The twilight softly gathered<br />Round my home among the hills<br />And all nature soon will settle away to rest<br />While I sit and sadly ponder<br />And my heart with longing fills<br />As I often think of one that I love best<br /><br />We were wedded in the springtime<br />And our hearts they knew no pain<br />Fair nature seemed to smile on us that day<br />Now she sleeps beneath the lilacs<br />And she’ll ne’er come back again<br />Where the silver Colorado wends its way<br /><br />There’s a sob on every breeze<br />And a sigh comes from the trees<br />And the mocking birds they sing a sadder way<br />For the flowers creep no more<br />Round my cheerless cabin door<br />Where the silver Colorado wends its way<br /><br />The silver snow is gleaming<br />On your distant mountainside<br />Where often used to wander Nell and I<br />And the birds are singing gaily<br />In the valley far below<br />Where I long some day to lay me down and die<br /><br />Then our lives were gay and happy<br />In the shadow of the hills<br />My heart beats fonder for her day by day<br />And I feel her presence near me<br />As I sit alone tonight<br />Where the silver Colorado wends its way<br /><br />J. Aldrich Libbey (famous for "After The Ball") sings "Where The Silvery Colorado Wends Its Way" on Edison Gold Moulded Record 8020 (1902).<br /><br />James Aldrich Libbey (29 February 1864 - 29 April 1925) is remembered by music historians for introducing on stage in early 1892 Charles K. Harris' composition "After the Ball." <br /><br />In his autobiography After The Ball: Forty Years of Melody (New York: Frank-Maurice, Inc, 1926), Harris recalled persuading the baritone to introduce the new song in the show A Trip to Chinatown during an engagement at Milwaukee's Bijou Theater. <br /><br />Harris, a newspaper correspondent at the time, had promised that Libbey would be given a write-up in the New York Dramatic News in return for interpolating the song into the show. Harris writes that Libbey "possessed the temperament of a grand-opera song bird and was allowed to sing anything he chose."<br /><br />Libbey's photograph is on the cover of the sheet music, which sold well and helped established Tin Pan Alley by demonstrating to the business community that carefully marketed songs could be highly profitable. He never recorded the song, probably because it was no longer popular by the time he had his first session. <br /><br />The song was genuinely popular in the 1890s but was not often recorded in that decade. An anonymous band recorded "After the Ball" for Berliner 139 around 1894, and only a few singers cut it.<br /><br />The July 1899 issue of The Phonoscope notes that Libbey was making records for E.T. Paull Music Company, a newly established music publishing house and cylinder record studio. Paull was a composer of instrumental pieces, including "Napoleon's Last Charge" and "The Burning of Rome," and he set up his cylinder studio in New York City after moving from Richmond, Virginia.<br /><br />Libbey made at least three cylinders for Columbia in the late 1890s: "Old Man's Story" (4802), "The Organ Gringer's Serenade" (4805), and "Molly's the Girl for Me" (4806). <br /><br />
