Ida Emerson

Ida Emerson (April 17, 1873 – September 25, 1945) was a Broadway performer, composer, and lyricist whose career spanned both the stage and the songwriting world of Tin Pan Alley. She was among the rare women to gain entry into that celebrated circle of professional songwriters, where she collaborated with her husband, Joseph E. Howard, a composer, lyricist, arranger, and librettist. Together they worked as the songwriting team of Howard and Emerson.

Emerson first met Howard when he was seventeen years old. Following the death of his first wife, Mabel Barrison, Emerson and Howard married. The two built their early careers performing on the Midwestern vaudeville circuit, and their work in Chicago attracted enough attention to earn them an engagement in New York at Tony Pastor's Music Hall on 14th Street.

Their most enduring collaboration was the 1899 song "Hello, Ma Baby," a syncopated novelty number built around the then-novel concept of the telephone. Published in 1899, the song sold over a million copies of sheet music within a matter of months. It has remained familiar to modern audiences largely through its use in Warner Bros. cartoons, where it is associated with the character Michigan J. Frog.

Emerson's Broadway career ran from 1905 to 1906. During that period she starred in the musical In New York Town and also appeared in the musical The District Leader.