The Music Man: Seventy-Six Trombones

Please folks, please folks. May I have your attention please?

Attention please?

I can deal with this trouble, friends, with a wave of my hand

This very hand

Please observe me if you will

I′m Professor Harold Hill

And I'm here to organize a River City Boys Band

Oh think my friends, how could any pool table ever hope to compete with a gold trombone?

Ra-da-ra-da-da-da-da-ra-da

Remember my friends what a handful of trumpet players did to the famous fabled walls of Jericho?

Oh billiard parlor walls come a′tumbling down

Oh a band will do it my friends, I mean a boys band, yes indeed

I say River City's gotta have a boys band and I mean she needs it today

But Professor Harold Hill's on hand

And River City′s gonna have a boys band

As sure as the Lord made little green apples

And that band′s gonna be in uniform

Johnny, Willie, Teddy, Fred

And you'll see the glitter of crashing cymbols

And you′ll hear the thunder of roaring drums

The shimmer of trumpets

Ta-ta-da!

And you feel something akin to the electric thrill I enjoyed when Gilmour, Liberate, Pat Conway, the Great Creator, W.C. Handy, and John Philip Sousa all came to town on the very same historic day.

Seventy-six trombones led the big parade

With a hundred and ten coronets close at hand

They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuosos

The cream of every famous band

Seventy-six trombones caught the morning sun

With a hundred and ten coronets right behind

There were more than a thousand reeds springing up like weeds

There were horns of every shape and kind

There were copper-bottom timpanies and horse platoons

Thundering, thundering all along the way

Double-bell euphoniums and big bassoons

Each bassoon having his big fat say

There were fifty mounted cannon in the battery

Thundering, thundering louder than before

Clarinets of every size and trumpeters who'd improvise a whole octave higher than the score

Seventy-six trombones hit the counterpoint

While a hundred and ten coronets blazed away

To the rhythm of harch, harch, harch all the kids began to march

And they′re marching still right today

They're marching still right today

Harold Hill!