Waltz me around again, Willie (Around, Around, Around)

AKA
First Published 1906
Words/music Will D Cobb / Ren Shields Roud RN208

Music Hall Performers Numerous artistes including Florrie Forde, Margaret Cooper
Folk performances Collected from the singing of:
US Soldiers in WW1,
Clark, LaRena ; Canada : Ontario ; 1917		 

From 1906 Sheet Music (Levy Collection)

Willie Fitzgibbons who used to sell ribbons
And stood up all day on his feet,
Grew very spoony, on Madelaine Mooney,
Who’d rather be dancing than eat.
Each evening she’d tag him, to some dance hall drag him,
And when the band started to play,
She’d up like a silly, and grab tired Willie,
Steer him on the floor and she’d say:

“Waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around!
The music is dreamy, it’s peaches and creamy,
Oh! don’t let my feet touch the ground.
I feel like a ship on an ocean of joy,
I just want to holler out loud, ‘Ship Ahoy!’
Oh! waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around!”

Willie DeVere was a dry goods cashier
At his desk he would sit all the day.
’Till his Doctor advised him to start exercising,
Or else he would soon fade away.
One night this poor looney met Madelaine Mooney
Fitzgibbons, then shouted with joy,
“She’s a good health-regainer, you’ve got a great trainer!
Just wait ’till she hollers, my boy."

A big hit in 1906, sung in several theatre productions in the New York and London, as well as in American vaudeville theatres and British Music Halls – basically anywhere where popular songs were performed. It was written by the American Tin Pan Alley songwriters Will D Cobb and Ren Shields.

It was extremely popular amongst English speaking troops in the World Wars – for whom it provided a convenient way of linking together bawdy limericks, for example the relatively polite version recorded by Oscar Brand in 1949 (see below and also this Mudcat Thread )

Florrie Forde sings it:

A slightly bawdy derivative by Oscar Brand:

Sources: