"At Mail Call Today" is a song written by American country music artist Gene Autry and Fred Rose. The two had a successful song writing partnership dating back to 1941, including "Be Honest With Me[3]", "Tweedle-O-Twill" and "Tears On My Pillow". Rose, with Roy Acuff, founded Acuff-Rose Music Publishing in 1942, and in 1947, would go on to producing Hank Williams.[4] Autry, after a brief lull in film making due to WWII, would be back to his pre-war output by 1946.[5]
| "At Mail Call Today" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Gene Autry | ||||
| B-side | "I'll Be Back" | |||
| Published | March 14, 1945 Western music pub. Co., Hollywood, Calif.[1] | |||
| Released | March 1945[2] | |||
| Recorded | December 6, 1944 | |||
| Studio | CBS Columbia Square Studio, Hollywood, California | |||
| Genre | Country & Western | |||
| Length | 2:49 | |||
| Label | Okeh 6737 | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Gene Autry, Fred Rose | |||
| Gene Autry singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
Background
editThe song is similar to other contemporary love songs and deals with the possibility of unfaithfulness.[6] The lyrics describe a young soldier opening a Dear John letter at mail call and learning that the girl he loved from back home has left him. The final words reflect the soldier's despair:
Good luck and God bless you
Wherever you stray
The world for me ended
At Mail Call To-day.[7]
Chart performance
editThe song, recorded in December 1944, was Gene Autry's most successful song on the Juke Box Folk charts, peaking at number one for eight weeks with a total of twenty-two weeks on the charts.[8] The B-side of "At Mail Call Today", a song entitled, "I'll Be Back" peaked at number seven on the same chart.
Charts
edit| Chart (1945) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles | 1 |
References
edit- ^ Library of Congress. Copyright Office. (1945). Catalog of Copyright Entries 1945 Music New Series Vol 40 Pt 3 No 1. United States Copyright Office. U.S. Govt. Print. Off.
- ^ "At Mail Call Today". 45worlds. Archived from the original on 2017-09-11. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
- ^ "Hillbilly Recordings – Month Ending August 30, 1941" (PDF). The Billboard. Cincinnati, Ohio. 30 August 1941. p. 104. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
- ^ "Hank Williams 78rpm Issues". jazzdiscography.com. Retrieved 2021-09-09.
- ^ "Sioux City Sue". www.tcm.com. Retrieved 2021-09-09.
- ^ Smith, Kathleen E. R. (2003). God Bless America ; Tin Pan Alley Goes to War. The University Press of Kentucky. p. 44. ISBN 0-8131-2256-2.
- ^ Jones, John Bush (2006). The Songs that Fought the War. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. pp. 256–57. ISBN 978-1-58465-443-8.
- ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). The Billboard Book Of Top 40 Country Hits: 1944–2006, Second edition. Record Research. p. 35.
Further reading
edit- Cusic, Don. Gene Autry: His Life and Career. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2007. ISBN 0-7864-3061-3 OCLC 81150476
- Jones, John Bush. The Songs That Fought the War: Popular Music and the Home Front, 1939–1945. Waltham. Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2006. ISBN 1-58465-443-0 OCLC 69028073
- Kingsbury, Paul and Alanna Nash. Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America. London: DK, 2006. ISBN 0-7566-2352-9 OCLC 71248377
- Wolfe, Charles K. and James Edward Akenson. Country Music Goes to War. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. ISBN 0-8131-2308-9 OCLC 56421871
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