The Home Corral
(Bob Nolan)
Sometimes when on night herd I'm riding
And the stars are a-gleam in the sky
Like millions of wee little candles
That glimmer and sparkle on high.
I wonder if up there among them
Are streets that are shining with gold.
And if it's as pretty a country
As all the sky pilots have told.
And sometimes I wander and wonder
If over that lone Great Divide
I'll meet with my pals who have journeyed
Across to that dim, farther side.
If out on the great starry ranges
Someday in the future, I, too,
Shall ride on a heavenly bronco
When earth's final round-up is through.
They tell us no storms nor blizzards
Blow over that blue, scattered range.
That it's always and always like summer
A land where there's never a change.
At nights when I lie in my blanket
And the star world casts o'er me its spell
I seem to look on the glories
That lie in that great home corral.
(recording by Patsy Montana: The Home Corral (Bob Nolan) Bluebird 5973 <77248-1>; rec. 33-12-06)
Many thanks to OJ Sikes for finding the song for us.
Some helpful comments by music historians:
"Bluebird
was a subsidiary of RCA and it depends on where Patsy was living at the
time. As a subsidiary of RCA they would record in New York, Chicago,
Los Angeles and with field equipment could, an did, record in smaller
communities.
"As to her recording the song in 1933 despite the 1936 copyright, in 1933 Bob's songs weren't yet being published. When [Cross & Winge] began publishing song folios in 1936 they began copyrighting
unpublished songs that had been written earlier."
The recording was made in Chicago (flip side is Homesick for My Old Cabin) along with Montana Plains / Waltz of the Hills.
It was copyright 1936 05 07 in Cross and Winge sheet music and a later copyright for additional material 1938 02 16. The copyright was renewed 1965 03 17.
Most artists had to travel to the recording centers of New York, Camden, Chicago & Los Angeles. Patsy (Rubye) was in Chicago at that particular time but she recorded in Camden in 1932 and New York in 1935.
The song was never published in any of the group's five songbooks.
Too bad there is no one with a copy of Starrett's Call of the Rockies
which contains "A Cowboy Has to Sing" ending with the words "home
corral" and "Home Corral." That is if the AFI catalog hasn't confused
the two songs.
You'll note
that you can sing these lyrics to the tune of "A Cowboy Has to Sing" but
at a faster tempo, and different, than Patsy's recording.