“On Lake Champlain” Song by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble

Care to join me for a singalong? Today I’d like to share with you the sheet music cover image for the song, “On Lake Champlain Song”, by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble. I’ve added this song to my hyperlocal music wishlist along with “Essex-on-Champlain“, a hymn composed by George Webster.

Call it sentimentality. Or nostalgia. Or burning curiosity. (After all, I may well be spiritually and nominally descended from Curious George.) Whatever you call it, it’s unlikely you’ve overlooked my wandering wonder. Inquisitiveness may have proved troublesome for some fabled feline (although I’m not 100% confident in this oft parroted truism about curiosity and the cat), but I’m no cat, and my wandering wonder has invested my half century with no end of good adventures.

I hope that Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble’s “On Lake Champlain” will not prove to be an exception. After all, music (a ballad, I suspect) celebrating our magnificent Lake Champlain? Perfect!

I was fortunate enough to stumble across this sheet music, but I’ve now misplaced it. I vaguely suspect I lent it out in the hopes of soliciting a performance or a recording. But that may be my overly optimistic imagination stepping in to assist m memory. No doubt I’ll reconnect with this artifact anon, and perhaps then I’ll have more luck transforming sheet music into audible music.

In the mean time, I’d like to see if someone out there might be able to boost this wishlist item a bit. Let’s learn this song! Here’s a little more information to [hopefully] catalyze some sort of progress toward a listenable and eventually singalong-able version on “On Lake Champlain” by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble.

Instrumentation: voice; piano
City of Publication: New York
Illustrator: L.P.N.
DCMI Type: Still Image
Is Part Of: 1910-1920
Publisher: Jerome H. Remick
(Source: Duke Libraries)

What else do we know? It looks like “On Lake Champlain” was composed in 1916, Albert Gumble lived from 1881 to 1946, and previous collaborations with Alfred Bryan included:

• 1908
  • “Are You Sincere?”
  • “When I Marry You”
  • “Can’t You See?”
• 1910
  • “I’m Afraid of You”
  • “I Won’t Be Back ‘Till August”
  • “Get a Girl to Love You”
  • “Winter”
• 1911
  • “You’ll Do the Same Thing Over Again”
• 1912
  • “Somebody Else Will if You Don’t”
  • “When I Waltz with You”
  • “When You’re Married”
• 1913
  • “I’m Goin’ to Stay Right Here in Town”
  • “Think of Me When I Am Near”
  • “Flow Along River Tennessee (To the Home of the Girl I Love)”
  • “You’re Never Too Old to Love” (Note: w/William Jerome)
• 1914
  • “Down in Waterloo”
  • “I’d Like to Be on an Island with You”
• 1915
  • “Things Are Getting Better Every Day”
• 1916
  • “His Cute Moving Picture Machine” (Source: Ragpiano.com)

So for now I’ll pause this post in the hope that the vintage color lithograph for Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble’s sheet music will miraculously move us closer to an audible version of “On Lake Champlain”. If fortune smiles upon us, I’ll update this post.