Let Me Call You Sweetheart: A Song History

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"Let Me Call You Sweetheart" is a popular song with music by Leo Friedman and words by Beth Slater Whitson, published in 1910.[1] A copy in York University's John Arpin Sheet Music Collection, subtitled "I'm in Love with You," carries the Chicago imprint of Leo Friedman and Harold Rossiter and a cover illustration of a woman.[2] Whitson, born in 1879 in Goodrich, Hickman County, Tennessee, where her father co-edited the local paper, had already had a major hit with "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland" in 1909; with her sister Alice Whitson Norton she wrote lyrics for more than 400 songs before her death in 1930.[3]

Lace-paper valentine with a young couple in old-fashioned dress sitting on a wall among flowers

Kate Greenaway, Valentine, chromolithography in colors and gold on card with openwork lace paper, 1876. A Victorian valentine, shown for the song's sweetheart; it has no connection to the song.

According to the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Peerless Quartet had an enormous success with the song in 1911, and a recording by Arthur Clough from the same year was also popular.[1] The earliest version in the Discography of American Historical Recordings is by the Columbia Quartette, made in New York on July 28, 1911, and issued on Columbia A1057.[4] Riley Puckett sang it to his own guitar for Columbia in New York on June 17, 1925.[5] The previous September, Victor had recorded a waltz version by the International Novelty Orchestra under Nathaniel Shilkret, with tenor Lewis James, which can be heard on the Library of Congress National Jukebox.[6] The discography's entries for the song run from that 1911 session to 1947, the year of a version by Stuart Foster with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra.[7] The Songwriters Hall of Fame named it a Towering Song in 2001.[1] Judy House arranges it in Favorite Sing-Along Songs For The Mountain Dulcimer, an 85-page book of familiar tunes in moderately easy settings that she publishes herself.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Let Me Call You Sweetheart"

Sources

  1. Songwriters Hall of Fame: "Let Me Call You Sweetheart".
  2. York University, Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections: "Let me call you sweetheart (I'm in love with you)".
  3. Tennessee Encyclopedia: "Beth Slater Whitson" (Carroll Van West).
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix 19503. Let me call you sweetheart / Columbia Quartette".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Columbia matrix W140697. Let me call you sweetheart / Riley Puckett".
  6. Library of Congress, National Jukebox: "Let me call you sweetheart (I'm in love with you)".
  7. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Beth Slater Whitson".
  8. Judy House: "Favorite Sing-Along Songs For The Mountain Dulcimer".
  9. Image: Kate Greenaway, Valentine, chromolithography in colors and gold on card with openwork lace paper, 1876. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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