Amongst a batch of antique sheet musical instruction booklets offered for sale online was a piece with Art Nouveau hand lettering on the cover entitled “Seven Musical Travelogues for Piano”.
This design served as the inspiration and model for Ragtime Gal JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.
The font’s name comes from the line ‘Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal…’ from the 1899 song “Hello Ma Baby”; a tune that found a new burst of popularity in an odd way within a 1955 Warner Brother’s cartoon [“One Froggy Evening”].