I'll Be There, Mary Dear

DESCRIPTION: A soldier bids farewell to his sweetheart, giving her a golden leaf to remember him by. He loses an arm in battle, but friends tell him him one arm is enough to hold her. When he returns home, however, he finds her dead and buried; he is heartbroken
AUTHOR: Words: Andrew Sterling / Music: Harry von Tilzer (1872-1946)
EARLIEST DATE: 1902 (sheet music)
KEYWORDS: soldier death separation return grief love promise army war
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Rorrer-RamblingBlues-LifeAndSongsOfCharliePoole, p. 84, "Goodbye Mary Dear" (1 text)
Roud #12394
RECORDINGS:
Richard Harold, "Mary Dear" (Columbia 15426-D, 1929; rec. 1928)
Roy Harvey and the North Carolina Ramblers, "I'll Be There, Mary Dear" (Brunswick 234/Aurora 22032, 1928)
Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, "Goodbye, Mary Dear" (Columbis 14546-D, 1929)
NOTES [216 words]: The similarity to "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee" is obvious, but the words and tune are different, and there are plot elements here that aren't in that song, so I separate them. Meanwhile, I'd give long odds this dates from just after the Civil War. - PJS
It's easy to see why Paul thinks so (I would have guessed the same thing had I not seen a recent article by Lyle Lofgren about the piece), but in fact this -- like "The Girl I Left in Sunny Tennessee" -- dates from soon after the Spanish-American War. (Lofgren points out that there is a reference to the soldier taking a "transport" back home, strengthening the ties to 1898.) Presumably the latter war re-inspired this sort of tear-jerker, even though the casualties were less than in the Civil War. Mostly because the war was shorter; the troops were often as ill-clothed, ill-fed, and ill-cared-for as they had been a third of a century earlier.
For some background on Harry von Tilzer, see the notes to "A Bird in a Gilded Cage." Andrew B. Sterling is best known for writing the words to "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" and "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie"; also "On the Shores of Havana," "Strike Up the Band (Here Comes a Sailor)," "Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown (What You Goin' to Do When the Rent Comes 'Round?)," and others. - RBW
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