Anti-Ragtime Girl

A 1913 popular song.
Words and music by Elsie Janis.

This song mentions an older song, Sweet Genevieve (1869).


The sheet music:


Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:


Lyrics

  1. You can talk about your ragtimes
    And your all night cabarets
    You may sing the praise of all the lights
    That gleam on old Broadway
    And of all the fluffy ruffle girls
    That make the life divine
    But not one of them can travel
    With this little girl of mine
    She’s just a little fireside girl
    And you may call her slow
    But she’s just the kind your mother
    Would have liked to have you know

Chorus
She don’t do the bunny hug
Nor dance the Grizzly Bear
She hasn’t learned the Turkey Trot
And somehow she don’t care
For chasing ’round the restaurants
She doesn’t care a fig
She can’t tell a Tango from a Can-can or a Jig
She don’t wave her shoulders
When the band plays “Itchy-koo”
The “Wedding Glide” don’t make her senses whirl
But you bet that she’s right there
On some sweet old fashioned air
Like “Genevieve, sweet Genevieve”
She’s my little Anti-ragtime girl

  1. There are lots of girls on Broadway
    Who have foreign motor cars
    And the chorus ladies always have
    Much finer ones than stars
    But this little girl that I know
    Likes the subway or the “El”
    And she says that in a little cottage
    We are going to dwell
    She thinks that moving picture shows
    Are absolutely grand
    And when they turn the light out
    I’m allowed to hold her hand

Sung here by Fred Feild: