"Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" is a vaudeville and music hall song first performed by the 1880s. It was included in Henry J. Sayers' 1891 revue Tuxedo in Boston, Massachusetts. The song became widely known in the 1892 version sung by Lottie Collins in London music halls, and also became popular in France.
The melody was later used in various contexts, including as the theme song to the mid-20th century United States television show Howdy Doody .
The song's authorship was disputed for some years. [1] It was originally credited to Henry J. Sayers, the manager of Rich and Harris, a producer of the George Thatcher Minstrels. Sayers used the song in the troupe's 1891 production Tuxedo , a minstrel farce variety show, in which "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" was sung by Mamie Gilroy. [2] [3] Sayers later said that he had not written the song, but heard it performed in the 1880s by a black singer, Mama Lou, in a well-known St. Louis brothel run by "Babe" Connors. [4] Another American singer, Flora Moore, said that she had sung the song in the early 1880s. [3]
Stephen Cooney, Lottie Collins' husband, heard the song in Tuxedo and purchased rights from Sayers for Collins to perform the song in England. [1] Collins created a dance routine around it. With new words by Richard Morton and a new arrangement by Angelo A. Asher, she first sang it at the Tivoli Music Hall on The Strand in London in December 1891 to an enthusiastic reception. It became her signature tune. [5] Within weeks, she included it in a pantomime production of Dick Whittington [3] and performed it to great acclaim in the 1892 adaptation of Edmond Audran's opérette, Miss Helyett . According to reviews at the time, Collins delivered the suggestive verses with deceptive demureness, before launching into the lusty refrain and her celebrated "kick dance", a kind of cancan. One reviewer noted that "she turns, twists, contorts, revolutionizes, and disports her lithe and muscular figure into a hundred different poses, all bizarre". [6]
The song was performed in France under the title "Tha-ma-ra-boum-di-hé", first by Mlle. Duclerc at Aux Ambassadeurs in 1891. The following year it was a major hit for Polaire at the Folies Bergère. [7] [8] In 1892 The New York Times reported that a French version of the song had appeared under the title "Boom-allez". [1]
Later editions of the music credited its authorship to various persons, including Alfred Moor-King, Paul Stanley, [9] and Angelo A. Asher. [10] Some claimed that the song was originally used at American religious revival meetings. Richard Morton, who wrote the version of the lyric used in Lottie Collins' performances, said its origin was "Eastern". [1] [10]
Around 1914 activist Joe Hill wrote a version that tells how poor working conditions can result in workers "accidentally" causing their machinery to have mishaps. [11] Similarly, in 1954 Joe Glazer released a rendition of the song about a worker who is initially dismissive of labor organizers. After losing his savings and standard of living in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, he joins the labor movement. [12] A 1930s lawsuit determined that the tune and the refrain were in the public domain. [6]
The 1893 Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera Utopia, Limited has a character called Tarara, the "public exploder". [13] A 1945 British film of the same name describes the history of music hall theatre. [14]
From 1974 to 1988 the Disneyland park in Anaheim, California, included a portion of the song in their musical revue attraction America Sings , in the finale of Act 3 – The Gay 90s. [15]
Since the early 20th century, the widely recognizable melody has been re-used for numerous other songs, children's camp songs, parodies, and military ballads. It was used for the theme song to the United States television show Howdy Doody (as "It's Howdy Doody Time"). [16]
"Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow" is a song written in 1892 by prolific English songwriter Joseph Tabrar.
Howdy Doody is an American children's television program that was created and produced by Victor F. Campbell and E. Roger Muir. It was broadcast on the NBC television network in the United States from December 27, 1947, until September 24, 1960. It was a pioneer of children's programming and set the pattern for many similar shows. One of the first television series produced at NBC in Rockefeller Center, in Studio 3A, it pioneered color production in 1956 and NBC used the show to promote color television sets in the late 1950s.
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Leonard Garfield Spencer was an American singer, composer, booking agent, vaudeville star and recording artist who was considered one of the most popular phonograph performers in the United States from the 1890s to the 1910s.
Lottie Collins was an English singer and dancer, most famous for introducing the song "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay!" in England.
Charlotte Josephine Collins was an English actress and singer known by her stage name, José Collins, who was celebrated for her performances in musical comedies, such as the long-running The Maid of the Mountains, and early motion pictures.
James William Tate was a songwriter, accompanist, and composer and producer of revues and pantomimes in the early years of the 20th century. Tate was born in Wolverhampton, England and died in Stoke-on-Trent, suddenly at the age of 46, as a result of pneumonia caught while traveling the country with his touring revues.
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Letitia Elizabeth Rudge, known professionally as Letty Lind, was an English actress, singer, dancer and acrobat, best known for her work in burlesque at the Gaiety Theatre, and in musical theatre at Daly's Theatre, in London.
Music hall songs were sung in the music halls by a variety of artistes. Most of them were comic in nature. There are a very large number of music hall songs, and most of them have been forgotten. In London between 1900 and 1910, a single publishing company, Francis, Day and Hunter, published between forty and fifty songs a month.
"Oom-Pah-Pah" is a show tune with music and lyrics by Lionel Bart which appeared in the 1960 musical Oliver!, in which it is sung by Nancy and the crowd at the "Three Cripples" tavern. Although not an original music hall song, it recalls that genre and, in terms of both its tempo and suggestiveness, shares characteristics with such late 19th century songs as "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay".
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"I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside" is a popular British music hall song. It was written in 1907 by John H. Glover-Kind and made famous by music hall singer Mark Sheridan, who first recorded it in 1909. It speaks of the singer's love for the seaside and his wish to return there for his summer holidays each year. It was composed at a time when the yearly visits of the British working class to the seaside were booming. It is catalogued as Roud Folk Song Index No. 32459.
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Tuxedo was a vaudeville show with minstrelsy in which the song "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" was interpolated.
"The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo" is a popular British music hall song published in 1891 by Fred Gilbert, a theatrical agent who had begun to write comic songs as a sideline some twenty years previously. The song was popularised by singer and comedian Charles Coborn.
Paul Stanley was a German-born American composer and vaudeville comedian who some credit with writing the music for the ditty Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay for Henry F. Sayers' 1891 musical entertainment, Tuxedo.
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