Hello! Ma Baby
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hello! Ma Baby is a song written in 1899 by the team of Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson ("Howard and Emerson"). Its subject is a man who has a girlfriend he knows only through the telephone.
Although it is portrayed as a "coon song", with African-American caricatures on the sheet music and ethnic references and language stereotypes in the lyric, such as "I's" ("I is") instead of "I'm" ("I am"), the song is easily adaptable to any singer... or even a cartoon frog.
Its chorus is far better known than its verse, as the introductory song in the famous Warner Bros. cartoon One Froggy Evening, sung by the character later dubbed Michigan J. Frog and high-stepping in the style of Bert Williams:
- Hello! ma baby
- Hello! ma honey
- Hello! ma ragtime gal
- Send me a kiss by wire
- Baby, ma heart's on fire!
- If you refuse me
- Honey, you'll lose me
- Then you'll be left alone
- Oh, baby, telephone
- And tell me I'm your own!
- The first three lines of the song are also featured in an episode of the Nicktoon Kappa Mikey, "Lost in Transportation".
- The South Park episode, Cancelled showed Saddam singing that song.
