[This is the first in a series of every-now-and-then posts about popular songs with long lives.]
Some great songs go through subtle changes over time: the original lyrics are updated to correspond to more modern diction and taste; rhymes get improved or dropped altogether; refrains are added and subtracted; and of course new arrangements can, with the slightest addition of an instrumental passage, change our very understanding of what a song means.
“Blue Moon” didn’t begin as a classic — not in the form it eventually acquired. While the music remained unchanged, its lyrics didn’t simply evolve: they mutated almost overnight, going through three versions before finally settling down into their fourth and (more or less) final variation.
The song was originally written (by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers) to be sung by Jean Harlow — of all performers — in a 1933 MGM film called Hollywood Party. In this form, called “Prayer,” it was meant literally as a prayer to be sung by Harlow’s character. Below, on the left, are the lyrics from the most familiar passage of what we know as “Blue Moon”; on the right, the corresponding lyrics from “Prayer”:
Blue moon,
you saw me standing alone
without a dream in my heart
without a love on my own…Oh, Lord,
if you ain’t busy up there,
I ask for help with a prayer
so please don’t give me the air…
It’s nice (?) to know that writers aren’t the only creative types whose work gets run through the editorial wringer: in the event, Jean Harlow didn’t appear at all in Hollywood Party — and neither did “Prayer”!
New life came along in the form of another film, 1934’s Manhattan Melodrama (famous as the film which John Dillinger saw right before being shot to death outside Chicago’s Biograph Theatre). This time around, the tune became the title number, and was also called “It’s Just That Kind of Play.” Here’s a portion of the refrain, which you can compare with the above lyrics for “Blue Moon” and “Prayer”:
Act One:
You gulp your coffee and run;
Into the subway you crowd.
Don’t breathe — it isn’t allowed.
Again, the studio chopped “It’s Just That Kind of Play” from the film. But the tune was again remade (and finally appears in the film), this time as “The Bad in Every Man” — in which form Shirley Ross sang it… and it wasn’t discarded this time around. Here are those four lines in this version:
Oh, Lord
What is the matter with me?
I’m just permitted to see
the bad in every man.
By now you’d think Lorenz Hart was pretty sick of rewriting the damned thing, and who could blame him?
Life wasn’t quite that simple. Here’s the summary of how the final lyrics came about in 1935, courtesy of the JazzStandards.com site:
It was not long after this that music publisher Jack Robbins offered a “deal” to the songwriting team: If Hart would write a more commercial lyric, Robbins would “plug it from one end of the country to the other.” Robbins suggested the song should be one of those Tin Pan Alley love songs with the words June, moon, and spoon. Just to show he could do it, and with a large measure of cynicism, Hart wrote the lyrics to “Blue Moon.” Although he did not personally like the song, it soon became a number one hit, a million-seller in sheet music sales, and, in the end, his most popular song.
Life’s little ironies, eh? (As JazzStandards.com also says, this final version was Lorenz and Hart’s only hit which wasn’t written for stage or screen — just as a one-off number.)
The final lyrics, in full, are:
Blue moon,
you saw me standing alone
without a dream in my heart
without a love on my own.Blue moon,
you knew just what I was there for
you heard me saying a prayer for
somebody I really could care for.And then there suddenly appeared before me,
the only one my arms will ever hold
I heard somebody whisper, “Please adore me.”
and when I looked,
the moon had turned to gold.Blue moon,
now I’m no longer alone
without a dream in my heart
without a love on my own.
In this form (more or less, as I said), “Blue Moon” has been amazingly popular. Search Amazon for it and you’ll come up with hundreds of versions, by hundreds of performers. (Wikipedia lists several dozen.)
Below, I offer five different versions — each unique in some way. I’ll precede each of the five little audio player widgets with a couple of brief notes on the corresponding version.
Billie Holiday: The first version of “Blue Moon” recorded as a single was by Connee Boswell, in January, 1935. I don’t have a copy of that, but this recording by Billie Holiday is from about the same era. She makes a couple of passes through the lyrics, broken by a couple of instrumental solos from her sidemen (saxophone and trumpet).
Elvis Presley: Elvis’s 1950s version has a curious rocking gait to it — as well as something approaching a yodel.
(By the way, this is not the same Elvis hit as “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”)
The Marcels: In 1961, this doo-wop group recorded what rock-oldies enthusiasts probably consider the definitive version — a rollicking, staccato, nearly a capella number in which the lyrics are preceded, interrupted, and concluded by one of the most bizarre passages in any song, ever:
Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang
Ba ba ding a dong ding Blue moon moon blue moon dip di dip di dip
Moo Moo Moo Blue moon dip di dip di dip Moo Moo Moo Blue moon dip di dip di dip
Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang
Ba ba ding a dong ding
(Personally, I can’t believe someone actually took the time and made the effort to transcribe all that but, well, this IS the Web…)
Oscar Peterson: You (clever reader that you are) probably noticed in the above story of its composition that one feature of “Blue Moon” remained unchanged: the melody. It really is a lovely melody, regardless of what’s layered over it verbally. Jazz pianist Peterson is only one of the hundreds of musicians who’ve recognized the tune’s hard-to-beat purity as a tune, straightforwardly instrumental.
Cowboy Junkies: My favorite version of “Blue Moon” appeared on the Cowboy Junkies’ 1988 Trinity Session album. In this guise, the title is “Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)”; our familiar song is embedded neatly within another piece. (It demonstrates perfectly why one critic (not me!) once called the group the quintessential “Thorazine rock” band.) Margo Timmins’s ethereal voice lifts the altered lyrics to some plane beyond poetry — straight through the shocking changeup in the story line which occurs halfway through.
Lyrics for “Blue Moon Revisited (Song for Elvis)”:
I only want to say
That if there is a way
I want my baby back with me
’cause he’s my true love
My only one don’t you see?And on that fateful day
Perhaps in the new sun of May
My baby walks back into my arms
I’ll keep him beside me
Forever from harmYou see I was afraid
To let my baby stray
I kept him too tightly by my side
And then one sad day
He went away and he diedBlue Moon, you saw me standing alone
Without a dream in my heart
Without a love of my own
Blue Moon, you knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care forI only want to say
That if there is a way
I want my baby back with me
’cause he’s my true love
My only one don’t you see?
(By the way, if you think you know what the phrase “blue moon” actually refers to — a second full moon in a single month — think again. It’s meant that only for a little over 50 years out of several centuries’ use, and the “second full moon” meaning is actually the result of a mistake. I just love finding this stuff out.)
s.o.m.e. 1's brudder says
The Apollo 13 Soundtrack has a pretty haunting version (While not officially attributed on the copy I’ve got), which I believe is Chris Isaak. Some songs just can’t grow old.
recaptcha: 144 attained…weird….
John says
brudder: Chris Isaak’s version isn’t available at Amazon but I bet it’s at iTunes and/or Napster. I’ll check the next time I’m in *cough*cough* Windows.
I have my theories about the reCaptcha — they have to do with electoral votes — but I’ll keep them to myself. This is an apolitical blog. (Although, like anyone covering his bets, I’ve already got two versions of Wednesday’s post. :) And for the record, my own reCaptcha here is “competent street.”
marta says
I like these older songs, but I LOVE that picture you have with this post. I also like Chris Isaak and will have to check out his version of the song.
John says
Marta: yeah, isn’t that a great picture? I have no idea what (if anything) the brand name has to do with the song, but I loved the dreamy look of the artwork.
And of course, it’s a natural for anybody who still believes in The Wee Folk.
george ganssle says
the first time I ever heard ‘Blue Moon’ was in a 1964 movie with Rod Taylor – ‘Fate Is The Hunter’. He was a devil may care bomber pilot, who, at times of extreme anxiety, while the other crew members were shaking in their boots, he’d take the controls and, while taking evasive action, he’d belt out that song – cool as cucumber in January. For years I thought that song was written for that movie. After becoming an audiophile, I wised up.
John says
George: Honestly, I remember the premise (and the details of how they recreated the flight) much better than Taylor’s singing — but jeez, I haven’t seen Fate Is the Hunter in AGES. Now I’m going to have to look it up… Thanks for the tip!