of Havana," "Strike Up the Band (Here Comes a Sailor)," "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown (What You Goin' to Do When the Rent Comes 'Round?)," and others.
According to Geller, Sterling and a couple of friends visited a bar run by a man named Louis (Louie), and they called his product Louie as well. When Sterling came in, one of the others said, "Another Louie, Louie," and that inspired the idea. (Boni et al have the minor variant that beers from Saint Louis were called Louis. They agree that the phrase "Another Louie, Louie" inspired this song.)
This is probably the most popular tune by Kerry Mills (whose publishing company F. A. Mills used his actual initials; "Kerry" was a nickname) -- but he had plenty of others, including in this index "Red Wing (I)" and "Whistling Rufus" (although he did not write the texts of any of them). Probably his other biggest hit was "At a Georgia Campmeeting" (1897). This was one of the many "cakewalks" published by Mills, who according to David A. Jasen, Tin Pan Alley: The Composers, the Songs, the Performers and their Times: The Golden Age of American Popular Music from 1886 to 1956, Primus, 1988, p. 18, had been largely responsible for the cakewalk craze with his 1895 coon song/cakewalk "Rastus on Parade." Mills went on to produce rags and other modern music; Jasen, p. 19, says, "Through Kerry Mills, the cakewalk became the first major dance form of Tin Pan Alley, breaking the dominance of the waltz and adding a syncopated kick."
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000, p. 267, estimates that this was the eighth most popular song in America in 1904, peaking at #1 in July 1904 (#1 for the year being Edward Maddon and Theodore F. Morse's "Blue Bell"); p. 478 says that it had another vogue in January 1945, when it reached #19, presumably as a result of Judy Garland's recording in the song "Meet Me in St. Louis."
Incidentally, the 1904 World's Fair turned out to have a great deal of cultural influence (and waistline influence). Joe Schwarcz, That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles, ECW press, 2002, pp. 214-218, notes that among the inventions popularized there were the ice cream cone (ice cream was well known, but until then it had been served mostly in dishes), the hot dog bun, peanut butter (originally designed as a protein source for those with poor or no teeth), cotton candy, and Dr. Pepper soda. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: R514

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