Westfalia Waltz: A Song History
Also spelled "Westphalia Waltz," this tune carries the name of a small farming community in southwestern Falls County, Texas, settled from 1879 by immigrants from the Westphalia province of Germany.[1] According to the Handbook of Texas, Cotton Collins, fiddler with the Lone Star Playboys, wrote the instrumental waltz in 1946, and local people suggested its name after a dance.[1] The Handbook credits the Lone Star Playboys with the first recording,[1] and the Traditional Tune Archive lists a 1946 Blue Bonnet 78 by the band with Collins on fiddle.[2]
Arthur Rothstein, photograph probably related to Couple dancing in Oke-Doke dance hall, Williamson County, Illinois, January 1939. Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information collection, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. A couple dance of the era; the photograph is not connected to the tune.
Where the melody itself came from is less settled, and sources differ. The Tune Archive ties it to "Pytala Sie Pani," a bawdy Polish drinking song, and notes that documentary producer Joe Weed's film on the tune follows it from Polish folk roots in the 1920s into the northern United States in the 1930s.[2] The same source reports that the Polish song was recorded for ethnic audiences in 1930s America and that fiddler Steve Okonski carried the tune from Chicago to Bremond, the largest Polish settlement in Texas, in the late 1930s. It also records Weed's view that Collins picked the tune up in Germany during World War II, and researcher Paul Wells's 1978 evidence pointing instead to Vince Icadona, a 1930s member of the Dallas-based Crystal Springs Ramblers, as its composer.[2]
Hank Thompson popularized the waltz with a 1955 recording for Capitol, and its reach now extends well beyond Texas: Missouri fiddler Charlie Walden counts it among his "100 essential Missouri fiddle tunes."[2] Mountain dulcimer players will find it in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam collection for DAD tuning, under the spelling "Westfalia Waltz."[3]
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