HISTORY OF A SONG: MOONLIGHT SERENADE

This excellent article on Glenn Miller's most famous recording and theme song is taken from the excellent site: The Geezer Music Club.

Miller’s theme song is one of the most familiar sounds from the big band era, but “Moonlight Serenade” actually evolved from an earlier Miller melody, one that went by the awkward title “Now I Lay Me Down to Weep.” It had been written by Miller around 1935 and over the next few years went through some rewrites, a couple of name changes, and more than one set of lyrics. It finally showed up as an instrumental named “Moonlight Serenade” on the ‘B’ side of Miller’s 1939 recording of “Sunrise Serenade.” It was mostly meant to be a similarly-named complement to the ‘A’ side, but it had something special going for it — and therein lies a story.

Whether you choose to believe the scene from the 1954 movie The Glenn Miller Story doesn’t really matter, because the fact remains that the song did showcase what became known as the Glenn Miller Style — a clarinet-led, sax-driven, amazingly smooth sound that fans absolutely loved. The record became a best-seller and the song would forever be identified with Glenn Miller, but it didn’t take long for some of Miller’s contemporaries to start edging in — a common practice in the big band era. That same year, Count Basie recorded the song but his version had lyrics added, which brings up another interesting story.

Although “Moonlight Serenade” had gone through various sets of lyrics during its stages of evolution, and was occasionally performed as a vocal, it was mostly known as an instrumental. In fact, an earlier scene in The Glenn Miller Story shows him being unhappy at hearing a speeded-up vocal of the song performed in a night club. But it was performed as a vocal from time to time, and in 1965 a lot of publicity was generated by the song’s inclusion on Frank Sinatra’s new album, Moonlight Sinatra. In the years since it’s been recorded by countless artists — as both instrumental and vocal — and has also shown up on dozens of TV and movie soundtracks.

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