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At Mail Call Today

"At Mail Call Today"
Single by Gene Autry
B-side"I'll Be Back"
PublishedMarch 14, 1945 (1945-03-14) Western music pub. Co., Hollywood, Calif.[1]
ReleasedMarch 1945 (1945-03)[2]
RecordedDecember 6, 1944 (1944-12-06)
StudioCBS Columbia Square Studio, Hollywood, California
GenreCountry & Western
Length2:49
LabelOkeh 6737
Songwriter(s)Gene Autry, Fred Rose
Gene Autry singles chronology
"Don't Fence Me In / Gonna Build a Big Fence Around Texas"
(1944) 		"At Mail Call Today"
(1945) 		"Don't Hang Around Me Anymore"
(1945)

"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]

Background

The 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

The 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

Chart (1945) Peak
position
U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles 1

References

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ "At Mail Call Today". 45worlds. Archived from the original on 2017-09-11. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  3. ^ "Hillbilly Recordings – Month Ending August 30, 1941" (PDF). The Billboard. Cincinnati, Ohio. 30 August 1941. p. 104. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  4. ^ "Hank Williams 78rpm Issues". jazzdiscography.com. Retrieved 2021-09-09.
  5. ^ "Sioux City Sue". www.tcm.com. Retrieved 2021-09-09.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ 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.
  8. ^ Whitburn, Joel (2004). The Billboard Book Of Top 40 Country Hits: 1944–2006, Second edition. Record Research. p. 35.

Further reading

  • 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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