Westphalia Waltz

Waltz in G major, 3/4, from the Texas fiddle tradition, adapted into its current form in 1946 by fiddler Cotton Collins of the Lone Star Playboys and named after Westphalia, Texas, a German-immigrant community near Waco. The melody itself is not original to Collins — multiple sources trace it to a Polish folk song known as “Pytała się Pani” (also “Wszystkie Rybki” / “Dreamy Fish Waltz”), which circulated among Polish-American communities in Chicago and Texas in the 1920s–30s before Collins reworked it as a Texas dance tune. One researcher (Paul Wells, 1978) instead credits composition to Vince Incardona of the Crystal Springs Ramblers. The tune was first recorded by the Lone Star Playboys on Blue Bonnet Records in 1946, then reached national popularity via Hank Thompson and His Brazos Valley Boys’ 1955 Capitol recording. Other notable recordings include Kenny Baker and Bobby Hicks on Darkness on the Delta (County 782) and a 1948 version by Johnny Gimble, then a member of the Lone Star Playboys, sometimes cited as the definitive take. The tune’s Polish-to-Texas transmission is the subject of Joe Weed’s 2011 documentary The Waltz to Westphalia.