Goodbye Dolly Gray is a music hall song, with lyrics by American Will D. Cobb and music by fellow American Paul Barnes
Goodbye, Dolly Gray was first published in 1897 by the Morse Music Publishing Company (Theodore F. Morse). The song was the publishers' first hit. The song was popularised as a Boer War anthem, but it was actually written during the earlier Spanish–American War. A notable early gramophone recording on a 78 rpm record was made in 1901 by Canadian singer Harry Macdonough. In the same year another popular version was recorded by the Big Four Quartette with vocal group members Arthur Collins, Byron Harlan, Joe Natus and A. D. Madeira. The song featured in Noël Coward's 1931 play Cavalcade and in the movies Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Alfie (1966) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The tune (with different lyrics) is also used in the modern day as Good Old Collingwood Forever, the club song of the Australian Football League's Collingwood Football Club. Goodbye, Dolly Gray was also recorded by Bruce Lacey and the Alberts in the 1960s, and a modern recording by Stan LePard was featured on Xbox Live Arcade game Toy Soldiers as an opening menu theme.
Paul Barnes - a pseudonym of George Franklin Feger; (October 1868 – May 1922) was a vaudeville comedic actor, singer, pianist, and songwriter who, with Will D. Cobb as lyricist, in 1897 composed the Spanish–American War-era hit, Goodbye, Dolly Gray.
William Denight Cobb (July 1876 – January 1930) was an American lyricist and composer. He and partner Ren Shields produced several popular musicals and musical comedies in the early 20th century. Cobb also had a long-run collaboration with Gus Edwards. Cobb was a prolific lyricist and composer in the early 1900s. His career spanned from 1901 through the late 1920s. Over the course of his career, he worked with Buddy De Sylva, George Gershwin, Harry Ruby and Earl Carroll, among others.
