The American husband of English music hall star Lottie Collins saw the show and acquired the English rights to the song from Sayers. He stole the song for his own troupe, replacing the 'unspeakable' lyrics, and featured the song in a blackface farce called Tuxedo, which opened in 1891. There he heard the resident singer, Mama Lou, deliver the song. It was perhaps the year 1890 when Henry Sayers, the white manager of a blackface minstrel company, went to a nightclub/brothel in New Orleans (or maybe St. It was said that Black dockworkers in New Orleans caught the refrain and soon it had reached far into Louisiana, 'where a Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay was shouted when anything was to be hoisted at the sugar mills' I read that this refrain originated among sailors from the west coast of Africa who used it in a pulling shantey. It's as simple as Happy Birthday and in its day was so popular the first huge media-circus music copyright court room battle was fought over it (see below). We associate it with high kicking women in frilly knickers.

We've heard this chorus 1,000s of times, in cartoons and comedies.

Ta ra ra boom d