Help
Add this page to your book
Show book (0 pages)
Suggest pagesThere'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
| "A Hot Time In The Old Town" | |
 Sheet music cover (1896). |
|
| Music by | Theodore A. Metz |
|---|---|
| Lyrics by | Joe Hayden |
| Published | 1896 |
| Language | English |
| Recorded by | Dan Quinn, Edison Records (1896)[1]; Len Spencer, Columbia Records (1896)[2] |
"A Hot Time in the Old Town" is an American ragtime song, composed in 1896 by Theodore August Metz with lyrics by Joe Hayden. Metz was the band leader of the McIntyre and Heath Minstrels.
One history of the song reports "While on tour with the McIntyre and Heath Minstrels, their train arrived at a place called 'Old Town'. From their train window, [Metz] could see a group of children starting a fire, near the tracks. One of the other minstrels remarked that 'there'll be a hot time in the old town tonight'. Metz noted the remark on a scrap of paper, intending to write a march with that motif. He did indeed write the march the very next day. It was then used by the McIntyre and Heath Minstrels in their Street parades."[3]
The dialect and narrative of the song intimate an African-American revival meeting.[4]
The song was a favorite of the American military at the turn of the 20th century, particularly during the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion.[5]
Prior to the adoption of "The Victors" as the University of Michigan's official fight song, it was considered to be Michigan's school song.[6]
The fight song of Texas A&M University currently uses the chorus of this song as its finale, but it is sung with different lyrics.
The song has also been tradition at the University of Wisconsin since the late 1890s when a Wisconsin-flavored arrangement was made. The University of Wisconsin Marching Band plays this arrangement regularly at sporting events, including the beginning of each period in Hockey and Basketball, and following touchdowns at football games.[7]
Also, the Eastern Illinois University marching band plays the song in conjunction with their fight song at athletic events.
The song is now frequently sung by fans of the Chicago Fire Soccer Club of Major League Soccer during matches.[8]
The song appears as an instrumental at the very end of the New Year's Eve scene in the stage and 1936 film versions of the musical Show Boat.
In the 1960's the song was played for laughs at a "very" slow tempo by the Hooterville Volunteer Fire Department Band on the American sitcom Petticoat Junction.
Contents |
[edit] Lyrics
- Verse 1:
- Come along get you ready, wear your bran, bran new gown,
- For dere's gwine to be a meeting in that good, dum strange town,
- Where you knowed ev'ry body, and they all knowed you,
- And you've got a rabbits foot to keep away the hoodoo;
- Where you hear that the preaching does begin,
- Bend down low for to drive away your sin
- And when you gets religion, you want to shout and sing
- There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!
- My baby -
- Chorus:
- When you hear dem a bells go ding, ling ling,
- All join 'round and sweetly you must sing
- When the verse am through, in the chorus all join in,
- There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight.
- Verse 2:
- There'll be girls for ev'ry body in that good, good old town,
- For dere's Miss Consola Davis an dere's Miss Gondolia Brown;
- And dere's Miss Johanna Beasly she am dressed all in red,
- I just hugged her and I kissed her and to me then she said:
- Please, oh please, oh, do not let me fall,
- You're all mine and I love you best of all,
- And you must be my man, or I'll have no man at all,
- There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!
- My baby -
- Chorus[9]
[edit] References
- ^ Dan Quinn, Songwriters Hall of Fame
- ^ Len Spencer, Songwriters Hall of Fame
- ^ "A Composer's and Lyricists Database". Theodore Metz. Archived from the original on April 02, 2003. http://web.archive.org/web/20030402003254/http://nfo.net/.CAL/tm4.html.
- ^ Finson, Jon W. (1997). "The Voices That Are Gone: Themes in Nineteenth-Century American Popular Song". Oxford University Press. pp. 222. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZJM_PrFI2scC&pg=PA222&lpg=PA222&dq=Come+along+get+you+ready,+wear+your+bran,+bran+new+gown&source=bl&ots=J6D5wlk0Gy&sig=Q5M-57neE_ZiKa2HxXxevpge7l8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QDEQUKHpC--80AGgtoCADA&ved=0CHIQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=Come%20along%20get%20you%20ready%2C%20wear%20your%20bran%2C%20bran%20new%20gown&f=false. Retrieved July 25, 2012.
- ^ Browne, The Story of Our National Ballads, p. 208: "The witchery of this tune was such, that during our brief war with Spain, the Spaniards in Cuba were quite convinced that our National Anthem was named 'There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town To-night.' At all events, the frolicsome tones of this unpretentious popular song are the most intimately associated of any, with the already dimming recollections of that 'whirlwind campaign'."
- ^ The Michiganesian Yearbook 1999 p.186
- ^ "Hot Time -- University of Wisconsin Marching Band" Retrieved on 2008-3-24
- ^ "Fire Songs and Chants" Retrieved on 2012-7-28
- ^ Hayden, "A Hot Time in the Old Town" (sheet music).
[edit] Bibliography
- Browne, C.A. The Story of Our National Ballads. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company (1919).
- Hayden, Joe (w.); Theo A. Metz (m.). "A Hot Time in the Old Town" (sheet music). New York: Willis Woodward & Co. (1896).
[edit] External links
- "A Hot Time in the Old Town". The Charles Templeton Digital Sheet Music Collection. Mississippi State University.
- "Hot Time in the Old Town" , Victor Military Band (Victor 18371, 1917)—Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia.
- "Hot Time (Cheer, Boys, Cheer!)", University of Wisconsin Marching Band.
- YouTube video of song being performed
