"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 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 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.
Sheet music and the Warner Bros. acquisition of the song
In the 2001 TV series My Wife & Kids, the third season episode Man of the Year shows Michael Kyle teasing his daughter Claire with the song because she had an allergic reaction on her face after using her mom's makeup.
In the 2004 TV series Wonderfalls, episode 1, the wax lion sings the song to irritate Jaye into doing what she is told.
In episode 7 of the
Cartoon Network television program
Ninjago, the character Zane (a robot) begins singing the song once his "funny switch" is enabled. Does this again in episode 41.
The jam band
Phish was known to perform the song fairly often in the '90s barbershop-style huddle around a singular microphone, prompting many people in the large arenas and stadiums to shush people to be quiet in order to hear the song in full.