A Summer Night’s Rain

Bob Nolan
Original copyright: July 4, 1936

Loneliness is just that I need someone.
The desert flowers, they need someone, too.
The thirsty earth invites the summer raindrop.
Through this lonely night I wait for you.

Far o’er the plains, the summer night rains
Fall soft as twilight dew.
Come from on high where sad angels cry.
I guess they’re lonesome, too.
Low in the sky comes a trail of gray,
Breathing a sigh to the newborn day
While it rains to comfort the plains down here,
But where are you?

While it rains to comfort the plains down here,
But where are you?

"A Summer Night's Rain" began its life as a poem and, in answer to the growing demand for more and more songs for radio programs, Bob wrote music for it. The result is a song as gentle as a soft rain in a hot and thirsty land. "A Summer Night's Rain", like Cool Water, is also a prime example of how one of Bob's verses was changed slightly to suit the listening public. In the last two lines of his original song, he concluded with:

While it comfort the plains down here
But where are you?

Because of the inadequacies of radio at the time, listeners heard it this way:

While it rains to comfort the plains.
Dawn's here, but where are you?

Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers bowed to the inevitable, as they did with Cool Water or Tumbling Tumbleweeds, and changed the lyric to what the listener thought he heard. The original verse is never used now. It was registered for copyright on July 4, 1936.

“A Summer Night’s Rain” was published as sheet music in Songs of the Pioneers Folio No. 2, © 1936 by American Music, Inc.

A Summer Night’s Rain (American Music, Inc)

SONS OF THE PIONEERS TRANSCRIPTION RECORDINGS

Standard Radio transcriptions, No. 3061 (1935)

Teleways Radio Productions transcriptions, Nos. 21, 101, 173, 201, and 254 (c. 1947-48)

10-2-4 Time radio show, No. 390 (37650-05) (July 14, 1944)

Lucky U Ranch radio shows (courtesy of Larry Hopper)
- Transcriptions disc TR-123/124 (November 29, 1951)
- Transcriptions disc TR-282/283 (March 14, 1952)
- Transcriptions disc TR-417/418 (June 18, 1952)
- Transcriptions disc TR-477/478 (August 15, 1952)
- Transcriptions disc TR-571/572 (November 20, 1952)

Smokey the Bear radio show, episode No. 4 (1959)