“Blue Moon,” the classic American ballad that is one of the most universally recognized songs of the 20th century, is not what you think it is.
History tells us that it was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
In reality, “Blue Moon” was composed in 1931 by a 17-year-old, the son of Polish immigrants, after an evening of moonlit skating on a pond in upstate New York. This is the previously untold true story.
Listen…
From the Memoir:
“. . .the history of ‘Blue Moon,’ for all of its known convolutedness and remarkableness, actually begins much earlier. Its unknown origins are even more remarkable and convoluted, and its agency lies at that very intersection of those final Hart lyrics being either his ‘simplest. . .or most banal.’”
“. . .the lyrics. . .weren’t written by Hart, nor was the melody penned by Rodgers. Rather, the song was composed in 1931 by a 17-year-old, the son of Polish immigrants, in Troy, on the East bank of the Hudson River in upstate New York. His name was Edward W. Roman.”
“I know because I am his daughter and because I have always known this story. It’s been part of my family for all of my growing-up years, the source of whispers about ‘that “Blue Moon” thing’ among the adults. . .a matter of curiosity among the more curious of the youngsters, of which I was perhaps the most curious.”
Ed, with the 1930 DeSoto,
possibly the car he bought with the settlement from “Blue Moon,” 1937
“I’ve been asked by some to whom I’ve told this story: didn’t the writer of a song as eternal as ‘Blue Moon’ write other songs? And to that question I would have have to answer, before I went through the papers in the attic, that I didn’t know. Truth be known, I didn’t think to ask. . .”
“But he had. A young club manager and aspiring songwriter, Henry R. Dutton—whose name I’d never heard until slipping his letter to my father out of its envelope—proposed right after the article about the lawsuit appeared in The Knickerbocker Press that they collaborate.”
“Two appear to be complete: ‘Am I Really in Love?,'” which I would later learn Dutton copyrighted in 1936, both the melody and lyrics, and “All Because of You,” on which he copyrighted the music.”
“The point is that from his skating-on-the-pond in 1931 that resulted in ‘Blue Moon’ to the legal statement six years later. . .that the suit had been ‘settled and dismissed,’ my father was fully in pursuit of his passion.”
“In the feature in The Knickerbocker Press, there’s a picture of my father, young and slim and serious and handsome, in his trademark wireless glasses and wearing a jacket and tie. He’s seated and holding a document with his attorney, E. Stewart Jones. . .”
My Uncle Dom said my father “had gotten chummy with Chris after meeting my mother. Chris had heard the song on the radio; had learned that the sheet music alone had racked up $75,000 in sales in the first year; and insisted they sue.”
“My Uncle Dom said Richard Rodgers called my father, offering to settle for $1,200. . .I asked about the figure being the $900 that I had heard in my youth. But my Uncle Dom countered, no, it had been $1,200, two or three times what most people earned in a year in those days.”
© 2024 Liz Roman Gallese – BlueMoonSong.org
CONTACT: Liz@bluemoonsong.org
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