"A Hot Time in the Old Town", also titled as "There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight", is an Americanpopular song, copyrighted and perhaps composed in 1896 by Theodore August Metz with lyrics by Joe Hayden. Metz was the band leader of the McIntyre and Heath Minstrels.
Origins
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, 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." An alternative suggestion is that Metz first heard the tune played in about 1893 at Babe Connor's brothel, known as the Castle, in St Louis, Missouri, where it was one of the songs performed by the entertainer known as Mama Lou, with pianist Tom Turpin. And yet one more version is Metz and his Minstrels were in Hot Springs, SD, where Joe Hayden worked at the Evans Hotel. Hayden had the song from his "growing up" days in New Orleans, and he and Metz sat down and wrote the first version of "Hot Time" for a re-dedication ceremony for the local Chautauqua Park and Entertainment Center. The tale is part of the 2015 book And The Wind Whispered. According to a 1956 article in the Afro Magazine Section of the Baltimore Afro American, Mama Lou's original lyrics went: "Late last night about ten o'clock / I knocked at the door and the door was locked / I peeked through the blinds, thought my baby was dead / There was another man in the folding bed....". Metz heard the tune, copyrighted the music in his own name, and had it incorporated into a minstrel show, Tuxedo Girls, with revised lyrics. The dialect and narrative of the song imitate those of African-American revival meetings.
In popular culture
Films and musicals
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.
The song is also featured in Citizen Kane, in the line: "are we going to declare war on Spain or are we not?".
The Joker sings the title line from this song in a scene where he uses his "joy buzzer" to electrocute the character Antoine Rotelli in the film Batman.
Catwoman directly refers to the song title as Selina Kyle, while asking Bruce Wayne if he plans to attend the tree relighting ceremony in the film Batman Returns.
The melody was used for "The Chewing Song" in the Columbia Pictures film The Road to Wellville.
Military
The song was a favorite of the American military around the start of the 20th century, particularly during the Spanish–American War and the Boxer Rebellion. The tune became popular in the military after it was used as a theme by Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.
Music
included the song in a medley on his album Join Bing and Sing Along.
The Eastern Illinois University marching band plays the song in conjunction with their fight song at athletic events.
The chorus is used at the University of Kansas immediately after every touchdown in football and following each basketball game, during "The Waving of the Wheat".
The song has 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. 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.
Texas A&M University's "Aggie War Hymn" currently uses the chorus of this song as its finale, but it is sung with different lyrics.
The song is the beginning of the UCLA victory song, "Rover", played by the UCLA Marching Band.
Television
In 1964, the song was played for laughs at a "very" slow tempo by the Hooterville Volunteer Fire Department Band on the American sitcoms Petticoat Junction and Green Acres.
Richard Nixon's 1968 U.S. Presidential campaign used part of the song mixed with more dissonant sounds accompanying pictures of poverty-stricken areas, soldiers wounded in Vietnam, and the recent unrest, including the riots at that same Convention.
