Arthur Collins - Hello Ma Baby 1899 - Edison Phonograph Cylinder.
"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.
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.
As with many songs of the era, its chorus is far better known than its verse. The song may be most well-known today 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.
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