Hello, Hawaii, How Are You?

Hello, Hawaii, How Are You? is a song written in 1915, by Jean Schwartz, Bert Kalmar and Edgar Leslie.

Sheet music cover, 1915

The song was inspired by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company's recent successful radio (then commonly called "wireless") telephone transmission from the U.S. Navy's station, NAA in Arlington, Virginia, to Hawaii.[1] This technology was still experimental, and the song underscores the caller's desperation to talk to their sweetheart in Hawaii, from their home in New York City.

The song was recorded in 1915 by Billy Murray, backed with an instrumental version by Pietro Deiro on Side B; and later that year by Broadway star Nora Bayes.

Murray's version of the chorus is given below;

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. He went through a whole month's pay just to phone and say:

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?

Good-bye!

In Murray's version, at least, "Hawaii" is pronounced in a slangy way, as "Hah-WAH-yah", playing on the "How are you?" line.