Lyr Add: Hello, Hawaii! How Are You?

Subject: Lyr Add: HELLO, HAWAII, HOW ARE YOU?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 06 Jul 05 - 09:55 AM

I heard this on the radio yesterday, sung by Debbie McClatchy. You can hear the archived radio program (for the next few weeks) by clicking here. The song begins 1 hour, 3 minutes, 50 seconds from the beginning of the program. The playlist is here.

From The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music

HELLO, HAWAII, HOW ARE YOU?
Words, Bert Kalmar and Edgar Leslie. Music, Jean Schwartz. 1915.

1. Captain Jinks one night on Broadway, all alone,
Read the news about the wireless telephone.
Pretty soon his thoughts began to stray
Over seven thousand miles away.
Then he went and drew a whole month's pay
To phone and say:

CHORUS: Hello, Hawaii! How are you?
Let me talk to Honolulu Lou
To ask her this: "Give me a kiss, give me a kiss by wireless."
Please state, I can't wait to hear her reply,
For I had to pawn ev'ry little thing I own
To talk from New York through the wireless telephone.
Oh! Hello, Hawaii! How are you? Goodbye!

2. After he was through his phoning, he was broke.
To his friends he started moaning, "It's no joke.
For the money spent to phone that far,
I could buy myself a motor car;
But I love her like a real Jack Tar,
So there you are." CHORUS

[Debby McClatchy sings the following verse, which isn't in the sheet music:]

3. Captain Jinks and his phone call were the scandal on the block.
He sold his home, his house and car, put his mother into hock.
When the phone bill came, he still couldn't pay,
And when they found him down the Bow'ry Way,
He said he'd do it all again someday
Just to hear her say.... CHORUS

[Originally sung by Nora Bayes; her recording is on "Together and Alone," 2005; also by Ciro's Club Coon Orchestra on "Earliest Black String Bands Vol. 1: 1914-1917," 1999; by Bing Crosby on "Bing Crosby on Radio in the Thirties (1937-1938)," 1995; and by Debbie McClatchy on "Off to California."]