With all the talk about the “blue moon” on New Year’s Eve I thought it would be fun to talk about the “other” Blue Moon, that is to say the song written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

If you don’t immediately recognize the song title, I’ll let the amazing Ella Fitzgerald remind you with her version:

The thing is, that this song actually has a rather long and complex history. In the early 1930s Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were under contract to the MGM Studios to write songs for their movie musicals. The music which would eventually become Blue Moan was originally written (with completely different lyrics) to be sung by Jean Harlow in the film Hollywood Party. The song at that time was called Prayer. It’s not clear how the song would have fit into the film, and it was never recorded in this version.

The music (but still not the familiar lyric,) was first heard in the 1934 film Manhattan Melodrama. As you watch and listen to this scene, you’ll recognize the familiar melody sung by Shirley Ross.

As a part of the film release, sheet music for this song was published, but it was certainly not a hit. Jack Robbins, the head of MGM’s publishing company, like the melody and thought it was worthy of a commercial release. However, he felt that it required a more commercial lyric. Lorenz Hart was not happy about providing this, but he did and the result is the classic song that we know today. Of all the music that Rodgers and Hart wrote, much of which has become known in the American songbook as jazz standards, Blue Moon was the only one that was a major commercial hit at its time of release. Though I haven’t been able to find confirmation of this tonight, some years ago I was told by a friend of mine who has studied Rodgers and Hart in depth that Lorenz Hart absolutely hated this song even though was the only one that they really made money with.

By the way, there were two other unpublished versions of this song, with different titles and entirely different lyrics that I haven’t even talked about here.

So the next time you listen to Blue Moon, maybe while you’re looking at the blue moon tomorrow night, you’ll know a little bit more about the complicated history of this great American standard.

What is it that makes great art great? I’ve often seen people try to answer this question in a technical way, and have even been guilty of doing that myself on occasion; but I really think that it’s not about anything technical. Great art speaks to you in an intangible way that reaches to your very core. It may bring a deep sense of peace, or a sense of discomfort in the unsettled — but it moves you in a way that’s profoundly real. So as someone who creates art, the question becomes how do you do that?

Great art is in the eye and heart of the audience. (photo by Peasap)

There’re a number of things that have been helpful to me in my work, I’ve found that either technical mastery or technical inexperience tend to be good starting points — one end of the spectrum the technique is so natural that it’s not in the way, at the other end of the spectrum there is no sense of technique or how it should be to get in the way. I’m reminded of Prof. Peter Rothbart who I studied electroacoustic music with at Ithaca College. In one of the first intro classes he suggested that those of us who were not really accomplished keyboard players not try to play the synthesizer like a piano but rather treat the keyboard like a row of buttons so that our creativity was not stifled by lack of technical ability.

I’ve also found that for me it’s important to “empty the cup,” that is to stay to start from a position of no expectation about what the outcome will be. When I begin a new design, I do my very best to set aside any preconceived notions and simply read the script and/or score and see what it has to say. Only then, am I ready to talk to the director, with my initial impressions firmly in my mind to ground me.

But I still don’t think that these are the things that make for great art, I believe they can certainly help to facilitate it, but there’s something else. Whenever I do what I later looked back on as some of my best work, I home to a critical point where I am getting out of my way, and letting the work “do,” rather than me doing the work. I really don’t know how else to explain this, in a way it’s very strange, and in a way it’s very natural. It really is about letting go and letting the music, or the imagery, or the stage picture, or the talk comes through me. When I’m able to do that, that’s where the real magic is.