IRVING BERLIN lyrics - He's A Rag Picker

[1st verse:]

Down in Alabama where the cotton grows

Lives a funny fellow by the name of Mose

He hasn't anybody he can pick upon

So he picks on a grand piano

Morning, noon and night you'll find him picking rags

I don't mean the kind of rags they put in bags

He doesn't own a junk shop

Just the same



[Refrain:]

He's a rag picker, a rag picker

All the livelong day

He bangs upon the piano keys

In search of raggy melodies

All day he's at the ivories

And while he dozes, he composes

Mister Moses makes an ordinary ditty sound so pretty

Like nobody can

Most any time of the day

You'll find him picking away

He's a rag picker, a rag picker

A ragtime picking man



[2nd verse:]

Moses' father told me that upon the morn

When his little piano playing boy was born

They didn't have a cradle they could put him in

So he slept on the grand piano

In a week they found him there upon his knees

Chewing on the highly polished piano keys

That very day his father

Loudly cried