Saturday Music Post - Bill Bailey

Has any song been more enjoyable than "Bill Bailey"? Originally titled "Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home," it was written in 1902 by Hughie Cannon,  a tavern piano player in Jackson, Michigan. As the story goes, Cannon was inspired by the carousing of his friend and fellow musician Willard "Bill" Bailey, whose wife regularly called on him to end his late night habits. Whether true or not, Michigan's nocturnal Bill Bailey has been immortalized in a song that has been a Dixieland and jazz standard for over a century. The song is almost impossible to overdo, overact, over arrange, or over produce. Though parodies abound, I have included only one.

The clips are at The Faculty Lounge.