Let Me Call You Sweetheart

DESCRIPTION: "Let me call you 'sweetheart'...." The singer professes his lover in the usual sorts of empty phrases
AUTHOR: Words: Beth Slater Whitson 1879-1930) / Music: Leo Friedman
EARLIEST DATE: 1910 (sheet music)
KEYWORDS: love nonballad
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, p. 327, "Let Me Call You Sweetheart"
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 257, 374, 467, 473, "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (notes only)
RECORDINGS:
New Milford Senior Center Members, "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (Fragment: Piotr-Archive #680, recorded 09/19/2023)
Riley Puckett, "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (Columbia 405-D, 1925)
SAME TUNE:
Let Me Call You Sweetheart, I'm In Love With Your Automobile (File: xxLMCYA)
Don't You Call Me Sweetheart (Pankake/Pankake-PrairieHomeCompanionFolkSongBook, p. 113)
Let Me Call You Lizzie (Pankake/Pankake-PrairieHomeCompanionFolkSongBook, p. 113; cf. Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 257)
Buddie Song ("Let me call you Buddie, let me pal with you") (Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsNThings, p. 100; Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsPopularEdition, p. 51)
NOTES [139 words]: Not a folk song by any stretch I can imagine. It's listed here because of all the parodies it inspired.
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000, p. 293, 353, estimates that this was the second most popular song in America in 1911, peaking at #1 in February 1911 (#1 for the year being Irving Berlin's "Alexander's Ragtime Band"), with a secondary spike in October 1925 when it reached #9.
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. 66, notes that Chris Smith and Arthur J. Lamb had written a song, "Let Me Call You Sweetheart Once Again," but all it has in common with this song seems to have been the title. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: xxLMCYS

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