Tumbling Leaves
ｩ2004
Days may be dreary, still I知 not weary.
My heart needs no consoling.
At each break of dawn you値l find that I致e gone
Like old tumbling leaves, I知 rolling.
See them tumbling down,
Pledging their love to the ground,
Lonely but free I値l be found
Drifting along with the tumbling leaves.
Cares of the past are behind,
Nowhere to go but I値l find
Just where the trail will wind,
Drifting along with the tumbling leaves.
I know when night has gone
That a new world痴 born at dawn.
Time keeps rolling along,
Why should I care if I知 wrong
Here in my heart is a song,
Drifting along with the tumbling leaves.
(Multi-track recording by Dave Bourne of the original song with small performance changes. )
Bob recalled standing at his apartment window one stormy day in 1931 (another time he said it was 1929), moodily watching the leaves being torn and whirled from the trees. After a brief reconciliation, his wife Pearl had taken their small daughter and left him for good. The Great Depression was slowly crushing his hopes and dreams. Traveling had always been his escape and it was to traveling that his thoughts turned again. He put the poem down on paper and called it "Tumbling Leaves". This scrap of paper in Bob's handwriting is all that is left of that original song.
The Calin Coburn Collections ｩ2004
After the Sons of the Pioneers gained popularity on the radio in 1933, listeners would call in for "the tumbling weeds" song. Harry Hall, the announcer at radio station KFWB, suggested simply changing the title but Bob made a few adjustments to the rhythm as well and the song became "Tumbling Tumbleweeds", the all-time theme song of the Sons of the Pioneers. This is how Bob described making the change.
There is a newly-awakened interest in the original song, "Tumbling Leaves", because the words are timeless and not necessarily Western. It has not yet been commercially recorded but Dave Bourne generously made the demo you are listening to with Bob Nolan's original verse. This verse was changed by an unknown studio writer when it was sold to the second publisher. Read Laurence Zwisohn's "The Sad History of "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and Lawrence Hopper's "Tumbling Tumbleweeds: Evolution of a Western Standard"
Note: When Bob sued Williamson Music for the U. S. publishing rights to Tumbling Tumbleweeds, he stated that he wrote the song in 1929. (300 F. Supp. 1311 (1960) p. 1313.)
