Empty Arms (Autumn Reverie)

Bob Nolan
Original copyright: September 27, 1955

See the autumn leaves, the falling leaves, come down ~
Teardrops of the sighing trees.
May you never, never guess there can be such loneliness.
Here, with empty arms outstretched, I cry.
With empty arms outstretched, I cry.

There’s a chillness in, a stillness in the air ~
Garlands of a broken dream.
As the empty branches wait for the springtime buds to break,
Here with empty arms I’m waiting, too.
With empty arms, I’m waiting, too.

Originally titled "Autumn Reverie" by Bob Nolan, he had it registered for copyright on April 26, 1954, as "Empty Arms." This song was written after Nolan had left the Sons of the Pioneers and he was concentrating on writing the songs he wanted to, instead of the western songs he was hired to write for films. "I’ve taken the cowhide out of them because I’ve written too much about that," he told Douglas B. Green in a 1979 interview.

We have both his original "Autumn Reverie" lead sheets and the later printed "Empty Arms" sheet music published by Bob Nolan Music, Inc.
First and second handwritten drafts of “Autumn Reverie”
Published sheet music of “Empty Arms” (Bob Nolan Music, Inc.)

Bob Nolan had an old home recording machine, and he made his own wax demos on it. Many years later, his grandson rented a record player and transferred the old demos to tape.

“I remember years ago, soon after Bob died, that my mom went down to see P-Nuts and brought back a box of old 78s. These records were one-time studio recordings of songs that he wrote and never were recorded [commercially]. But we went out and got a 78 record player, needles, (which were hard to find), and hooked it up to a cassette recorder and recorded all the records. As you can imagine the quality was very poor. A little curl of wax built up before the needle, so the sound was virtually destroyed.”
(Calin Coburn, July 2, 2000)