Top Track Music

“Blue Moon” By the Marcels is one of my favorite oldies. Walt Maddox is a very good friend of the family.

“Blue Moon” is a classic popular song. It was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934, and has become a standard ballad.

The first crossover recording to rock and roll came from Elvis Presley, but the version that really stirred things up came from The Marcels, a doo-wop group. In 1961 the Marcels had 3 songs to record and needed one more. Producer Stu Phillips did not like any of the other songs except one that had the same changes as Heart and Soul and Blue Moon. He asked them if they knew either, and one knew Blue Moon and taught it to the others, though with the bridge or release (middle section – “I heard somebody whisper…”) wrong. The famous introduction to the song (“bomp-baba-bomp” and “dip-da-dip”) was an excerpt of an original song that the group had in its act. The record reached #1 on the Billboard Pop chart for three weeks and #1 on the R&B charts.  The Marcels version of “Blue Moon” sold a million copies, and is featured in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

In 1967, Eric Clapton used a portion of the song in his guitar solo from Cream’s hit “Sunshine of Your Love.” Bob Dylan covered the song on his Self Portrait album in 1970. In 1978, an arrangement by Jeff Funk was used in the film Grease. This has been followed by a country version from The Mavericks. More recently, it has been recorded by Rod Stewart. Elkie Brooks. Cybill Shepherd sang “Blue Moon” on an episode of Moonlighting (the detective agency in that show was called “Blue Moon Investigations”.)