 | ||
"Hello! Ma Baby" is a Tin Pan Alley song written in 1899 by the songwriting team of Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson, known as "Howard and Emerson". Its subject is a man who has a girlfriend he knows only through the telephone. At the time, telephones were relatively novel, present in fewer than 10% of U.S. households, and this was the first well-known song to refer to the device. Additionally, the word "Hello" itself was primarily associated with telephone use — "Hello Girl" was slang for a telephone operator even through the first world war — though it later became a general greeting for all situations.
Contents
The song was first recorded by Arthur Collins on an Edison 5470 phonograph cylinder.
It was originally a "coon song", with African-American caricatures on the sheet music and "coon" references in the lyrics.
Its chorus is far better known than its verse, as the introductory song in the famous Warner Bros. cartoon One Froggy Evening (1955), sung by the character later dubbed Michigan J. Frog and high-stepping in the style of a cakewalk.
Influence
In Charles Ives's 1906 composition Central Park in the Dark, it is quoted frequently.
The short piano piece "Le Petit Nègre" by Claude Debussy from 1909 features a melody very similar to "Hello! Ma Baby", and may have been inspired by the song.
Sheet music and the Warner Bros. acquisition of the song
The sheet music was published by T.B. Harms & Co., who were acquired by Warner Bros. before the Stock Market Crash of 1929 (during the advent of the "Talkies" era of cinema).