Harry S. Miller


Harry S. Miller was an American lyricist, composer, and sometimes playwright who lived in New York and Chicago in the 19th and early 20th centuries and is best known for his song "The Cat Came Back", published in 1893.

Life

Born in Philadelphia in 1867 to Isaac D. Miller and Amelia Straub, Miller was the second of four brothers. He was raised in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, and moved to New York City in 1896 to further his career as a lyricist.
Miller's songs were part of Tin Pan Alley, and were sold to various TPA entertainers. He specialized in quatrains and often wrote using a Georgian Black dialect, though Miller was white. His contemporaries credited him with the popularization of the terms of endearment "honey" and "baby" in African-American English and the spread of coon songs, as well as the phrase, "Got troubles of my own".
In 1898, Miller wrote The Insurance Agent: An Eccentric Character and Comedy Sketch, a two-man play.
Miller married his wife Levina and moved to Tyrone, Pennsylvania, where they gave birth to their daughter, Gladys Lucille, in 1905.
Most of his music was published by Edward Taylor Paull, a New England publisher at the time, who also composed "He's Goin' to Hab a Hot Time Bye an' Bye" for Miller.
The date of Miller's death is unknown, but he was apparently still alive in 1908.

Works

Songs

Many of his songs have been lost, along with their date of publication, including: