Louis Wolfe Gilbert was a Russian-born American songwriter of Tin Pan Alley.
Gilbert's first songwriting success came in 1912 when F. A. Mills Music Publishers published his song Waiting For the Robert E. Lee (melody by composer Lewis F. Muir). Gilbert later wrote both the words and music to "Down Yonder", a sequel to "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee". "Down Yonder" has become something of a standard as an instrumental, though the lyrics are rarely performed.
During the 1930s, Gilbert worked on Cuban songs that helped to popularize the rumba in America. Some of these hits for which he wrote English lyrics include The Peanut Vendor, Mama Inez, and Maria My Own.
Gilbert wrote the theme lyrics for the popular children's Television Western Hopalong Cassidy, which first aired in 1949 on NBC. He was an innovator in his field, having been one of the first songwriters to begin publishing and promoting a catalog of his own works. He served as the director of ASCAP from 1941 to 1944, and again in 1953. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
