The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry)  

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"The Wallflower" (also known as "Roll With Me Henry" and "Dance With Me Henry") is a popular song. It was one of several answer songs to "Work With Me Annie" and has the same 12-bar blues melody.

It was written by Johnny Otis, Hank Ballard, and Etta James. Etta James recorded it, with uncredited vocal responses from Richard Berry, under the title "The Wallflower" and it became a rhythm and blues hit, topping the U.S. R&B chart for 4 weeks. It was popularly known as "Roll with Me Henry".

The song was covered for the pop market, with the title, "Dance With Me Henry", by Georgia Gibbs. That version charted in 1955, hitting the top five of several different pop charts. It reached number one on the Most Played In Juke Boxes chart on May 14, 1955, and spent three weeks on top of that chart.

It was also covered as "Dance With Me Henry" by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan as the characters Henry Crun and Minnie Bannister from the BBC radio comedy series The Goon Show in 1955.

In 2008, Etta James received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award for her 1955 recording.

The song is a dialogue between "Henry" and the singer:

Hey baby, whatta I have to do to make you love me too?
You've got to roll with me Henry.

The context is the dance floor. The Midnighters also recorded an "answer to the answer": "Henry's Got Flat Feet (Can't Dance No More)".

The song inspired the title of the Abbott and Costello film Dance With Me Henry (1956), although the film's plot was unrelated to the song. It was also included in the films Sister Act and Back to the Future.



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "The Wallflower (Dance with Me, Henry)" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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