Hot Time In The Old Town: A Song History
"A Hot Time in the Old Town" was issued in New York by Willis Woodward & Co.; the copy dated 1896 in Johns Hopkins's Levy sheet-music collection reads "Words by Joe Hayden. Written by Theo. A. Metz."[1] Its authorship is disputed: Metz, a German immigrant, registered the copyright in July 1896, but Hayden, a vaudeville actor, said he had written it, and his name was later added as lyricist when the sheet music was reissued; meanwhile a Texas banjo player, Cad L. Mays, had brought out a different version five months before Metz's appeared.[2] In an account Metz gave TIME in 1935, he was bandmaster of the McIntyre & Heath Minstrels touring Louisiana in 1886 when their train passed a village called Old Town, and McIntyre's remark there supplied the title.[3] The Levy catalog lists minstrel shows among the sheet music's subjects, and WBEZ notes that the lyric is written in a stereotyped Black dialect.[1][2]
William P. Chappel, Fighting a Fire, oil on slate paper, 1870s. A New York street fire, shown in fun for the title's hot time.
The song reportedly sold 750,000 copies within four years, and once the United States went to war with Spain in April 1898, American troops serving in Cuba and the Philippines took it up as an unofficial anthem.[2] Writing in 1919, C.A. Browne asserted that Spaniards in Cuba believed it was the American national anthem.[4] Browne also rejected as fictitious a newspaper report that soldiers won the Battle of San Juan Hill to its strains, since Roosevelt said he never heard his men sing in battle, though they often sang in camp.[4] Metz later told TIME that Roosevelt once took a baton and led Metz's band through the tune.[3]
The Discography of American Historical Recordings lists a Berliner disc by the tenor Dan W. Quinn, with sessions in Philadelphia on November 12, 1896, Washington on May 17, 1897, and New York on March 31, 1898, and with Hayden and Metz credited on the label.[5] Sousa's Band, conducted by Arthur Pryor, recorded an instrumental version for Berliner in New York on June 8, 1899.[6] Later recordings listed there include Bessie Smith's on March 2, 1927, and Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers' on October 29, 1929, both for Columbia.[7] Shelley Stevens includes it, in DAD tuning, in Baker's Dozen #10: Ragtime And Honky Tonk, a book of 13 classic American ragtime tunes for mountain dulcimer in standard notation and tablature, published by Fingers Of Steel.[8]
Sources
- Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Johns Hopkins University: "A Hot Time in the Old Town".
- WBEZ Curious City (Robert Loerzel): "Hot Time in the Old Town".
- TIME: "Music: Old Ragtimer" (August 5, 1935).
- C.A. Browne, Internet Archive (Cornell University Library copy): "The Story of Our National Ballads" (1919).
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Berliner matrix 527. A hot time in the old town / Dan W. Quinn".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Berliner matrix 0201. Hot time in the old town / Sousa's Band".
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Theodore A. Metz".
- Fingers Of Steel: "Shelley Stevens, Baker's Dozen #10: Ragtime And Honky Tonk".
- Image: William P. Chappel, Fighting a Fire, oil on slate paper, 1870s. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.