Thomson was commissioned in 1948 to write music for a documentary entitled Louisiana Story. The film was about an oil development project and its affects on a French-speaking family. The story is told through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy.

Thomson looked to the folk music of the region and to the book French Folk Songs edited by Irene Therese Whitfield. Thomson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1949, the first time music for a film was so recognized.

From the music of Louisiana Story, Thomson constructed two suites for orchestra. The first suite has enjoyed the greatest success and was first played by the Philadelphia Orchestra on November 26, 1948, under Eugene Ormandy.

A description of the suite was provided by Thomson: "The orchestral suite...consists of four movements: the Pastoral, describing bayous, the boy in his rowboat, and the maneuvers of the 'marsh buggy,' an amphibious bulldozer which is part of the oil-prospecting machinery; a Chorale, which represents the boy playing in a tree with his pet raccoon and his view from there of the drill barge's majestic approach; a Passacaglia, which recounts the boy's adventure in robbing an alligator's nest of its eggs, ending with the approach of the mother reptile; and a chromatic Fugue in four sections, which is used in the film to accompany the boy's fight to land an alligator that he has hooked with bait."

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