Nam. The massive conflagration began on Oct. 8, 1871, in a barn on the Near West Side owned by the O'Learys, a family of Irish immigrants. Oct 9, 1871. Seth Perlman, Amr Alfiky/Associated Press Soon after the Great Chicago Fire burned from October 8 to 10, 1871, this anonymous poem appeared in the Chicago Evening Post. “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” remained an iconic American song for decades. As far as we can tell, it spread only by word of mouth. "Miss Nash ... refuses to disclose her true identity, but is said to be a society woman whose family has met with reverses," the newspaper reported, adding: "Miss Nash is said to be a young woman, with a beautiful face and magnificent figure. Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (left) and Gov. ", It's common for kids to shout "Fire! A decade later, they were entertaining California audiences as "That Komedy Couple," and she was calling herself Flo Nash. In fact, some believe the fire was started by a comet from outer space. Tracking how a song was transmitted by oral tradition is difficult, but social media can help provide some clues. The fire spread quickly and soon raged out of control. A classroom in the old Mount Sinai Junior High School, a so-called "Rosenwald School" built for rural Black students during the Jim Crow era near Prattville, Ala. There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight. “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!” In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire consumed a four-mile-long and two-third-mile wide area of Chicago. But such is life in the land of TV Shows. "Maybe the other kids who didn't go to camp don't know this song, and you sort of have this extra secret handshake thing. Rory Dames says the Red Stars are working to sign two Europe-based players. "I haven't seen your book for at least 25 years, although I remember it well," Kevin told the author in an email. Dozens of people replied, saying they first heard it at schools and in summer camps, and not just in the Chicago area — everywhere from South Dakota to Texas to Connecticut. Fire!" CHICAGO (CBS)– A fire in the back of an apartment building sent people out of their homes early Tuesday in the Old Town neighborhood. Other stories continued to claim that the song didn't start with Metz, Hayden or Mays, who were all white, but rather with black musicians. "It was rattled out by the drums, shrieked by the fifes and blared by the bands ashore and afloat.". Lyrics. at the end of this song, sometimes followed by even more exclamations. Catherine "Cate" O'Leary (née Donegan; March 1827 – 3 July 1895) was an Irish immigrant living in Chicago, Illinois who became famous when it was alleged that an accident involving her cow had started the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. It's also heard in the classic 1941 movie Citizen Kane. In a New Jersey version, Mrs. O'Leary became "Old Lazy Larry.". There are no overt racial epithets in Metz's version, though it's clearly written in a stereotypical black dialect. JB Pritzker Says Michael Madigan Should Testify In Bribery Inquiry, Illinois Voters Concerned With Mailing Ballots Are Opting For Early Voting, Chicago Has A New Plan To Reduce Gun Violence, But COVID-19 Has Created Challenges, 'An X-Ray Of Our Country': How America's Caste System Has Shaped History, Chicago Eases Some COVID-19 Restrictions On Bars And Restaurants. (Of course, that's "fire" spelled in reverse. 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Several people claimed to have written the original version of 'Hot Time In The Old Town,' including German immigrant Theodore Metz (left), Texas banjo player Cad L. Mays (middle), and vaudeville actor Joe Hayden (right). ", Although depictions of the Great Chicago Fire often include references to Catherine O'Leary and her cow, they aren't an accurate history of the fire's origins. And the spoofs and spinoffs began almost immediately. Five European Strikers the Red Stars Could Sign. From day one, the authorship of the original "Hot Time in the Old Town" was a matter of heated controversy. Late last night, While we were all in bed, Miss O'Leary left a lantern in the shed, When the cow tipped it over, She winked her eye and said, "It will be a hot time in the old town tonight", FIRE! In February 1898, the Sioux City Journal in Iowa reported that: "Thousands and thousands of persons in all walks of life have whistled and hummed and sung the 'hot time' melody in paroxysms of joy and delight.". There are many other hypothesis's as to how the fire began. According to the Independent Record, Flossie Nash sang her parody in Chicago, where it "tickled" local vaudeville fans. Follow him at @robertloerzel. I am about midway through the fourth season. "Since 1871, she's been blamed," he says. hide caption. That's told of Mrs. O'Leary, and the doings of her cow. The city of Chicago talked with different Chicagoans to figure out who started the fire. But is he the Josef Martinez of old? People eat outside of a restaurant in Skokie, Ill., Thursday, June 18, 2020. Marveling at the tune's enduring popularity, Kevin remarks: "The story of the cow has sort of kept that song alive.". The first verse of Metz's song describes people gathering for a religious revival where a "hot time" is expected. ... at the time of the fire the O'Leary story enabled people to blame someone in particular for what was a matter of collective responsibility and misfortune. Kevin's third grade class sang the Mrs. O'Leary version of "Hot Time" during a show at McKenzie Elementary School in Wilmette — with several extra verses. Entitled "A Hot Time in the Old Town," the song was written, according to Metz, while traveling with a minstrel show in 1886. Tony Raggs, far left, is the manager of the Safe Streets program for ALSO, an anti-violence organization. Chicago Fire Notebook: Positive injury news, a new training facility, and Wicky weighs in on Marsch to Red Bull Leipzig, Pugh Scores First Red Stars Goal in OL Reign Loss, OL Reign vs Chicago Red Stars: NWSL Challenge Cup Gameday Guide and How to Watch, Atlanta United 3, Chicago Fire 1: What We Learned. But, I don't have a TV at the moment, so I have been binge watching Chicago Fire lately. The Mrs. O'Leary song was also set down in print, on the pages of the 1974 children's book There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight by Robert Quackenbush. By 1901, she was married to Gibson. "University of Kansas was playing," he recalls. One such newspaper report claimed that the music came out of Chicago's Levee prostitution district. It was in the air. ... "There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!" Chicago police detectives investigate the scene where a number of people were shot in a city park in Chicago in 2013. He doesn't remember ever seeing the camp's songs printed on paper. Although the song spread by word of mouth for generations, today it has made its way onto the Internet. That first verse has been forgotten over the years. JB Pritzker. The lyrics on Section 8's website are just a bit different from most versions — saying that the cow "tipped" over the lantern, instead of kicking it over. Meanwhile, another musician, Texas banjo player Cad L. Mays, had published a different version of the song five months before Metz's song came out. And the tune served the … Is the first line "Late one night" or "One dark night"? The Great Chicago Fire Of 1871 Timeline created by Apache_Guardian. "You just learned them around the campfire," he says. FIRE FIRE FIRE. Hot Time in the Cold Town. Thanks to the Chicago History Museum's Ellen Keith, Richard Martin of Archeophone Records, Library of Congress music reference specialist Robert Lipartito and Steve Sullivan (author of Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings) for their assistance with research. But that revision didn't end the debate over the tune's origins. Kevin Pearce, who grew up in Wilmette, vividly remembers learning a song about the Great Chicago Fire when he was 4 or 5 years old. But will the familiarity mean an advantage for either team? Late one night, when we were all in bed Old Mother Leary left a lantern in the shed And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said, “There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.” I learned this song about the Great Chicago Fire. ", Bales helped exonerate Catherine O'Leary with his meticulously researched book, but he doesn't expect the myth — or that song — will fade away anytime soon. It all depends on where and when you learned the song. Many of the hypothesiss are based on conflicting statements given during the . It was always there. Some are, to be expected, not good. Exactly 150 years ago, a great fire roared through the city of Chicago. In 1997, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution officially exonerating Mrs. O'Leary of blame. And some kids learn the song when they hear Chicagoans Amy Lowe and Megan Wells sing it in their show Fire in Boomtown: The Story of the Great Chicago Fire, which they released as a CD in 1997. Start by marking “There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight: The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 Told with Song & Pictures” as Want to Read: Want to Read. "I am a music educator, and I've always been involved in education," he says. The second verse describes a man wooing a woman dressed in red. Robert Quackenbush There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight: The Great Chicago Fire Of, 1871... Library Binding – September 1, 1988 by Robert M. Quackenbush (Author) FIRE! Some of these reports about the origins of "Hot Time" suggested that the tune was passed from one person to another before it was ever written down. This song is a parody of the old minstrel song "There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight". In History. (They're performing the show April 3 at the Old Town School of Folk Music.). hide caption. Researching that question, we found a story about the way jokes and songs can spread by word of mouth, like an intergenerational game of telephone. "None of the children's repertoire is sheet music," says Eve Harwood, an associate professor emerita in music education at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, who has researched playground songs and chants. And even in the era before commercial radio, the song was pervasive. There was a months-long drought that year. it'll be a hot time, in the old town, tonight! Mayor Lori Lightfoot released a plan Tuesday that takes a long-term approach to solving the city's entrenched gun violence. CHICAGO’S RED… They had nothing to do with Mrs. O'Leary. A search of digitized newspapers reveals that the Mrs. O'Leary parody appeared in print on March 21, 1898, when "Hot Time" was near the peak of its popularity. It's sung everywhere from summer camps to soccer games. "The song is iconic," says Bales, who remembers it from his childhood in the 1950s in suburban Aurora. The fire of October 8, 1871, that started atis known for being the Great Chicago Fire and it earned it. He stands with some of his coworkers in Humboldt Park. A Chicago newspaper editor to his reporters, in John McGovern, Daniel Trentworthy: A Tale of the Great Fire of Chicago. Beyond that, the details of her life are a mystery. Oct 8, 1871. hide caption, Reporters probably heard children on the streets telling a story about the cow — and printed it as fact, Bales says. The Ultimate Camp Resource website offers instructions for replacing some of the song's words with silent gestures. The responses we received demonstrate how the song varies from place to place. "I think that's probably how it started — just by kids making up a story. ", Evanston playwright Mickle Maher learned the song at a camp in Michigan in the 1970s, where the refrain was followed by a "backward" version, with the words in jumbled order — concluding with a shout of "Erif, Erif, Erif!" FIRE FIRE FIRE! But no evidence has been found to verify that Nash performed in Chicago. ICHi-036033)/Chicago History Museum So one dark night when the folks were all in bed. The song was a parody of the tune of “A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and was meant to be about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (although it was later found that poor Mrs. Leary and her cow had nothing to do with starting the Chicago fire). September 29, 2020 • In her new book, author Isabel Wilkerson argues we have a caste system in the U.S. — and that acknowledging it is an important first step in understanding issues of race. Courtesy British Library/Louisville Courier-Journal/Newspapers.com At the tune's climax, two kids inside a cow costume exclaimed, "Shame, oh shame!". 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