From “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home” by Arthur Collins to “I’d Leave My Happy Home For You” by Arthur Collins

 (In Which We… Um… Need To Deal With The Pop Phenomenon Known As… Errr… Umm… “Coon Songs”)

I’ve been putting it off for as long as I can, but it has become unavoidable.

We have arrived at a phenomenon that was just too big for us to ignore and pretend the whole thing never happened.

The biggest pop genre in the 1890s may have been the whole post-“After The Ball” tear jerkers scene, but by the first couple of years of the 20^th century, a new style of song emerged to which seemingly every second hit belonged.

The hottest pop genre at the turn of the century was commonly referred to as “coon songs.” This was a genre made up of songs that dealt, almost exclusively, with derogatory stereotypes of African Americans.

We’re not just talking about a couple of songs here or there. “Coon songs” wasn’t just some weird offshoot of popular culture. “Coon songs” were popular culture. Inescapable. Ubiquitous. Lists of the latest songs often allocated a separate column for “coon songs”, implying that the genre had its own fan base who were specifically interested in keeping up-to-date with the all the latest “coon song” releases.

“Coon songs” were so ubiquitous that sheet music publishers sometimes felt the need to emphasize “this is not a coon song” on their covers. So even those songs that weren’t “coon songs” were defined in relation to what was clearly considered the default option of what a popular song should be about.

So… if you had issues with the collected works of George W. Johnson, you might like to skip this chapter. On the other hand, understanding this chapter is almost a prerequisite for understanding about half of everything else that will happen in popular culture over the next two decades. It’s up to you.

After close to a century of minstrel shows that had also dealt with negative stereotypes of Black folk, there was a lot of material for Tin Pan Alley to work with. The sheer number of negative stereotypes that could be crammed into a pop hit can be seen by “The Coon’s Trade Mark” or to give it is full name “The Coon’s Trade Mark: A Watermelon, Razor, a Chicken and a Coon.” As best as I can tell it was never recorded, but it existed, and that is bad enough.

For anybody who has even the faintest degree of sensitivity about other people’s feelings the existence of these songs – not to mention their virtually universal appeal – can come as a bit of a shock. So, take a little while, and take a deep breath, and try to accept that “coon” was a commonly accepted, if still mildly derogatory, slang term for an African American. Some tunes – Arthur Pryor’s “Coon Band Contest” for example – were probably not designed to cause offence, or even intentionally to ridicule. There’s little doubt, however, that most of them were.

So, how had we gotten to such a situation?

It is generally agreed that the whole “coon song” phenomena was kicked off by Black ragtime tunesmith Ernest Hogan and his runaway hit “All Coons Look Alike To Me.” Ernest wrote this hit to be sung around the New York Black vaudeville circuit, a scene that was still quite small in the 1890s, but was vibrant, and fast becoming more so.

Ernest looked like ragtime was supposed to make you feel. The few remaining photos of the man suggest a capacity for over-the-top excitement and enthusiasm, bordering on delirium. Even though Ernest was an entertainer, and acting excited was kind of his job, it’s hard not to get the impression that he may have been overdoing it.

Earnest Ernest was the perfect candidate, in other words, for kicking off the ragtime/”coon song” craze! The success of “All Coons Look Alike To Me” probably played a bigger role in making ragtime the hottest sound around than anything that Scott Joplin ever did.* It may be the most influential single song of the entire 1890s!!

It all happened in the aftermath of – you’ll never guess – the Chicago World Fair! Ragtime had arrived in Chi-Town on the fingers of Mid-West piano professors, descending upon the town to play to the tourists, and it remained there after everyone had gone home. That is where Ernest heard some ragtime piano player – the identity of whom has been lost in the mists of time – singing and playing a song called “All Pimps Look Alike To Me.” Ernest thought this title to be a little bit too risqué to be a hit in polite society – or even the relatively impolite society of the New York Black vaudeville scene - and so he softened it to “All Coons Look Alike To Me.” He subtitled it as a “A Darkey Misunderstanding,” which indeed it would turn out to be.

“All Coons Look Alike To Me” is a tale of woe from a man, a Black man, who has been dumped by his girlfriend who has chosen another man, a Black man, a “barber from Virginia”, because he spends more money on her. This was another change that Ernest had made. In the original “Pimps” version, the barber was a pimp. The narrator wonders at one point if it’s because he was too nice to her and whether he ought to have treated her mean.** But it was the vixen’s kiss-off line that caught the public’s attention, first in the Black vaudeville halls, then in the white vaudeville halls, and finally, all over America, where it was embraced with an eagerness that was utterly unbecoming.

Ragtime and “coon songs” instantly became synonymous with each other, as though you couldn’t have a “coon song” without a ragtime rhythm, and you couldn’t have a ragtime rhythm without “coon song” lyrics.

The degree of overlap is so huge that it’s difficult to tell: did ragtime become the dance music of choice because of the popularity of “coon songs”? Or did “coon songs” become popular because of their vibrant ragtime rhythm? Or was it because the combination of the two created the impression of an underground subculture so sinful, so full of suggestively salacious songs, that newspapers often refused to print their titles. Scandal! Syncopation!! An irresistible combination!!!

The oppressively ubiquitous use of racial slurs wasn’t the defining characteristic of “coon songs.” The oppressively ubiquitous use of racial slurs was not a new development. Multiple decades of minstrelsy had produced a multitude of popular songs – some of which I have already discussed - that were basically “coon songs” in everything but name. It wasn’t necessarily the incessant use of “coon”, “darkey” and other similar words that distinguished – that doesn’t really feel like the right word, does it? - “All Coons Look Alike To Me” from what came before. It was the combination of this with a ragtime rhythm that made it irresistible.

Similar to the progression of “All Coons”, from Black vaudeville to white vaudeville to right across America, the entire genre took a similar path. The Black community was not exactly happy about this situation, as evidence by an editorial printed in the Black newspaper, “Freeman”, “Coon Songs Must Go”, from which I will quote a couple of passages:

·        “Coloured men in general took no offence at proceedings and laughed as heartily on hearing a “coon song” as the whites. But where the rub came was when the coloured man was called a “coon” outside of the opera house”

·        “A show goes to a country town – some low down, loud-mouth “coon shouter”*** sings “Coon, Coon, Coon” or some other song that has a lot of “coon” in it, with an emphasis on the word “coon.” Then the people, or especially the children, are educated that a coloured man is a “coon.” They think it’s alright, because it’s all in fun, and it’s in all the songs.”

Ernest’s little song was having a real effect on Black folk’s lives. He found himself having to deal with a lot of flack; quite possibly on a daily basis. Yet people still wanted to sing his little song. And whistle his little song. There are reports of punch-ups in certain neighbourhoods of New York, triggered by someone whistling Ernest’s little song. Some performers tried to get around the controversy by changing the lyrics once again, to “All Boys Look Alike To Me.”****

It wasn’t long before Tin Pan Alley, always hungry for the next hit, the next bandwagon upon which to jump, joined in. Although many of the Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths were poor and working class and many were immigrants on the Lower East Side, what they were not, was Black. The aspects of Black life with which they were familiar were primarily those popularized through minstrel shows. And minstrel show-songs largely focused on a handful of activities and common interests that all African-Americans were presumed to share: the chasing of chickens, as rendered by such hits as “All I Want Is Ma Chickens”, the fighting with razors, as demonstrated in “Never Raise A Razor, Less You Want To Raise A Row”, a passion for watermelon, as highlighted by “Watermelon am Good Enough For Mine”, and the occasional opossum, as seen in “Possum Pie (Or The Stuttering Coon).” Every single one of those songs actually existed.

Tin Pan Alley also wrote their “coon songs” “in dialect.” Usually this was limited to spelling “that” as “dat”, as in “Bake Dat Chicken Pie”. Or “them” as “dem”, as in “If You Love Your Baby, Make Dem Goo-Goo Eyes” Not to forget spelling “the” as “de”, as in “Dat's De Way To Spell "Chicken"”.

Not only did the success of “All Coons” lead to the sheet music market being flooded with “coon songs”, but also to at least a handful of songs that closely followed the same broad plot, that of Black men being spurned by their girlfriends for the colour of their face and the “wooly”-ness of their hair. This is not quite the same plot as in “All Coons”, where the girl dumps her beau for economic, not racial, reasons. This is however the plot line of the infinitely worse in every single way afore-mentioned “Coon, Coon, Coon” – a song that, incredibly, did in fact exist, the newspaper wasn’t just making a joke - which features the hero attempting to pass as white in order to get his girlfriend back. He has his face enamelled*****, his hair straightened, he’s all ready to woo. But then he crosses a park and sees two doves looking at him, and they – as doves will – cry out “coooooooon.” It will not have escaped your attention that doves are white. This is unlikely to have been unintentional.

The biggest hit cylinder of “Coon, Coon, Coon” was by Arthur Collins, a man who would base much of his subsequent career on “coon songs,” and on impersonating Black men in general. At least when it came to recorded music, Arthur was by far the biggest proponent of the form. And he was biggest in every sense of the word.

Arthur had a pre-existing showbusiness background that was distinctive only to the extreme extent that it wasn’t. He’d spent a decade and a half going round and round in circles and not getting anywhere. He’d even quit for a little while, deciding instead to pursue the far less glamorous profession of bookkeeper, and at some point, working in a cigar factory.

But the glamour of show business kept luring him back in, and Arthur found himself performing for DeWolf Hopper, a man most famous for reciting a famous poem about baseball – “Casey At The Bat” – in a ludicrously overstated fashion! They worked together in a production was called “Wang”, based in Siam, and mostly notable for including a life-sized imitation elephant. Somebody from Edison caught the show and something about Arthur stood out. Something that suggested that he was the perfect guy to sing such material as “Mammy’s Little Punkin Colored Coon” and “No Coon Can Come Too Black For Me” (also “Every Night I See That N#^$@r Standing Round'' because not all “coon songs” featured the same derogatory term).  There were so many of these songs, the mind boggles. Record companies would be able to keep Arthur supplied with a constant stream of “coon song” material for years, and Arthur would turn on his best, absolutely terrible, Black man impersonations to record them (every single one of these records is a 1)

One of Arthur’s biggest records was “Any Rags?”, composed by Thomas Allen, a minstrel musician from Boston who was trying to update the minstrel show by writing ragtime songs. On one level, “Any Rags?” is a pun on the ragtime craze, but on another more literal level, it is a song about a ragpicker who steals everything that isn’t nailed down. This, as it turns out, was a very topical subject at the time.

Ragpickers were professional collector of things that could be recycled. Rags for example, could be turned into paper. Bottles could be turned into bottles. All manner of rubbish could be turned into all manner of things, and there was a lot of rubbish on the streets at the time. The streets of New York especially were full of rotting vegetables, horse manure, and occasionally, a dead horse that had been there for weeks and no-one could figure out whose responsibility it was to get rid of the thing. A dead horse may have been one of the few things that a ragpicker did not try to get a few coins out of.

So the protagonist in “Any Rags?”, a man with a pack on his back, called Ragged Jagged Jack, goes from door to door, asking for rags, asking for bottles. Each time the door is opened by a woman, played - very badly it must be said - by Byron G. Harlan, of “Bird In A Gilded Cage” fame.

Byron was in the process of abandoning the tearjerker scene and embracing a new role as the impersonator of Black women in “coon songs.” Byron – who was clearly not a woman at the best of times, and very clearly not a woman in this instance - asks Ragged Jagged Jack if he will pay money for her rubbish, and when he answers in the negative, tells him “you get out of here you big Black rascal youuuuu!” And Ragged Jagged Jack moans and shuffles down the road, his homelessness is played for laughs (Arthur and Byron’s version of “Any Rags?” is a 1)

Arthur Collins did another impression of a Black man – an unlucky preacher in this case – a couple of years later in “The Preacher and the Bear”. I’m not sure who’s playing the bear – is it also Arthur? Is he playing both roles? – but they are very good! Arthur makes a far more believable bear than he makes a believable Black human.

So, the Preacher is out hunting on a Sunday. The Preacher catches a quail. The Preacher catches a hare. All of this, as the song points out, was against his religion, which means he must be punished. So, after catching the quail, and catching the hare, The Preacher bumps into a bear! And he spends the rest of the song perched high in a tree, praying to the Lord, reminding Him that He’d previously helped Daniel in the lion’s den and Jonah in the whale. Then he has a chat with the Bear to try and negotiate himself out of his predicament. We never find out if he was successful. (Arthur and whoever-is-playing-the-bear’s version of “The Preacher And The Bear” is a 3)

A rather more empathic “coon song”, albeit not a song that most of its fans would necessarily recognise as such, was as “Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home?” It may be the best known “coon song” of all, largely because it has far more universal appeal; it’s a song that anyone with a nagging wife can relate to.

“Bill Bailey” was written far, far away from Tin Pan Alley, in Jackson, Michigan, by the piano player in one of Jackson’s saloons, Hugh Cannon. Hugh was a man who knew his way around a saloon, having been drinking heavily since he was 10. Maybe this is why his life reads as a chaotic and random journey across America, playing in minstrel shows and saloons here and there, and occasionally writing a hit song – he wrote “Just Because She Made Dem Goo-Goo Eyes”, not to be mistaken for “If You Love Your Baby, Make Dem Goo-Goo Eyes” – before selling it straight away and going back to drinking and wandering around America. Maybe this is why “Bill Bailey” sounds so authentic. Or maybe it was because Bill Bailey really existed.

Bill was one of Hugh’s patrons. He was also a piano player himself and had to work nights, an arrangement his wife does not appear to be pleased about, throwing Bill out the house one rainy night. It doesn’t take long however for Bill’s wife to decide that maybe she was in the wrong after all, apologizing and promising to do all the cooking. And so, for Bill Bailey anyway, it’s a happy ending. ****** (Arthur Collins recorded a version and it’s not totally rubbish, it’s a 4)

As incredible as it may seem, Arthur’s impersonations were considered to be so spot on that Edison Phonograph Monthly felt the need to clarify matters in a 1905 article titled “Mr Collins Is Not A Negro,” in which they proclaim that Arthur found his mistaken identity both amusing and complimentary.*******

If it was hard to tell whether or not Arthur Collins was a Black man or not, it was also tricky to identify what is a “coon song” and what is not. “All Coons Look Alike To Me” is very clearly a “coon song.” “Coon Coon Coon” is even less ambivalent. Then there are those songs that are “in dialect.”

Any song about chickens was also bound to be a “coon song.”

Then there are those songs where the word kind of sneaks up on you, or, in the case of many Dan Quinn cylinders, shouts it at you when you least expect it.

You had to be careful when Dan Quinn was around; the c-word could sneak into even the most innocent sounding of tunes. In the middle of a song, for example, that, on the face of it at least, is simply about beer and its relationship with the city of Milwaukee.

In “The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous” Dan Quinn rhymes “opens up a fine saloon” with “the waiter was a big black COON!!!” and believe me that is exactly how he sings it ("The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous" is a 3)

Dan Quinn seemed to enjoy singing “COON!” way too much, and he sang it often. He seems to enjoy singing the word so much that there are some recordings where – through the hiss and the crackle – Dan crying out “COON!” is about the only lyric you can be sure of. It is seriously weird and disturbing, the extent to which these white folk just seemed to love saying “coon” so much.

But back to Arthur Collins. Edison had gotten Arthur to record a tune called “Zizzy Ze Zum Zum” an awful tune made self-aware of its own awfulness. “A happy little chappie” writes a ragtime tune, the other little chappies announce that “it’s a peach by gum!” And so they – and eventually everyone in town! – start to sing along “e zizzy, ze zum zum, zizzy ze zum zum, zizzy ze zum zum zum” etc. This very quickly becomes annoying, so the happy little chappie needs to be punished. And he is, sentenced to singing the song himself all day. This doesn’t seem like much of a punishment. Arthur, for example, despite similarly being required to sing the song all day – for recording purposes - sounds as though he’s having a ball of a time! (“Zizzy Ze Zum Zum” is a 2)

“Zizzy Ze Zum Zum” was a ragtime tune written to ridicule ragtime and is therefore still very much in the “coon song” tradition. It also possesses an extremely earwormy vocal hook. Arthur’s willingness to shamelessly sell a vocal hook was a large part of his appeal, a talent he pushed to the limit in his next hit – the largest of his early hits – “I’d Leave My Happy Home For You,” a song with an earworm of a vocal hook that the sheet music referred to it as “The Great Oo-Oo-Oo Song.”  We should probably refer to it as “I’d Leave My Happy Home For Yooo-ooo-ooo-ouuuu.”

“I’d Leave My Happy Home For Yooo-ooo-ooo-ouuuu” was all about a young lady who had dreams of stardom and so followed around a blackface performer trying to convince him to take her with him when his minstrel show leaves town. The young lady is supposed to be annoying, so I guess credit should be given to Arthur for capturing the essence of the character. Credit, but not gratitude. “I’d Leave My Happy Home For Yooo-ooo-ooo-ouuuu” is a deeply irritating tune, even by the highly grating standards of the time.

At first glance, it is not super-obvious that “I’d Leave My Happy Home For Yooo-ooo-ooo-ouuuu” is a “coon song.” There are no chickens, razors or watermelon, and not once does anyone utter the word “coon” or any of its substitutes. The only thing that clearly identifies the song as such is that the protagonist sings her chorus “in dialect.” Sure, she’s leaving home for a blackface performer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s white? A lot of Black vaudeville performers, usually mixed-race, wore blackface. Was the young girl aware that the blackface performer – probably – wasn’t Black? Is that the joke? Lyrically, there’s a lot that is unclear, but The Logansport Pharos-Tribune described the song as “a dusky maiden’s appeal to her likewise dusky lover”, and one of the prettiest “coon songs” around. That later description feels generous. (Arthur Collins version of “I’d Leave My Happy Home For Yooo-ooo-ooo-ouuuu” is a 2)

Maybe it was due to Arthur’s own decade and a half of showbiz struggles, but his biggest early hits all seemed to deal with the indignity of life on the road. Such as the anti-“I’d Leave My Happy Home For You” – in that it’s the male character who is reliant upon his lady friend – “I Guess I’ll Have To Telegraph My Baby.” It’s status as a “coon song” is made clear right out the gate, with its opening line, “a coon he left his happy home, to go upon the stage”, before launching into a story of a Black man who dreams of being a star of stage – he specifically dreams about being Williams and Walker, who we’ll cover in the next chapter - so he joins a minstrel troupe. For reasons not revealed within the tune itself, the troupe disbanded, “and coons all stranded.” When asked what he’s going to do now, he sighs and replies, that he guesses he'll have to telegraph his baby, and ask her to send him some money, so he doesn’t have to walk home.

“I Guess I’ll Have To Telegraph My Baby” could not fail to be a hit. It was written by George M Cohan, a Broadway hit writer on the rise, a man who lived and breathed Broadway, and of whom much more in a couple of chapters time. It mentioned Williams and Walker, who were arguably even hotter. And it mentioned the telegraph, which by now was an established piece of technology, that everyone was familiar with (Arthur’s version of “I Guess I’ll Have To Telegraph My Baby” is a 3)

What would be even better? Even more cutting edge? How about song about a telephone?

Out of the vaudeville scene of the Mid-West came the husband-and-wife song-writing team of Howard and Emerson and “Hello! Ma Baby,” - aka “Hello my baby! Hello my honey!! Hello my ragtime gal!!!”… you know the one - a song about a strange situation in which a man – let’s, for the sake of simplicity, call him Arthur - falls in love with Bess, who, we are informed, he has never actually met in person. He’s simply spoken to her on the phone, after – and this may be the ultimate cute-meet of the era – their telephone lines got crossed.

Arthur’s greatest fear is that the lines will get crossed again and that “some other coon will win” his baby! His honey!! His ragtime gal!!!

Sadly Arthur Collins recording is – as always – an utter mess. He can’t seem to decide whether he wants to sing the song as written or commit to Black-man impersonating comic adlibs. “Hello! Ma Baby” was one of the catchiest songs of 1899, and it really deserved better (Arthur’s version of “Hello! Ma Baby” is a 3)

The main thing that indicated that “Hello, My Baby” was a “coon song” – other than that single line above - is that it featured a word in the title that only Black people used. That word, strange as it may seem, was “baby.” White people in the 1890s – or at least respectable middle class white people - simply did not call their beaus “baby.”  And it appears that the sudden appearance of so many “coon songs” in which the protagonist was calling their beaus “baby” was a matter of dire concern in certain quarters. It led to an instant backlash; article after article praying for the “coon songs” death and dancing on its grave.

There’s this from “The Oshkosh Northwestern” 7th Feb 1901, “Some of them” that is, “coon songs”, “became exceeding vulgar.

“Vulgar?” Pray tell, “Oshkosh Northwestern”, pray tell.

“It is not pleasant to hear a charming young woman sit down and sing about loving her ‘black baby’ and ‘wanting her honey back’ and ‘press dem ruby lips to mine’ and all such as that.”

So, both Black folk and white folk were campaigning against “coon songs”, for completely different – and diametrically opposite – reasons.

How about the musicians?

White musicians at least also wanted the “coon song” to die. White musicians dreamt of a day when they would be able to go back to playing songs “of a better sort”, or “a better class.” It wasn’t the ridicule of Black folk that they found unpalatable, it was the fact they were playing Black music at all. Or at least playing songs with Black folk in them.

1901 also saw the Temperance Movement – about much more later, when they get their way – have a serious debate over whether they wanted to add a campaign against ragtime and “coon songs” to their existing demands for the abolition of alcohol, or specifically a motion that “express (their) scorn” for “songs and music that savour the coon or tough element.” The motion was defeated, but it was reputedly very close. The primary reason for the defeat appears to be that they were concerned that it would create the impression that they themselves sang “coon songs”, and that just wouldn’t do.

Now, to be fair, Black folk were not the only ones to get ridiculed on the cylinders, nor in the vaudeville shows of the day. White people were as well. Or at least, some white people. If they were immigrants, who talked funny, ate weird food, or otherwise possessed strange habits that could be the source of mirth. Also backwards country folk, since they also talked funny, ate weird food and possessed strange habits that could be the source of mirth. Also, Native Americans, as demonstrated by the hit song “Navajo,” written by Egbert van Alstyne, a man who found much enjoyment in writing novelty songs about Native Americans. Whilst such novelty Native American nonsense was quite popular, it never became popular enough to be allocated its own genre name; it just got integrated into the pre-existing “coon song” nomenclature and promoted as “Indian coon songs.”

“Navajo” became popular when it was included in the musical “Nancy Brown”, all about a marriage broker – the titular Nancy - travelling to a fictional land called Bally-Ho, ruled by Muley Mustapha, whose maidens, potential wives of Prince Barboo, go by the names of Tutu, Zuzu and Tulu.

“Navajo” – as you may have guessed – was not set in the fictional land of Bally-Ho.

“Navajo” most likely became popular because it offered the convenience of ridiculing two races simultaneously, telling the story of a Black man trying to woo a Navajo girl. She wants him to buy her feathers. He says no problem; he’ll just steal them from a passing chicken.********

Quite what this had to do with the fictional land of Bally-Ho was likely never explained. Nor was an explanation likely ever requested. Once Broadway stars discovered they could make extra money being paid by Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths to interpolate completely unrelated tunes into their musicals, this sort of thing would happen time and time again.

It particularly seemed to happen with Marie Cahill, a Broadway star of the wholesome variety, whose appeal was based on her standing up for her moral convictions even in roles where those morals were decidedly questionable. Such as in “Sally In Our Alley”, where she helps a neighbour out by pretending that a baby is hers, a plotline that doesn’t exactly seem to lend itself to songs about bamboo trees. A little detail like that wasn’t going to stop Marie from interpolating a tune called ‘Under The Bamboo Tree” into the show, where it was the only part of the night the audience remembered once they left the theatre. But they remembered it well, and they whistled it everywhere. Marie also interpolated “Under The Bamboo Tree” into “Nancy Brown,” which seems to make far more sense. Although details about the fictional land of Bally-Ho are scares, one can imagine they might have bamboo trees.

But that’s a story for another chapter.

* For one thing it was published in 1895, four years before Scott got around to convincing John Stark to publish “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899.

**There’s a lot going on in this song. Not only in terms of race, but gender relations and gender roles; the implication that nice guys finish last, and women want men to treat them mean. There’s a lot to unpack. But this is neither the time, nor the place, to do this unpacking.

***More than just a singer of “coon songs”, “coon shouters” were a whole style of singing; loud, unrestrained, a little bit uncouth. It would eventually become one of the component ingredients of “the blues” sometime during the 1910s. Needless to say, we’ll come to that story later.  

**** This may not feel like much of an improvement, but baby steps.

*****No doubt you were intrigued by the phrase enamelling the face. This was indeed a thing, although it was usually white women on Broadway or other fashionable addresses who got the procedure in order to look younger. It was a time consuming and costly procedure that required facial hair to first be plucked before the face is coated with a pasty mixture than included arsenic and lead. Alternatively you could use a calamine lotion, which I hope is the option our hero opted for.

****** Although not mentioned in the song itself - but uncovered in consequent decades by journalists obsessed about who this Bill Bailey character might be – Bill was a bit of a ladies’ man. It is this, as much, if not more than, his irregular work and drinking hours, that his wife was upset about. Either way, the simple fact that she’s begging him to come home, promising to do all the cooking, suggests that she wants him back because she needs some of his good-lovin.’ No wonder Bill – the real Bill Bailey – loved the song so much.

******* Although not specified it is likely that most, if not all, of the people who made that mistake were white. It’s likely that they had limited interactions with Black people. It’s likely that the editors of Edison Phonograph Monthly had limited interactions with Black people. I say this because Arthur Collin’s impersonations of Black men were so bad that it is inconceivable that a genuine real life Black person – or even anyone who knew a genuine real life Black person – could possibly make such a mistake.

********Chickens again!! Enough with the chickens!!!*