[HAROLD HILL]
Please, please folks
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 the River City boys' band
Brrrrrrrot

Oh think, my friends, how could any pool table ever hope to compete with a gold trombone?
Rah rah, rah da da dat da, dah, 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

Oh a band'll do it, my friends, oh yes
I said a boys' band, do ya hear me?
I said River 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 cymbals
And you'll hear the thunder of rolling drums and the shimmer of trumpets, tum ta-da
And you'll feel something akin to the electric thrill I once enjoyed
When Gillmore, Liberati, Pat Conway, The Great Creatore, W.C. Handy, and John Phillip Sousa
All came to town on the very same historic day
[Musical queue]

Seventy-six trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets 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]

[TOWNSPEOPLE]
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