Ya Got Trouble / Seventy‐Six Trombones Songtext
von Robert Preston

May I have your attention please?
Attention please
I can deal with a 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
Braada radadadada rara
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 will do it my friends, oh yes I said a boys band do you hear me?
I said River city′s gotta have a boys band and I mean she needs it today
Well 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 see the glitter of crashing symbols
You hear the thunder of rolling drums and the shimmer of trumpets
Tumdadum!
And you feel something akin to the electric thrill I once enjoyed
When Gillmore, Pat Conway, The Great Creator, 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 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 tympani in horse platoons
Thundering, thundering all along the way
Double-belled euphoniums and big bassoons
Each bassoon having its big bad say

There were fifty mounted canons in the battery
Thundering, thundering louder than before
Clarinets of every size and trumpeters
Who improvise a full octave higher than the score


Seventy-six trombones hit the counterpoint
While a hundred and ten coronets played the bridge
To the rhythm of "arch", "arch", "arch"
All the kids began to march
And they're marching still, right today!