I Follow the Stream

Bob Nolan
Original copyright: September 27, 1955

Have you ever roamed along by a stream that sings a song
Upon its weavin’, bendin’, ever weary, wendin’ way?
Have you ever watched a beam from the moon upon a stream
Reflect on ev’ry ripple as it rolls and rambles on?
Then come along with me and maybe you will see
Why this roving soul of mine goes…

Refrain:
Wandering down thru the years like a brook winding on in a dream.
Somehow it leads me home if I’ll just follow the stream.
Drifting along like a leaf on the rippling waters that gleam.
Wandering where it goes and so I follow the stream.
Thru the shady nook, the leafy vale,
Beyond the waterfall I’ll find a trail that leads me on
When the twilight appears and the moon with a pale yellow beam
Guides me along as thru the night I follow the stream.

What better introduction to this song than the one Bob gave in Teleways Radio Transcription No. 36 in the late 1940s:

"There’s no road map to happiness. We all wander the way of life. Don’t let anyone tell you that taking this turn or that will answer all the questions. Because it won’t. Did you ever notice the course of a river? It just kind of makes up its mind about directions as it goes along, twisting and turning but always singing its way to the place it meant to go, anyway. Well, that’s pretty much the way that I feel about life. I just follow the stream.”

In other words, Bob was confessing to a life of following the course of least resistance. However, as a biographer looking back over Bob's life, I can see that this may have been true in personal relationships and in the careless way he neglected his copyrights but Bob put a phenomenal amount of work into the Sons of the Pioneers for nearly 20 years. After his retirement, he followed the stream once more.

One of the Sons of the Pioneers' favorite songs, "I Follow the Stream" was included in their first song folio, Sons of the Pioneers Song Folio No. 1, © 1936 by Cross & WINGE, Inc. It was recorded many times, both on transcription discs and commercially. It is reported that it was used in 1935 in Columbia's Gallant Defender and Warner Brothers' Romance of the West. It is not in my copy of Gallant Defender and we do not have a print of Romance of the West yet.

Hundreds of Bob Nolan's songs were lost in a garage fire so we are constantly on the lookout for bits and pieces he left with friends. He wrote on whatever paper was handy when the spirit moved him—and left them behind. He often had his friends copy them out for him because he was embarrassed about his poor spelling. The lyric sheets below were found in a collection of Bob Nolan compositions and ephemera of Frances Shepp Irvine Longstreet, one of his close friends who also wrote an article about him. These rough copies are in his own handwriting.Bob's original working copies

Bob's original working copies

I Follow the Stream (American Music, Inc.)

SONS OF THE PIONEERS TRANSCRIPTION RECORDINGS

Standard Radio transcriptions, No. 2562 (1935)

Orthacoustic Symphonies of the Sage, (064447)

NBC Thesaurus transcriptions, LPT 1611 courtesy of Wallace Smith

Teleways Radio Productions transcriptions, Nos. 3, 36, 135, 174, 202, and 249

Lucky U Ranch radio show (courtesy of Larry Hopper)
- Transcriptions disc TR-125/126 (November 30, 1951)
- Transcriptions disc TR-127/128 (December3, 1951)
- Transcriptions disc TR-260/261 (February 28, 1952)
- Transcriptions disc TR-547/548 (November 4, 1952)

Smokey the Bear radio show, episode No. 9 (1955)