Rotary Songs

Song of the day

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

This evening we welcome our District Governor and other distinguished guests with a song that takes us back to the very early days of Rotary. Let Me Call You Sweetheart (song 196 on page 39 of our Song Book) was one of the big hits of 1910. Its special significance to Rotarians is that it was the first song ever sung at a Rotary meeting. (see below)

Harry Ruggles, known as the fifth Rotarian because he joined the Chicago Club at its second meeting on 9 March 1905, was also its first song master. At a rather dull club meeting one evening in the Sherman Hotel, he suddenly shouted “Gosh fellows, let’s sing!” “By that time,” he reminisced many years later, “I was standing on my chair, waving my arms and swinging into Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Was it a coincidence that the hit had been published in Chicago?

The song was the biggest success ever for the song writing team of Beth Slater Whitson (1879-1930), who wrote the words, and Leo Friedman (1869-1927), who composed the music, following on from an earlier hit they had had with Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland. An evergreen, it has featured in over twenty films between 1929 and 1998. Bing Crosby’s 1934 recording is famous, and Ethel Merman sang it in a 1932 short of the same name. It was even in a 1997 television adaptation of a crime novel of the same name by Mary Higgins Clark.

There is actually a lot more to the song than the well known chorus in our Song Book. For the record, the complete lyric is as follows:

For your interest, I attach the song sheet I have prepared for our Club’s meeting this week. I am going to have a crack at the first verse, but won’t be asking members to do more than get through the chorus (once). As a rather new song master, I have become aware that not all members are enamoured of our singing tradition, some thinking it old hat and boring. I am doing my best to turn that around!

As you can see, I have ducked the question of exactly when singing came to Rotary in my song sheet. It is good to know that the source of your information (other than Harry Ruggles’ written word) is his granddaughter, but it is not clear to me that it was she who made the estimate of 1906. The expression “early days” from someone who was not even born at the time is not really an adequate support for such an estimate. If there is any more specific evidence, it would be great to know about it.

You will notice I describe Let Me Call You Sweetheart as a hit of 1910, but even this is making an assumption that it became a hit in the first year of publication. We know this doesn’t always happen. Since writing this I have just become aware through a website, that the biggest early hit version of this song did not make it onto the pop charts until November 1911.

For Harry Ruggles to have launched into this song spontaneously, with no lyrics available for other members to use, suggests that it must have been very well known at the time. Are we talking after the First Rotary Convention? If so of course, it couldn’t have been the first song sung at a Rotary meeting, and Harry must have been thinking of some other popular song. Can his granddaughter throw any light on this?

The song book referred to in my song sheet is the Rotary South Pacific Song Book, compiled in 1990 by the Rotary Club of Mayfield (now Newcastle Enterprise) in D 9670, and widely used throughout Australia and New Zealand. Incidentally, a brief internet search reveals that the first Rotary Song Book was published in 1917 or 1918 in response to requests by Rotary clubs. By 1920 or 1921, there was a Rotary Minstrels Song Book

Dr. Richard Lugg
38 Woolwich Street
Leederville WA 6007