By The Light Of The Silvery Moon: A Song History

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"By the Light of the Silvery Moon" dates from 1909, with music by Gus Edwards and words by Edward Madden, and early copies were issued in New York by the Gus Edwards Music Pub. Co.[1][2] The Morgan Library's catalog of what may be the first regular edition describes it as an added number in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1909.[1] Library copies also survive under the Remick name, catalogued with the same 1909 date.[3]

Watercolor of a full moon among streaks of cloud above a dark, flat countryside with a cottage and a figure

Charles-François Daubigny, Moonlight, watercolor, ca. 1860. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

On December 22, 1909, Victor recorded tenor Billy Murray with the Haydn Quartet singing the song, and the take that was kept came out on Victor 16460.[4] Edison issued a version by Ada Jones with a male quartet on its four-minute Amberol cylinders and reissued it on Blue Amberol 1521 in 1912.[5]

The song returned to the spotlight in 1953 as the title of a Warner Bros. musical directed by David Butler and starring Doris Day and Gordon MacRae, a film loosely drawn from Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories that reunited much of the cast of On Moonlight Bay.[6] A Jerome H. Remick & Co. edition linked to the Warner Bros. picture is illustrated with a photograph of Day and MacRae.[7]

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Sources

  1. The Morgan Library & Museum, James Fuld Collection: "By the light of the silvery moon".
  2. Arizona State University Library, ASU Sheet Music Collection: "By the Light of the Silvery Moon".
  3. University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries, Popular Sheet Music Collection: "By the light of the silvery moon".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix B-8501. By the light of the silv'ry moon / Haydn Quartet ; Billy Murray".
  5. UC Santa Barbara Library, Cylinder Audio Archive: "By the light of the silvery moon" (Edison Blue Amberol 1521).
  6. AFI Catalog of Feature Films: "By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953)".
  7. York University, John Arpin Sheet Music Collection: "By the light of the silvery moon".