Hello! Ma Baby

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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 a generic 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!