Dominic Vautier
updated 1/2015
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Probably in early 1895 a minstrel show was traveling by train in southern Mississippi. The train stopped to take on water near the sleepy little railroad junction of Old Town. Several kids were playing nearby and had built a bonfire from debris, which soon spread to some nearby railroad ties, so members of the minstrel show rushed in to help local Old Town residents control the fire. In the midst of this pandemonium, one of the performers remarked glibly, “Dey’ll be a hot time in de Old Town tonight!” referring to the punishment the kids would probably receive from the hands of their elders for such malicious misadventures.
Ted Metz and Joe Hayden, two opportunistic songwriters from New York, immediately grasped the significance of all this and put together a song, using a common melody Metz had heard while in St. Louis.
From 1896 on, almost every minstrel show began its program with Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. Two years later in 1898, Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders charged up San Juan Hill to the tune of the same song. American soldiers soon adopted Hot Time as the unofficial Spanish American War song. When Roosevelt became president he requested that the song be stricken from the record because it was “ragtime” and not real music at all.
When I was little I knew the song as the Campbell’s Soup song:
Good old soup is what we want to eat.
Campbell’s Soup its flavor can’t be beat.
Good old soup is what we want to eat.
So at noontime, let’s have good hot soup for
lunch.