Cool Water

Bob Nolan
Original copyright: 1937

All day I’ve faced a barren waste
Without the taste of water, cool water.
Old Dan and I with throats burnt dry
And souls that cry for water,
Cool, clear water.

Refrain:
Keep a-movin’, Dan, don’t you listen to him, Dan,
He’s a devil not a man
And he spreads the burning sand with water,
Cool water.
Dan, can you see that big green tree
Where the water’s running free
And it’s waiting there for me
And you?

The nights are cool and I’m a fool,
Each star’s a pool of water, cool water.
But with the dawn I’ll wake and yawn
And carry on to water,
Cool, clear water.

The shadows sway and seem to say,
“Tonight we pray for water,
Cool water.”
And ‘way up there He’ll hear our pray’r
And show us where there’s water,
Cool, clear water.

Dan’s feet are sore, he’s yearning for
Just one thing more than water,
Cool water.
Like me, I guess, he’d like to rest
Where there’s no quest for water,
Cool, clear water.

Fascinated by the desert from the time he was thirteen years old, Bob Nolan grew up hearing stories of people lost in the blistering heat of summer, dying because they had neglected to take enough water with them. Prospectors and their burros were not an unusual sight in those early 1920 days in Arizona when he was a youngster. Bob's ability to mentally place himself in another's experience demonstrated itself early; he was only sixteen when he wrote this poem. According to his brother, Earl, Bob wrote "Cool Water" as a poem in Tucson High School. Although "Cool Water" was the title, the poem was not about water, Bob said, but about lack of water - about a mirage and a raging thirst.

Toward the end of 1936, Bob set the poem to music for a third collection of Sons of the Pioneers songs (Songs of the Prairie Folio No. 3 published by Cross & Winge in 1937). Since then, it has appeared in many movies, the latest being the Johnny Depp animated film Rango using an old Hank Williams recording.

"What was 'Dan'?" A burro? A horse? A friend? This question has been endlessly debated, but in a July 16, 1943 10-2-4 Ranch radio program, Dick Foran describes "Dan" as an old prospector's burro and then sings the song with Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers. Bob himself, in Teleways Radio Productions transcription No. 71, clearly stated that "Dan" was a burro. (You can listen to both of these recordings below.) So now you have it from the horse's mouth!

The lyrics continue to be given deep philosophical meanings of which the young Bob was unaware when he wrote it. He was simply imagining what it would be like to be dying of thirst:

“I was strictly trying to paint a picture of the desert and I missed miserably because I picked up the wrong thing to write about - a mirage. You can’t use the word mirage in a song. It just don’t sing and you can’t rhyme it. So I just left it out and I wrote in allegory and everything was nebulous but after I was through you couldn’t help but know that I was talking about a mirage."
(April 28, 1976 interview by Betty Cox Larimer, the publisher of Music City News and Lee Rector, editor.)

Because of the simple magic of his writing, Bob's song takes on a personal meaning to every listener. For example, in his thesis, Western Mystic: Bob Nolan and His Songs, Professor Kenneth J. Bindas spends 2 pages on the meaning of the lyrics. (The Bindas treatise was published in The Western Historical Quarterly, October 1986.)

In later years, to his friend Dick Goodman, Bob wryly confessed his irritation with publishers and singers who tampered with his chorus. He said, “The lyrics go:
’Dan, can you see that big green tree
Where the water’s running free and it’s waiting there for me
And you.‘

‘And you is just a little addition,’ said Bob. ‘It’s not supposed to rhyme with anything. The publisher took it upon himself to change it from me and you to you and me. Unfortunately, before we could pull the sheet music off the market, a lot of it had been sold and as the years went by people like Rex Allen and Marty Robbins and a few others recorded it with the lyrics reversed. And as the royalties came rolling in, I became more tolerant….’”

Among many awards for "Cool Water", Bob Nolan received a special citation of achievement from BMI for over one million broadcast performances. A 1951 national survey voted "Cool Water" the best-known song of the American West and it won the Grammy Award in 1986. As late as 2005, the song was still receiving awards, this time by the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. The song is still being recorded today because of its universal appeal to the senses. The lyrics are timeless.

Cool Water (Cross & Winge, Inc)

SONS OF THE PIONEERS TRANSCRIPTION RECORDINGS

Standard Radio transcriptions No. 3394 (January 1936)

Orthacoustic Symphonies of the Sage (059427)

NBC Thesaurus transcriptions 1898 side B MS-059426-L (same as Orthacoustic No. 2 side A)

Teleways Radio Productions transcriptions, Audition No. 1 and Nos. 11, 40, 71, 111, 152, 185, 211, and 234

10-2-4 Ranch radio show No. 173 (February 24, 1943)

10-2-4 Time radio shows
- Unnumbered show (July 16, 1943)
- Unnumbered show (January 24, 1945) (selected for the Congressional Library for their historical archives)
- No. 500, 64002 (March 28, 1945)

Lucky U Radio shows (courtesy of Larry Hopper)
- Audition discs No. 1 and No. 2.
- Transcription disc TR-87/88 (November 13, 1951)
- Special Bob Nolan Program. Transcription disc TR-145 (December 14, 1951)
- Transcription disc TR-230/231 (February 7, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-308/309 (April 2, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-359/360 (May 8, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-405/406 (June 10, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-431/432 (June 27, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-453/454 (July 29, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-499/500 (September 1, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-511/512 (October 9, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-577/578 (November 25, 1952)
- Transcription disc TR-684/685 February 9, 1953)
- Transcription disc TR-786/787 (April 20, 1953)
- Transcription disc TR-836/837 (May 25, 1953)

Smokey the Bear radio show, show No. 3 (1955)