On the Rhythm Range
(Bob Nolan)
I was born a rover on the rhythmic range,
A rootin’ tootin’ terror and I never will change.
I sing a tune to the day and travel all of the way in rhythm.
Everything around me is a part of my song.
They seem to want to follow as I ramble along.
The lazy hawk in the sky is even tempted to try my rhythm.
Refrain:
On the rhythm range,
On the rhythm range,
Everything is keepin’ time to a sort of runicrhyme
And rhythm.
Ev’ry time a Sunday comes a-rollin’ around,
Down beside the water hole I’m sure to be found.
I’ll be a-scrubbin’ and rubbin’ in a manner profound in rhythm.
Water from a thousand feet is colder than air.
I always thought the devil kept it warmer down there.
I guess it weren’t in his path so I’ll be takin’ my bath in rhythm.
I asked the prairie chicken when he started to scratch
If sandy fleas an’ bumblebees could hatch a better batch.
He said the only thing he found beneath this doggone ground is rhythm.
He started in to workin’ with a toss of his head
And then he turned around to me and here’s what he said,
“I ain’t a-diggin’ for gold but when I’m scratchin’, my soul’s got rhythm.
Nolan enjoyed reciting whole verses of poetry from his favorite poets – Keats, Byron, Shelley and Poe. Traces of this delight are found in a few of his songs but, since less that two hundred of his songs remain for examination, a complete study is impossible. He told Betty Cox Larimer and Lee Rector that he had written approximately sixteen hundred songs, most of which have been lost over the years or destroyed when his garage-workshop burned in the late Forties.
“The Bells” by Edgar Allen may have been a particular favorite of his as it plainly influenced the chorus of On the Rhythm Range.
On the rhythm range
Everything is keeping time
To a sort of Runic rhyme
And rhythm.
(Bob Nolan, from On the Rhythm Range (1939), refrain.)
Keeping time, time, time
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells.
(Poe, from The Bells (1849), 1.9)
Photocopies of sheet music for this song are available from Calin Coburn, Bob Nolan's grandson. Email Calin for more details.
