Idalene Cotton

The publishers, Barron & Thompson Co., were located between 5th & 6th Avenues on West 28th St in Manhattan. This block, crowded with music publishers, was known as Tin Pan Alley.  

Idalene had a large repetoire of immigrant accents, including Italian American  Whether this skill in some way accounted for her photograph on the cover, or if she performed the song in conjunction with a show is not clear. The advent of the fully realized American musical - Showboat - was still more than a decade away. To the extent that musical theatre was mounted, individual songs were not part of a unified and coherent story. Instead a collection of popular numbers were strung together, each having no relation to another.  

Ronklyn's lyrics incorporated slang that would have been heard in the city - skiddoo - as well as the commonly used acronym for the New York Department of Street Cleaning, D.S.C.   "Tough-a Tony," like the narrator (a fruit vendor), worked at the bottom of the economic ladder.