At Mail Call Today

"At Mail Call Today" is a song written and recorded by American country music artist Gene Autry.

Background

The song is similar to other contemporary love songs and deals with the possibility of unfaithfulness.[1] 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.[2]


Chart performance

The song, recorded in 1945, 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.[3] 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
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References
  1. 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.
  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.
  3. 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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