"What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)" is a song written by Glenn Sutton. The song's title is a reference to Schlitz beer, which for many years was advertised with the slogan, "The beer that made Milwaukee famous."

In 1968, Sutton was working as a staff producer at Columbia Records.  As a budding songwriter, he had engaged a music publisher, Al Gallico, and was asked to come up with some material for Jerry Lee Lewis.  In the mid-Sixties, the legendary wild man of rock, nicknamed "the Killer", had been persuaded by his producer, Jerry Kennedy, to switch styles to the more commercial sound of country and western.

Sutton was put on the spot when he took a call from Gallico.  A song was needed for a Lewis session the next day and Gallico wanted to know what he had.

Sutton had nothing prepared, but he didn't want to lose the work.  He glanced at a newspaper on his desk. T here was an ad for Schlitz, "the beer that made Milwaukee famous". "I just said to Al, it's a drinking song,"  "I'd written a lot of drinking songs before then, but I'd never thought of that."  Schlitz was one of a number of breweries mostly established by German and Polish immigrants which had sprung up in Milwaukee since the 19th century.  Their slogan made a great title, particularly as a country number.

Sutton worked on the song all night and "What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)" was completed by daybreak.

Beer may have put Milwaukee on the map, but it had put the song's protagonist on the skids.  It appealed to the Killer's instinct and he cut it the day after it was written.  Paced around a rolling piano and sweetened by a fiddle accompaniment, it shot up the Billboard Country chart and opened Lewis's album, “Another Place, Another Time”.  Rod Stewart returned the song to the charts in 1972.

Various Sources