BLUE MOON

Created on 03/12/2005
Latest update on 28/06/2023

Artist: Casa Loma Orchestra with Glen Gray
Author: Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart
Label: Decca
Year: 1934

Vocal: Kenny Sargent. The melody was first supposed to be introduced in the Hollywood Revue Of 1933 (by sex godess Jean Harlow as The Prayer). With slightly different lyrics Shirley Ross sang it as The Bad In Every Man in the famous gangster film Manhattan Melodrama ('34). Actors William Powell and Myrna Loy talked through much of the song, so Hart made a third and final attempt with again different lyrics when Blue Moon finally shone. Manhattan Melodrama wasn't so much famous for holding an older version of Blue Moon, but for being the film John Dillinger went to see in the Chicago theatre where he was gunned down by police bullets at the exit.

Covers:

1934:

Frankie Trumbauer & Band [four days later for Columbia]

1934:

Coleman Hawkins

1934:

Ted Fio Rito [three days later for Brunswick]

1935:

Connee Boswell

1935:

Glen Gray

1935:

Benny Goodman

1935:

Al Bowlly

1939:

Django Reinhardt

1948:

Mel Tormé [in film Words And Music about Rodgers & Hart]

1949:

Billy Eckstine

1949:

Louis Armstrong

1949:

Dave Brubeck

1951:

Ivory Joe Hunter

1952:

Billie Holiday

1953:

Dizzy Gillespie [with strings]

1953:

Buck Clayton

1954:

Elvis Presley [without happy end; see footnote]

1956:

Emanons [pre the Marcels' novelty hit]

1956:

Ella Fitzgerald

1958:

Sam Cooke

1958:

Dean Martin [in film Young Lions]

1958:

Julie London

1961:

Frank Sinatra

1961:

Marcels [n°1 US & UK]

1961:

Ventures

1961:

Annie Cordy [as Partout]

1961:

Cliff Richard

1962:

Art Blakey

1963:

Bobby Vinton

1964:

Nolan Strong & The Diablos

1967:

Supremes

1970:

Bob Dylan

1971:

Sha Na Na [later also in film Grease]

1972:

Blue Haze

1973:

Winston Francis [reggae version]

1974:

Mud

1977:

Robert De Niro & Mary Kay Place [in film New York, New York]

1979:

Linda Waterfall

1980:

Showaddywaddy

1981:

Keith Richards

1984:

Elkie Brooks

1988:

Cowboy Junkies [as Blue Moon Revisited (Song For Elvis)]

1989:

Jonathan Richman

1990:

Herman Brood

1990:

Placido Domingo [in medley with Moon River]

1990:

Mark Isham [vocal: Tanita Tikaram]

1994:

Chris Isaak

1995:

Mavericks [in film Apollo 13]

1996:

Iguanas

1996:

John Alford [hit UK]

2002:

Ian Tyson

2004:

Rod Stewart

2006:

Helmut Lotti

2006:

Jacqui Naylor

2011:

Twiggy

2014:

Herb Alpert

2018:

Willie Nelson

2023:

Ane Brun

One of the songs Presley came up with for his second Sun session. Ballads was what he liked the most, where he could best express emotions, intriguing Sam Phillips, cause these emotions kept sentimentality at bay ("I don't sound like nobody"). Up till then all versions sounded sentimental, all these crooners from the forties and thirties seemed to sing about another moon. Presley's moon reflected in the efficient echo of the Sun studio, merely veiled by guitar and bass. All of a sudden Blue Moon stopped sounding like an airbrushed second-hand wishing card.

Contact


If you noticed blunt omissions, mis-interpretations or even out-and-out errors,
please let me know:

Arnold Rypens
Rozenlaan 65
B-2840 Reet (Rumst)

info@originals.be

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