Till You Return

Bob Nolan
Original copyright: April 26, 1954

Till you return, no bird may sing
Nor word of song its message bring.
Oh, lonely hours of absence and empty arms
I must endure till you return.

Till you return, no star may shine,
Nor smile, caress to equal thine.
Oh, prayer of parting, tell me what must I do?
Or break my heart till you return.

When will I hear your sweet voice and then
When will I thrill to your touch again?

Till you return, I promise, dear,
Though birds won’t sing nor stars appear,
My heart on wings will find you each lonely day
And watch o’er you till you return.

One of Bob Nolan's post-Sons of the Pioneers compositions, "Till You Return" was registered for copyright as an unpublished work on April 26, 1954. Bob originally wrote the lyrics on the back of a 1953 fan letter from a Mrs. June Schmude. There was no commercial recording until Dr. Gene Davenport recorded his "Ghost Towns and Autumn Trails" CD: Pamorah Productions, 1998.

On November 18, 1952, Bob cut 4 sides for RCA in Hollywood, CA: "I Can't Lie to Myself", "An Angel in the Choir", "The Mystery of His Way", and "The House of Broken Dreams" without the Sons of the Pioneers. The background of this unissued recording of "Till You Return" is similar and it may have been recorded at the same time. The first four are in much better condition than the recording of "TIll You Return" which has been badly abused.

Some time after Bob's death in 1980, his grandson rented a record player and transferred his old acetates 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)

We do not have any sheet music for this song.