Hello Ma Baby: A Song History

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"Hello! Ma Baby" was published in New York in 1899 by T. B. Harms & Co., with words and music credited to Howard and Emerson, the songwriting pair Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson.[1][2] The Morgan Library & Museum catalogs its copy as possibly the song's first regular edition.[1] In the song a man courts his sweetheart over the telephone, and The Henry Ford says it brought nationwide success to Howard, who worked in vaudeville and musical comedy.[3] The Lester S. Levy Collection files the sheet music under subjects that include minstrel shows, dialects and caricatures.[2] A composer's note on PBS's Crucible of Empire website explains that in the 1890s "rag time" served as a label for songs about African Americans, and it remarks on how openly racist many of those songs were.[4]

Decorative color lithograph of two people talking on wall telephones in separate rooms

Moriz Jung, Telephone Conversation (Telefonisch Es Gespräch), color lithograph, 1907. A Viennese postcard design, shown for its telephone call.

Arthur Collins sang it on an Edison Gold Moulded wax cylinder that The Henry Ford dates to 1899.[3] Collins, a baritone, also recorded it for Berliner's seven-inch discs; the Discography of American Historical Recordings estimates that master's date as February 1900, working from the dates of his other documented masters.[5]

One Froggy Evening, a 1955 Warner Bros. cartoon, was added to the Library of Congress's National Film Registry in 2003.[6] It introduced Michigan J. Frog, a singing frog that the Chuck Jones website counts among Jones's most famous creations, and the same site lists this song's opening words among the frog's catchphrases.[7] Shelley Stevens includes "Hello Ma Baby" in Baker's Dozen #10: Ragtime And Honky Tonk, a book of thirteen classic American ragtime tunes for mountain dulcimer in DAD tuning, with every arrangement in both standard notation and tablature, published by Fingers Of Steel.[8]

Our book that contains the song "Hello Ma Baby"

Sources

  1. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Hello! ma baby" (T. B. Harms, c1899).
  2. Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University: "Hello Ma Baby".
  3. The Henry Ford: "Edison Gold Moulded Record, 'Hello My Baby,' 1899".
  4. PBS, Crucible of Empire: "A Note From the Composer, T.O. Sterrett".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Berliner matrix 01004. Hello! ma baby / Arthur Collins".
  6. Library of Congress, Now See Hear! blog: "Now Playing at the Packard Campus Theater (July 31-August 2, 2014)".
  7. ChuckJones.com: "Michigan J. Frog".
  8. Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #10: Ragtime And Honky Tonk".
  9. Image: Moriz Jung, Telephone Conversation (Telefonisch Es Gespräch), color lithograph, 1907. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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