Fairest of the Fair by John Philip Sousa, arranged by Robert W. Smith & Michael Story "The Fairest of the Fair" is a 1908 march by John Philip Sousa. One of Sousa's more melodic, less military marches, it was composed for the annual Boston Food Fair of 1908. It is claimed that the memory of a pretty girl he had seen at an earlier fair inspired the composition. It is the only work of any kind that he composed that year and one of only a handful of compositions that he wrote between 1906 and 1910.