Forgotten "Good-by, Dolly Gray" Composer All But Forgotten

1922

Meteoric Careers

Who today remembers the name of Paul Barnes? It took the tragic news of his death, blind, insane and destitute, to recall him to a generation to which his talents had no longer an appeal.

Yet his song, "Good-by, Dolly Gray," not so long ago, was a national war song. In the stirring days of '98 it was whistled and hummed and vamped and soloed and barber-shop-chorused and orchestraed and military- banded in camp and field and city by thousands of the boys in blue; it was a gentle solace to mothers in quiet cottage homes, a farewell token from many a young soldier on has way to Cuba or the Philippines.

Just a wisp of melody and a scrap of verse — pleasing and popular for the moment because it struck the keynote of a sentimentally aroused patriotism — entirely out of tune with the jazz and tension of the present day.

Such, however, is the inevitable fate of those whose talents are only for their own time and place. They have hitched their wagon to a meteor, not to a fixed star. Like the skyrocket, they burst into sudden splendor, and their fate is that of the rocket. The way of the artist is hard, especially of him who has but one arrow in his quiver. For him who persists in using bows and arrows in the days of rapid firing guns, of course the case is hopeless.

What shall be written over the tomb of the singer who gave the world "Dolly Gray" at a time when it was hungry for such poetic food? Surely something kindlier than the old cynical Latin inscription, "Sic transit gloria mundi!" — Los Angeles Times.

—The Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln, Nebraska, June 11, 1922, page 10.