"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".^[1] 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.^[2] Additionally, the word "Hello" itself was primarily associated with telephone use after Edison's utterance^[3]—by 1889, "Hello Girl" was slang for a telephone operator^[4][5]—though it later became a general greeting for all situations.

The song was first recorded by Arthur Collins on an Edison 5470 phonograph cylinder.^[6]

The song may be best 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.

The lyrics of Hello! Ma Baby and a study guide are found online and in the University of Pittsburgh, Library System, Voices Across Time, Song Discussion and Activities, Unit 6 Emergence of Modern America 1900-1929. Voices Across Time is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Hello! Ma Baby

By Ida Emerson, and Joseph E. Howard, 1899

[1.] I've got a little baby, but she's out of sight,

I talk to her across the telephone.

I've never seen my honey but she's mine all right,

So take my tip and leave this gal alone.

Every single morning you will hear me yell,

"Hey Central! Fix me up along the line."

He connects me with ma honey, then I rings the bell,

And this is what I say to baby mine,

[Chorus:]

"Hello! Ma baby,

Hello! Ma honey,

Hello! Ma ragtime gal.

Send me a kiss by wire,

Baby my 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'se your own."

[ 2.] This morning thro' the 'phone she said her name was Bess,

And now I kind of know where I am at;

I'se satisfied because I'se got my babe's address,

Here pasted in the lining of my hat

I am mighty scared, 'cause if the wires get crossed

'Twill separate me from ma baby mine,

Then some other coon will win her, and my game is lost,

And so each day I shout along the line,

[Chorus]

In Charles Ives's 1906 composition Central Park in the Dark, it is quoted frequently.

The short piano piece The Little Nigar (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.

It was also featured in "She's Only a Build in a Girdled Cage", an episode of F Troop.

The 1987 American space opera comedy film Spaceballs featured an uncredited recording (from One Froggy Evening) of part of the song sung by a xenomorph.

In the 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2, the song is performed by the character Robin Koninsky at the Théâtre Râleur in the fictional city of Saint Denis. ^[7]

Howard and Emerson's

Hello! Ma Baby

(As sung by Arthur Collins in 1899)

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The sheet music was published by T. B. Harms & Co., which was acquired by Warner Bros. before the stock market crash of 1929 (during the advent of the "Talkies" era of cinema).^[8]

• Sheet music for "Hello! Ma Baby" Archived 2006-11-04 at the Wayback Machine as published by T.B. Harms & Co. (as stored by the Duke University Libraries).
• https://voices.pitt.edu/TeachersGuide/Unit%206/Score%20HelloMaBaby.htm
• https://voices.pitt.edu/TeachersGuide/Unit%206/Song%20Page%20HelloMaBaby.htm
• https://voices.pitt.edu/TeachersGuide/Unit%206/HelloMaBaby.htm