Meet Me By The Moonlight, Alone: A Song History

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The title goes back to "Meet Me by Moonlight Alone," a popular song by the Irish composer Joseph Augustine Wade, who wrote both words and music; it was published in London by F. T. Latour around 1826 and made famous by the singer Madame Vestris.[1][2] The song travelled well beyond its first audience: S. T. Gordon issued an edition in New York in 1863, and between 1907 and 1916 it was recorded several times, beginning, among the discs listed in the Discography of American Historical Recordings, with Herbert Witherspoon for Victor.[3][2]

Moonlight breaking through dark clouds over a calm sea and rocky beach

Martin Johnson Heade, Point Judith, Rhode Island, oil on canvas, 1867–68. A moonlit shore, shown for the song's title; it has no connection to the song.

Wade's lyric also lived on in a folk song about lovers parted when the young man is sent to sea, which the Traditional Ballad Index files as "Meet Me Tonight in the Moonlight" (Roud 767), credits to Wade, and reports from the Appalachians, the South and the Midwest.[4] That family of verses later blended with other material into "The Prisoner's Song," and the two are often hard to separate.[4] The Index lists the Carter Family's version under "Meet Me Tonight in the Moonlight."[4] They recorded their "Meet Me by Moonlight, Alone" for Victor in Camden, New Jersey, on May 9, 1928, with Sara Carter singing alto and playing autoharp, A. P. Carter on bass vocal and Maybelle Carter on steel guitar; the Victor ledgers credit A. P. Carter as writer.[5] The record came out on Victor 23731 and was reissued on the Bluebird, Sunrise, Electradisk and Montgomery Ward labels.[5][4]

Elwood Donnelly, drawing on long study of Carter Family memorabilia and on practicing most of the group's recordings, sets the song in DAD tuning in Such Singing You Will Hear, his own collection of 35 Carter Family songs arranged for mountain dulcimer with accompaniment and singing.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Meet Me By The Moonlight, Alone"

Sources

  1. Library of Congress: "Greatest Hits, 1820-60: 1820 to 1829".
  2. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "J. Augustine Wade".
  3. IMSLP: "Meet Me by Moonlight (Wade, Joseph Augustine)".
  4. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Meet Me Tonight in the Moonlight".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-45020. Meet me by moonlight, alone / Carter Family".
  6. Elwood Donnelly: "Such Singing You Will Hear: 35 Songs Of The Carter Family".
  7. Image: Martin Johnson Heade, Point Judith, Rhode Island, oil on canvas, 1867–68. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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