KLAC Tribute to Bob Nolan, the Quiet Man

1980

Gerry (?): Quiet men in the 20th Century are rare, extraordinary to find and even more difficult to explain. Canadian Robert Nobles, born in 1908, was a very private man. Yes, a quiet man. He let his poems set to music speak for him. Robert Nobles, alias the Quiet Man, Bob Nolan.

Ken Griffis: Bob Nolan really was a quiet person. He was a person who really did not like to mix with the public. As a result of that, people said he was a hermit, a recluse, he did not like people. Possibly a little bit of that is true, but Bob, by and large, had been in the public eye for so long and, through certain things that had occurred his life, felt that he wanted to be by himself. He did allow people to visit him. He was very personable. He was a very friendly individual but he did not like the public eye. He did not like to go out into the public.

Gerry: Let’s find out about Bob Nolan, the man. He was originally born in Canada?

Ken: Right.

Gerry: He came to the United States. Let’s begin with his first locating in the United States and pick up from there and how he became the poet and songwriter that we know today.

Ken: Well, Bob indicated that he came out as a young man to the desert. His father, who had been in World War I, had been gassed and he had a health problem so he retired to the Arizona desert around Tucson, and Bob as a young fellow came out to live with his dad and Bob tells a very interesting story of his first experience with the desert. He said when he first came out that he would spend long hours walking out into the desert. “At first,” he said, “you see and hear nothing but as you become attuned to what is going on there, then,” he said, “it’s a fantastic world. You would not believe what all goes on in the desert.” And I guess that’s where he got the great stimulation for the songs that he wrote.

Gerry: Didn’t he write early poetry, as a young man in Arizona?

Ken: Well, he said that in his early days that he wrote for the school newspaper and he wrote poetry. Of course, Gerry, I’d like to think of all of his songs as poetry. I don’t really know if Bob really wrote much of what we would call ‘music’. He wrote poetry and then he put music to it, much in the vein that Stuart Hamblen…and Stuart Hamblen…fantastic poet. I think Bob got his stimulation from his early days in the desert and he wrote poems about it and then later on this become music.

Gerry: Let’s talk about, obviously, the two of the biggest songs, internationally known—Tumbling Tumbleweeds obviously certainly paints a picture of any desert, whether it be a Texas, Arizona or California desert. Then you listen to the sounds of Cool Water. Did Bob ever tell you, or do you have any idea (let’s take one at a time) did he ever tell you personally where he, for instance, came up with the idea of Tumbling Tumbleweeds?

Ken: Yes. Matter of fact, it’s rather interesting. I was over to see him the Sunday before he passed away. (I was privileged to see Bob every three or four weeks and spend some pleasant hours with him.) And we were trying to put together an album of the early Decca recordings and I wanted to get his clarification on the song Tumbling Tumbleweeds because it originally was written as Tumbling Leaves. He, uh, I was fortunate to get it on tape. I guess it was the last thing that he recorded. And he tells that he was living in West Los Angeles and he was watching the leaves tumbling down the street and he just sat down and started to write about the tumbling leaves. And I wanted to clarify that that was actually the same tune and everything that he had for Tumbling Tumbleweeds. So he indicated that the theme remained the same but on the station one of the announcers had mentioned that he was getting so many letters and calls from the audience and the listening public about wanting to hear “that tumbleweed song” that Bob decided, well, he would just change the theme and some of the words and call it Tumbling Tumbleweeds. So actually it was originally written as Tumbling Leaves.

[Plays “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” from “Bob Nolan, The Sound of a Pioneer”]

Gerry: Was there an original record of, was there an original song, Tumbling Leaves, or was that a live performance?

Ken: As far as I know, it was strictly live. I don’t believe it was ever put on record. The earliest recordings that the Pioneers made was 1934 and it was not recorded during their time with Decca, so I’m certain, almost certain that the song Tumbling Leaves was never recorded.

Gerry: Do you have a copy, by any chance, or do you know the leaves, uh, the words of Tumbling Leaves that was changed into Tumbling Tumbleweeds?

Ken: No, I don’t, but if you listen to the words of Tumbling Tumbleweeds, you can see that it’s the same thing. And one of the interesting things about Tumbling Tumbleweeds is that the original lead-in to the song that you hear now is not the one that Bob wrote—I’m a roving cowboy, ridin’ all day long. That is not Bob’s version. The one that Bob wrote for the lead-in to Tumbling Tumbleweeds, was rejected by the publishers as ‘that’s not good’ so they had somebody on Tin Pan Alley rewrite the introduction so that what is considered one of the most beautiful lead-ins to a song is really not by Bob. It is altogether different than the one you hear.

Gerry: Do you know what that was?

Ken: Yes, I have the sheet music—it’s got the original words on it—at home. It’s altogether different from what you hear.

Gerry: That’s tremendous. What about Cool Water?
Ken: Well, Bob says that he wrote that from his days in the desert, his inspiration from the desert and now, Gerry, the one thing that Bob mentioned many times is that he was so surprised that people think of Cool Water as a song about water. Really it’s not about water, it’s the absence of water. He was trying to convey, in fact, that there was no water. It’s all an illusion and on the last recording that was made, as far as I know, of Cool Water on Granite Records, and Lloyd Perryman used a lead-in to it, and he says that’s a mirage you see, it’s not water and he wanted to emphasize the fact that we’re talking about no water, not water.

[Plays “Cool Water,” Granite-ATV Music, Western Country, GS-1007, May 1976, Lloyd Perryman lead vocal]

Gerry: You know, in the picture painting process of such an artist and poet as Bob Nolan, he did, especially, I think, in Cool Water, paint that mirage, paint that feeling that you can actually get a dry mouth, you can get cotton mouth, by listening to that song.

Ken: That’s right.

Gerry: And a man of that talent must have had some great inner feelings to come up again with that kind of a picture. But it always comes to my mind, as well, that maybe there was some personal experience. Do you feel that he had any personal experience aside from, of course, the artistic experience of being in the desert?

Ken: Not that I know of, no. I’m not aware of anything in particular that stimulated other than his time in the desert.

Gerry: Was Bob a working cowboy?

Ken: Oh, to some degree. I guess in his early days he had some ranching but by and large, like most of the Sons of the Pioneers, they were just early day radio artists. Bob was a good horseman and he did quite a bit of riding in the Pioneer pictures with Roy in the early days. They made close to 100 movies with Roy.

Gerry: Let’s talk about the Sons of the Pioneers. Of course, it was Tim Spencer and Roy Rogers that originally started the group and they originally were called…?

Ken: The Pioneer Trio.

Gerry: The Pioneer Trio. And then in 193…as you indicated in your book, 1933, there entered Bob Nolan and from that point on, of course, it was a larger group and it was known as the Sons of the Pioneers.

Ken: That’s right. The title The Sons of the Pioneers was given to them by Harry Hall who was an announcer at KFWB, and I think it must have been just out of the—little bit poking fun at them—they were called The Pioneer Trio and Harry introduced them one day as the Sons of the Pioneers and I have to believe that he, perhaps, was putting a little emphasis on the name and the fellows after the show, according to Roy Rogers, they were ready to lay one on him because of that insult but he, after he said, “Well, you fellas aren’t pioneers, you’re really sons of pioneers,” and they said, “Well, that’s not a bad name. I think we’ll keep it.” So that’s the way the name came to be, The Sons of the Pioneers.

Gerry: And what, then, happened with their first recordings? In other words, at this point obviously there had not been a recording of either Cool Water or Tumbling Tumbleweeds by the Sons of the Pioneers because there had not been a group. How did, or did Bob ever let you know, how there came his involvement as songwriter Bob Nolan with the group.

Ken: Well, I think that’s the reason why most of the early day radio performers got into groups and tried to get on radios because that gave them a chance to see and be seen and to get personal appearances and get their music played. They did not make much money in those days. The publishers, if there was money to be made, usually made the money. But I think the emphasis of—a way of getting their music heard was to get on the radio. That was the big attraction in those days and Roy was a driving force behind the early Pioneers. And he is the one that searched out Tim and Bob. They had previously been together in a group called the Rocky Mountaineers and, after they broke up, Roy got them back together again and Bob was not too much, not much of a prolific writer at that time but then he and Tim, with the stimulation of the movies, got into the songwriting binge and, according to Bob, they’d sometimes be working on six songs at one time.

Gerry: Songs like Trail Herdin’ Cowboy, A Cowboy Has to Sing, One More Ride, Way Out There, Song of the Bandit. All of these paint the picture of, again, a working cowboy or maybe let’s take it away from the working cowboy to the motion picture or the movie screen cowboy. Were any of these written for specific motion pictures?

Ken: Almost all of them, Gerry. Just about the whole vein of music that was written by Tim and Bob from about 1936-7 on through ‘45 was directed to fulfilling a need for within a movie. And, as Bob said, they would be given a general idea of what the script is and they’d sit down and in a matter of a couple of days they’d knock out a half a dozen songs. And, strange enough, Bob didn’t take much pride in those songs. He didn’t think they were very good. He said that they were just manufactured and he did not particularly like them.

Gerry: What about songs like, later songs that came out around 1955, or in the mid-fifties like Cigarettes, Whisky and Wild, Wild Women [sic] and Careless Kisses, Room Full of Roses. Did he have the same feeling about those or did he take pride in them? They were a separation from what he’d done earlier.

Ken: Well, yes, the songs like Cigarettes and Whisky, that’s Tim Spencer’s song and that was written as a tongue-in-cheek thing as the result of a particular occurrence when the fellows were in Chicago and they woke up one morning with the strange sight of night’s wear and cigarettes all over the place and so forth—empty glasses, and so Tim picks up a quitar and starts singing about the cigareetes and whisky and wild, wild women and the first thing you know, it’s probably the biggest selling record next to Tumbling Tumbleweeds they’ve ever had

Gerry: Now how would Bob feel about that? I mean, although I guess he’s not a writer or co-writer on that with Tim.

Ken: No.

Gerry: But with his personal feeling toward music, how would Bob have felt about a song like that?

Ken: Oh, I think Bob took those things in stride. He was not particularly impressed with anything that was written during that era, including Room Full of Roses and Cigareetes. Those were not songs that were closely associated with Bob. They were written by Tim, and Tim and Bob did not write much together. They wrote separately and the only time that they would ever collaborate was when one or the other would get stuck and couldn’t finish it and the other one would come in and help. I would think that the later songs written by Bob Nolan, after he had left the group, is the ones that he takes pride in.

Gerry: Songs like…?

Ken: The Touch of God’s Hand, He Walks With the Wild and the Lonely and things of that nature. Bob, as you say, was a very deep individual and he did not like to share his thoughts with too many people. I guess the closest friend that he had, as far as I can determine, is Stuart Hamblen and others were friends but Stuart and Bob shared an awful lot of background over the years.

Gerry: Let’s talk about The Touch of God’s Hand. We have several recordings of it by Bob Nolan and yet one of the most recent was a recent album that he did with Snuff Garrett and I'm proud today that he did that. I’ve loved it since I got a copy of it to hear it. But one of the cuts in there that really stands out is The Touch of God’s Hand.

Ken: Well, I can tell you something, Gerry, and I assume I will not be violating any kind of a trust and I’d like the listeners to know this, and I want to say it very carefully, that Bob Nolan was not a religious man in the same vein that a lot of church people consider religious. He did not believe in the established church. He thought that more men got involved in religion the less perfect it became. So he had his own idea of what religion is and it was entirely outside the church. I don’t know that he ever went to church, at least, I’m not aware that he did in recent years.

Gerry: Structured church, in other words as you and I know it.

Ken: That’s correct. Bob had his own church and it was in his heart and in his mind and I think he was probably just about as religious a person as anyone that I have ever known but it is entirely different than anything that we consider today as “religious” and these songs are really not indicative of what Bob Nolan really believed. I once asked him about that when he told me about his feelings. I said, “Well, Bob, how can you write songs like that if it does not exactly fit your belief?” and he give me an answer but I really can’t interpret what it was he said, but it was in effect, he said that he wrote them because he felt there was a need to write them but they did not necessarily reflect his own personal belief.

[Plays “How Shall I Know Him (When He Walks By)” from “Sons of the Pioneers Sing Hymns of the Cowboy” LPM/LSP 2652, 1963]

ould you describe a man that, obviously to say that he’s a quiet man is an understatement? Almost a recluse is the word that you used earlier. The fact that he wants no shrines, he wants no awards, he does not necessarily want the Hall of Fame. In other words, he wants no notoriety past the acceptance of his material, his songs, his poems. How could we sum up, Ken, Bob Nolan the overall man?

Ken: Well, I really am not in a position to give you that answer, Gerry. I can just give you an interpretation of Bob Nolan as I knew him. Bob Nolan did not like notoriety. He did not like to appear before the public. I think that was one of the reasons that he left the group is because it got to be increasingly difficult for him to go out onto that stage and face the crowd. That may sound strange but I believe that was his big problem in the latter years with the group. He just did not like to go out on that stage and he had his own problems with meeting people, I mean as far as wondering what their motives may be and so forth. I think he felt that he should associate only with those people that he felt he had something in common with. And I believe he just liked to be by himself but, of course, that was not unique to this period. I know many of the Pioneers remarked in the early days in the movie industry, they’d look around for Bob and he’d be setting on a rock somewhere off to himself, gazing off into the distance, writing a song in his mind. He just did not like to associate with too many people and I just think he felt more comfortable by himself and why he felt that way, I really don’t know.

Gerry: Let me ask you two finishing questions. Was Bob Nolan a dreamer?

Ken: Oh, I think he very definitely was. Bob Nolan had some very deep thoughts. And he liked to pretend that he was as hard as nails on the outside but inside, Bob Nolan was just a very tender, respectful person. He had a great love of his wife, Mrs. Nolan. He had a great love of his country and I think he believed in The American Dream but he was certainly never gonna be found on the corner waving a flag. That was not Bob Nolan.

Gerry: Was Bob Nolan, as you knew him, in fact happy with himself at his final days? You said you saw him a few days before he passed away.

Ken: He seemed to be. He seemed to be totally happy with the way things were going. I believe one thing that did disturb him over the last few years was the fact that the music had changed so much and he felt he had a great contribution, he had some beautiful songs but they, this was just not the era for the Nolan-type songs which was very unfortunate but he, I think he accepted it. He was never happy about it but I think he accepted it and he was never one to complain. He never had a complaint or a bad word to say about anybody. He just took things one day at a time.

[Plays “What’cha Gonna Say to Peter When You Get There?”, vocal lead by Bob]

Gerry: Well, St. Peter. You have the pure pleasure of having the graceful harmony of those riders in the sky. You’ve got Tim, Lloyd and Bob. The great prairies of Heaven ring with the chant of their melodic harmony.

[Plays “Chant of the Wanderer” from “Our Men Out West, LPM/LSP 2603, 1963” (vocal by Tommy Doss—a common error to confuse Bob’s voice with Tommy’s)]

Gerry: Bob Nolan, the quiet man, with his loud voice which will live forever through his poem-songs, songs he wrote about himself, probably, yes, and about you and about me and about our old hometown.

[Plays “Old Home Town” from “Sound of a Pioneer”]

Gerry: Poet, song painter, friend. Cliffie Stone relates this thought about Bob Nolan, his long time personal friend.

Cliffie Stone: Well, this is Cliffie Stone and I’ve known Bob Nolan ever since I was a little kid. I was working with Stuart Hamblen on the radio and Bob Nolan and Roy Rogers (then known as Len Slye) and Tim Spencer and the original Pioneer Trio and then they became the Sons of the Pioneers and we did a lot of shows with them. We were on radio together and live shows and, of course, that was a very prolific time for Bob Nolan as a songwriter and he wrote so many great songs. I’m sure other people have told you about Cool Water and Tumbling Tumbleweeds and all those wonderful songs. A very inspirational person to be around and I’m gonna miss him.

[Plays “Wandering” from “Sound of a Pioneer”]

Gerry: A young man from Wichita Falls, Texas, spent most of his youth wandering in and out of movie houses fanaticizing himself into the great western movie roles. Snuff Garrett, today a very successful producer, writer and music publisher still fanaticizes with his western movie heroes but now he can work side by side with them in the recording studio and build memories that will last forever.

Snuff: Bob Nolan was…a lot like all of us talking here, he was…I grew up a fan. If I couldn’t play Roy Rogers, if the kid down the street was bigger than me and that day he got to be Roy Rogers, then I was Bob Nolan, you know. Bob Nolan was always my second choice, you know, or first. He had the most identifiable sound in the world so I grew up, him being a part of everything that I loved—the western—that mystique about him grew up with me. So, through the years I always heard that Bob was terribly reclusive, you know, very very quiet and laid back. So I started going over to his house and I was introduced to him and I asked him if he’d like to record an album. He looked at me like I was from another planet and I persevered. I stayed on him. It must have taken over 2 ½ years for me to finally talk him into it. And that was with “No’s” all the way. So, anyway, he finally said, “My goodness, if you want to do it this much, we better go in there and get it done.” (mimicked him perfectly here, you know how Snuff is so famous for mimicking Bob Nolan. )So we went down and we recorded and it’s one of the prides of my recording time. I’m as proud of it as anything I’ve ever done. There’s one song in there that I take great pride in and he really liked. He really liked the song a lot. It’s called That Old Outlaw, Time.

[Plays “That Old Outlaw, Time”]

Snuff: There’s one song he wanted to do in the album. So you gotta realize here’s a man who hadn’t actually recorded since, what, uh, between 48 and 50, I guess, was the last time he recorded and we were talking about, what, almost 20 years later. And he picked one song that he wanted to do. Ride Me Down Easy, the one song that he wanted to do. He said that typifies all the new songs the cowboy, uh, whoever wrote it, he said, knew the jargon and so forth and the cowboy.

[Plays “Ride Me Down Easy”]

Gerry: Ride me down easy, Lord, ride me down easy. Bob Nolan has ridden into the Great Beyond, grasping the touch of God’s hand, following the tumbling tumbleweeds and tasting the sweet taste of Heaven’s cool water. Bob, we’re gonna miss you, though we’ll never forget The Quiet Man.

[Plays “He Walks With the Wild and the Lonely”]