A popular song from 1902.
Words by Alex Rogers.
Music by Jim Vaughn and Tom Lemonier.
The sheet music:
When Sousa Comes To Coon-Town – Sheet Music
Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:
When_Sousa_Comes_To_Coon-Town – MIDI
Lyrics
1. Look here folks have you heard
The news that’s floating all around
Mister Phillipine Sousa’s big brass band
Is going to march straight thro’ our town
And they ain’t going to play
No overtures from William Tell
They ain’t going to play no “Stars and Stripes”
Nor the song called “Liberty Bell”
But Jasper Green wrote a ragtime march
With words and music, too
Mister Sousa gets the music
But all the words were made for you
So ev’rybody learn this chorus
Old folks and young ones, too
And sing as you never sang before
When Sousa marches through
Chorus
We all loves a brass band
And we’ll march throughout the land
Each one joining hand in hand
Always when the band plays
Some brag ’bout a banjo
Some ’bout a fiddle and de bow
But they stands no show
When Sousa comes to Coon-town
2. All you coons must dress up
In red or near it as you can
Turkey red is just the thing to make a flash
And it will help the scene look gran’
I wants de coons dat has de coin
To cook some chicken pie
So the oder will float through the air
When Sousa marches by
Den scratch dem signs off your houses, too
The ones that says for rent
And look out of your windows like you owned
The earth with a broad smile of content
And now there’s just another favor
That I would ask of you
Just let me hear the way you’ll sing
When Sousa marches through