"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 song was later recorded and broadcast, and its melody was used in various contexts, such as the theme song to the mid-20th century United States television show Howdy Doody.
Background
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]
Performances and versions
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] By 1893, John Philip Sousa's band featured the song as a concert arrangement for the Columbia Exposition in Chicago.[9] By 1900, it was featured in the music halls of England by singers such as Marie Lloyd.[citation needed]
Various editions of the music credited its authorship to various persons, including Alfred Moor-King, Paul Stanley,[10] and Angelo A. Asher.[11] 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][11]
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.[12] 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.[13] A 1930s lawsuit determined that the tune and the refrain were in the public domain.[6]
Gene Krupa's version, "Ta-ra-ra-Boom-der-e", released as a shellac record
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").[14]
"Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" has been recorded and arranged by performers in a wide variety of musical arrangements. In 1942, Mary Martin performed a big band arrangement of the song on American radio.[15]
In 1960, the song was reinterpreted by Mitch Miller and his Sing-Along Chorus in a jazz vocal version on the Golden Record label.[20] The same year, Cokney London released a folksy recording of the song for Verve Records[21] and Arthur Fiedler recorded a version with the Boston Pops in 1960.[22] 1n 1969, Georgia Brown released the song in the music hall style on the Decca Eclipse label.[23]
Elmo and friends performed the song on a 2018 disc.[24]
Legacy
The 1893 Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera Utopia, Limited has a character called Tarara, the "public exploder".[25] A 1945 British film of the same name describes the history of music hall theatre.[26] 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.[27]
Books using the title in their titles include Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom-De-Ay: The Dodgy Business of Popular Music, by Simon Napier-Bell,[28] and the songbook Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay: Songs for Everyone edited by David Gadsby and Beatrice Harrop.[29]
Notes
^ abcd"Live Musical Topics", The New York Times, April 3, 1892, p. 12
^Tompkins, Eugene and Quincy Kilby. The History of the Boston Theatre, 1854–1901 (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908), p. 387. An advertisement for a performance of Tuxedo in Washington, D.C., in September 1891 mentions the song: "Don't fail to see the fatal cabinet, nor hear the Boom-der-e (sic) chorus." The Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, 27 September 1891, p. 2
^Serry, John, Sr."Tara-ra-Boom-Dere", RCA Thesaurus 1954, RCA Victor Studios, archived at The John J. Serry Sr Collection: Series 2 Manusrcipts – Folder 17; and Series 4 Recordings: Item 10 John Serry Sextette – John Serry conductor, arranger and solo accordionist, pp. 18–19, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester
