[HAROLD]
May I have your attention please?
Attention please!
I can deal with the 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
Prrrrrrrroot

Oh think, my friends, how could any pool table ever hope to compete with a gold trombone?
Rah rah, rah da da dat da, rah, rah
Remember, my friends, what a handful of trumpet players did to the famous, fabled walls of Jericho
Old billiard parlor walls, come a-tumbling down!

Well, a band'll do it, my friеnds
Oh yes I said a boys' band, do ya hear me?
I said Rivеr City's gotta have a boys band
And I mean she needs it today!
While professor Harold Hill's on hand
River City's gonna have her boys' band
As sure as the Lord made little green apples
And that band's gonna be in uniform

Johnny, Willy, Teddy, Fred
And you'll see the glitter of crashing symbols
You'll hear the thunder of rolling drums and the shimmer of trumpets
Tumdadum
And you'll feel something akin to the electric thrill I once enjoyed
When Gillmore, Pat Conway, The Great Creatore, W.C. Handy
And John Phillip 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 ev'ry famous band

Seventy-six trombones caught the morning sun
With a hundred and ten cornets right behind
There were more than a thousand reeds, springing up like weeds
There were horns of ev'ry shape and kind

There were copper bottom tympani in horse platoons
Thundering, thundering, all along the way
Double-belled 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 ev'ry size and trumpeters
Who'd improvise
A full octave higher than the score

[Instrumental break]

[ALL]
Seventy-six trombones hit the counterpoint
While a hundred and ten coronets blazed the way
To the rhythm of "harch", "harch", "harch"
All the kids began to march
And they're marching still, right today