Lonely Little Room

Bob Nolan
Original copyright: December 27, 1954

This lonely little room
Once knew love’s sweet perfume.
Oh, how I miss you now and cry for you.
I cry through every dream
And, strange tho’ it may seem,
This lonely little room is crying, too.
The empty hours, the faded flowers upon the tables.
They’ll never tell, but all too well, they know it’s true.
Each time my tears begin I’ll wonder if you’re in
Some lonely little room and crying, too.

To his friends, Bob never spoke of his feelings but there is strong evidence in his poetry that at times he was an acutely lonely man. On page 14 of a questionnaire RCA sent him to fill out and return was a question, "Are you even-tempered? Or do you run to extremes of depression and elation?" He underlined "extremes". Bob was a solitary man with a recognized need to be alone. But the flip side of aloneness is loneliness and he couldn't have one without the other. He had two marriages and many lesser relationships, some painful.

Who was this "you" he was writing about? Many of Bob's fans have searched for clues but perhaps his grandson is right:

“I must also wonder where his music and lyrics came from at such an early stage in his life. Who was that love he longed for all those years? Or was it, as I've always thought, a search for a true love that he never ever found? I have a theory, though. He may have started to write about the love of a particular woman – maybe Pearl, maybe someone else before her or someone after her - his first love. But, as the years went by, he wrote about the love that he once felt; the desire to have that first love still in his life. That sort of love never comes twice in anyone’s heart, a love that is so clear and clean of all life’s trials and tribulations. In those younger years there are no responsibilities. Money isn’t factored into life yet. You are immersed in nothing but youth and love. That feeling and yearning after long years becomes an entity of its own. So, maybe there was no one woman he was writing about, rather a feeling that he had once experienced in his youth. And in his songs that feeling lives on.”
(Calin Coburn, Bob Nolan's grandson)

"Lonely Little Room" was one of the songs he wrote soon after he retired in 1949. The Sons of the Pioneers recorded it on November 22, 1954, for Coral. A few days later Bob sent it in to the Library of Congress and it was registered for sheet music on Lonely Little Room. The sheet music was published right away by Bob Nolan Music, Inc. “BN 111-2” is written at the lower edge of the sheet music.

Lonely Little Room (Bob Nolan Music, Inc.)