Hello! Ma Baby

{{short description|1899 song by Joseph E. Howard and Ida Emerson}}

Image:HelloMaBaby.jpg

"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".{{cite web | url=http://www.allmusic.com/artist/joseph-e-howard-mn0001193439 | title=Joseph E. Howard |publisher=AllMusic | access-date=2015-02-17}} 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.{{cite book |last1= Fuld |first1= James J. |title= The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk |edition= 3rd |year= 1985 |publisher= Dover Publications |location= New York |isbn= 0-486-24857-7 |oclc= 11289867 |page= [https://archive.org/details/bookofworldfamou0000fuld_i8f9/page/272 272] |url= https://archive.org/details/bookofworldfamou0000fuld_i8f9/page/272 }} Additionally, the word "Hello" itself was primarily associated with telephone use after Edison's utterance{{cite magazine |author=Allen Koenigsberg |title=The First "Hello!": Thomas Edison, the Phonograph and the Telephone – Part 2 |url=http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=800&id=1507 |url-status=dead |magazine=Antique Phonograph Magazine |volume=VIII |issue=6 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061116211033/http://www.collectorcafe.com/article_archive.asp?article=800&id=1507 |archive-date=16 November 2006}}—by 1889, "Hello Girl" was slang for a telephone operator{{Cite web |title=Online Etymology Dictionary |url=http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=hello&searchmode=none |access-date=28 September 2010 |work=etymonline.com}}{{Cite news |last=Grimes |first=William |date=5 March 1992 |title=Great 'Hello' Mystery Is Solved |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/05/garden/great-hello-mystery-is-solved.html |access-date=2017-10-25 |issn=0362-4331}}—though it later became a general greeting for all situations.

The song was first recorded by Arthur Collins on an Edison 5470 phonograph cylinder.{{cite web|url=http://musicbrainz.org/recording/6d96bad7-7669-48a5-89ec-9e481999523b |title= Recording 'Hello, Ma Baby' by Arthur Francis Collins |publisher=Musicbrainz.org |access-date=2015-02-17}}

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.