"Willie the Weeper" is a song about drug addiction. According to Alan Lomax in his notes to this song, in the late 19th and early 20th century "taking dope was not regarded as a much more serious habit than drinking or chewing tobacco". Lomax's informants in the Mississippi Delta told him that before World War I you could buy cocaine tablets in any drugstore and the black mule-skinners passed around their cocaine as freely as tobacco. Songs of the period about drug use include "Take a Whiff on Me", "The Ballad of Cocaine Lil" and this one. It is based on a standard vaudeville song, likely written in 1904. The first recording was likely by Freddie Keppard between 1923 and 1926. Many artists recorded it in 1927, including Frankie "Half-Pint" Jaxon, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven, and King Oliver. Ernest Rodgers recorded a version, also in 1927, which shares several lines with Cab Calloway's "Minnie the Moocher". Various collectors have found over thirty versions with more than 100 verses among them. Vance Randolph collected it in Kansas in 1908. It was included in Carl Sandberg's The American Songbag and Alan Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America. It has been recorded by various singers including The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Bette Davis and Dave Van Ronk. I learned it from Dave Van Ronk's recording. The tune given here is from Lomax.