What if Bill Bailey Was Hip-Hop
On one summer's day
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What if Bill Bailey Was Hip-Hop
Bill Bailey has been missing since 1902, and this time the song goes after him on foot. The vaudeville strut and the pit band are gone. In their place is a dust-dry upright piano loop, a swung drum machine, a walking upright bass and the crackle of a worn record. The verses come in quick, spoken phrases, and the hook is where the voice opens up.
Every word is Hughie Cannon's, spelled the way his publisher printed it in 1902: "Bellering like a prune-fed calf", and in the chorus, "Wid nothing but a fine tooth comb?" The B. and O. brakeman is a Baltimore and Ohio railroad man — the kind of job that keeps a husband out of the house, which is where this song's trouble starts. Both verses and both choruses are here in the printed order, with nothing cut, added or modernised. 12 The song comes out of the vaudeville stage of 1902, and its dialect is the printer's, kept exactly as it stands.
Play it on a walk home after the shops have shut, or on a Sunday evening with the week already leaning in. It is a comic song with a low ceiling over it, and the beat makes the joke land harder.
References
- 1Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home? (1902) — Wikisource
en.wikisource.org
- 2
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