Moonlight (2001)
For “Love And Theft” Dylan used his interest in old time popular
music in a much more innovative way than before. “Moonlight” is for me among the most successful songs on this record. It's an “easygoing romantic ballad with a rhyme scheme and structure worthy of a Depression-era Cole Porter classic, combined with the lazy lope of Texas Swing and sounding as if it has been recorded in a Parisian dance hall in the 1930s”, that he “sings like a Hoagy Carmichael-style pop crooner”, as Oliver Trager describes it in his “Bob Dylan Encyclopedia” (p. 429 )
Musically “Moonlight” is closely related to “Po' Boy”. Both songs share the 8-bar structure of the verses. The melodies are similarly conceived. The last four bars of the verses are nearly identical. The harmonies are very different from nearly anything Dylan had written before. Structure, melodies and chord sequences are clearly inspired by the popular songs from late 20s and early 30s. “Moonlight” and “Po' Boy” are based on 32 bar songs with AABA structure with the 8-bar A-parts turned into verses and the B-part into an extended bridge. Though no direct sources have been found yet it seems to me that “Tiptoe Through The Tulips” (Dubin/Burke) - in 1929 a hit for Nick Lucas, “The Singing Troubador” and revived in the 60s by Tiny Tim – may have served as model for the basic structure of the verses,
Tiptoe
Through the window,
By the window
That is where I'll be
Come tiptoe
Through the Tulips
With me.
And in fact tiptoeing through the tulips (in the night!) isn't that far from meeting in the moonlight, these are simply two euphemisms for the same thing. The chords seem to be Dylan's own but the melody may at least partly be derived from "Stars Fell On Alabama" (Parrish/Perkins), another thematically related song first recorded by Jack Teagarden in 1934:
We lived our little drama
We kissed in a field of white
And stars fell on Alabama
Last night
I can't forget the glamour
Your eyes held a tender light
And stars fell on Alabama
Last night
I never planned in my imagination
A situation so heavenly
A fairy land where no one else could enter
And in the center
Just you and me
My heart beats like a hammer
My arms around you tight
And stars fell on Alabama
Last night
It has been claimed that “Moonlight” is a murder ballad. I don't think so. It's surely one of Dylan's many songs about how to get the girl into bed. That's of course one of the most popular topics in songwriting and Dylan himself has been responsible for a lot of songs in this vein, from “I Want” and “I'll Be Your Baby Tonight” to “Tough Mama”, “Is Your Love In Vain” and “Make You Feel My Love”, to name a few. “Moonlight” fits well into this row of songs. Here Dylan has created another role for himself as a singer that works well in this context. Especially the ties to “Make You Feel My Love” are close. In that song he seems to be impersonating a guy trying to woo a girl by using cliché-ridden lines that sound like they were taken from ancient movies or songs. “Moonlight” has him taking over the role of a wanna-be romantic poet and I have some doubts if the lyrics should be taken that seriously . I definitely hear an ironic or even parodist undertone Additionally both songs share a comparable use of sexual imagery and boasting, as this line in “Moonlight”
I take you cross the river dear,
You've no need to linger here,
I know the kind of things you like.
This kind of sexually suggestive boasting from the perspective of an older man has become major topic in his songs since “Make You Feel My Love” in 1997 and is a very prominent motif in the songs on “Modern Times”.
It has been said that the title phrase is borrowed from the Carter Family's “Meet Me By The Moonlight Alone” (1928/35):
I'm going to the new jail tomorrow
To leave the one that I love
To leave my friends and relations
And, oh, how lonely, my love
Meet me by the moonlight, love, meet me
Meet me by the moonlight alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
To be told by the moonlight alone
My parents, how cruel they treat me
They drive me away from their door
If I live 100 years longer
I'll never go back any more
Meet me by the moonlight, love, meet me,
Meet me by the moonlight alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
To be told by the moonlight alone
If I had a ship on the ocean
All laden and lined with pure gold
Before my darling should suffer
I'd have that ship anchored and sold
Meet me by the moonlight, love, meet me,
Meet me by the moonlight alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
To be told by the moonlight alone
If I had the wings of an angel
O'er land and sea I'd fly
I'd fly to the arms of my darling
Then I'd be willing to die
Meet me by the moonlight, love, meet me,
Meet me by the moonlight alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
To be told by the moonlight alone
I do not agree although Dylan surely knows that song. But in this case it might be simply a reworking of standard motif in popular song: meeting or searching for the lady in the night. Dylan had already used variations of this motif in songs like “Tough Mama” (“Meet me on the border late tonight”) or “Meet Me In The Morning”. Also related is for example the Patsy Cline – hit “Walkin' After Midnight”:
I go out walkin', after midnight
Out in the moonlight
Just like we used to do
I'm always walking after midnight
Searching for you
If it's a quote then Dylan most likely went further back in time. “The Carter's “Meet Me By The Moonlight Alone” was a remake of Vernon Dalhart's “Prisoner's Song”, a great and very influential hit in 1925:
Oh I wish I had someone to love me
Someone to call me her own,
Oh I wish I had someone to live with
For I'm tired of living alone.
Oh please meet me tonight in the moonlight
Please meet me tonight all alone
For I have a sad story to tell you
It's a story that's never been told.
I'll be carried to the new jail tomorrow
Leavin' my poor darlin' alone
With the cold prison bars all around me
And my head on a pillow of stone
Now I have a grand ship on the ocean
All mounted with silver and gold
And before my poor darling would suffer.
Oh that ship would be anchored and sold.
Now if I had wings like an angel
Over these prison walls I would fly.
And I'd fly to the arms of my poor darling
And there I'd be willing to die.
That song is a conflation of fragments from a couple of different songs - the other main source is “Here’s Adieu To All The Judges And the Juries”, a British 19th century popular song - and it is not exactly clear if Dalhart and his co-writers Guy Massey and/or Nat Shilkret (it's not definitely known who was responsible – different sources tell different stories) put it together themselves or if they simply took the whole song as it is from oral tradition. But the lines about meeting in the moonlight are a fragment from another British popular song from the early 19th century, “Meet Me By The Moonlight” by J. A. Wade (1796 – 1845), a well-known and successful composer of his era. This song was first published in 1826 and then migrated to the USA where it was “popularized by the celebrated Mme. Lucia Elizabeth Vestris” (Mattfeld) who toured there in the 30s. It was obviously very popular througho
ut the century and regularly printed as sheet music, on broadsides and in songsters.
Meet me by moonlight alone,
And then I will tell you a tale,
Must be told by the moonlight alone,
In the grove at the end of the vale.
You must promise to come--for I said,
I would show the night flowers their queen--
Nay, turn not away thy sweet head,
'Tis the loveliest ever was seen--
Oh! meet me by moonlight alone.
Daylight may do for the gay,
The thoughtless, the heartless, the free,
But there's something about the moon's ray,
That is sweeter to you and to me.
Oh! remember--be sure to be there,
For though dearly a moonlight I prize,
I care not for all in the air,
If I want the sweet light of your eyes.
So meet me by moonlight alone.
This is another fine example for a popular song by a professional writer that was adapted in fragmented form for so called folk songs. These lines were transmitted by all available media: songs sheets, performances by professional artists, oral transmission, Folklore songbooks and recordings.
Dylan may refer back to the original and he is obviously well versed in 19th century popular song and poetry, something that he later proved with some of the songs for “Modern Times”. In fact “Moonlight” is constructed like “When The Deal Goes Down”. He combines the music style of the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, the Berlin era, with the florid poeticism of the 19th century romantic era, exactly that style of lyric writing that Berlin and his fellow songwriters had managed to overthrow with their pointed minimalism
The reference point for the lyrics of “Moonlight” is 19th century romanticism. Meeting in the moonlight, in the night etc was very popular among songwriters and poets of that era. The background is of course that the poor guys simply couldn't meet their girl at home but had to do what they wanted somewhere outside in the dark to avoid the presence of parents and chaperons (which was still a problem when Dubin & Burke wrote “Tiptoe Through The Tulips”). Typical songs of that time - and some of them seem to have been inspired by Wade's “Meet Me By The Moonlight Alone” - were for example “Meet Me At The Lane”, “Meet Me To-night”, “Meet Me, Josie, At The Gate” or “Meet Me At Twilight”:
Meet me just at twilight,
In the mystic shadows dim,
When the nightengale is singing
And the beetle opes her hymn;
When the zephyrs float so lightly
In the gray arcade above,
Whispering to the fragrant flowers
The melodies of love.
Meetme just at twilight,
In that hour of fairy spell,
When the roving fire-fly sparkles
Through the meadows and the dell;
When the tinselings of fancy
All around our hearts are cast,
Dreaming of the misty future,
Sorrowing over all the past.
Meetme just at twilight,
In the stilly hour of e'en,
Ere the dew is on the flowers,
Ere the lamps are lit in heav'n;
For I've something I would tell you
And I'll tell it only then,
When the shadows chase each other
Through the green and mossy glen.
But I also hear echoes of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning. Her “Bianca Among The Nightingales” might be somewhere in the background of “Moonlight”.
The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.
Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up, half down, as double-made,
Along the ground, against the sky.
And we, too! from such soul-height went
Such leaps of blood, so blindly driven,
We scarce knew if our nature meant
Most passionate earth or intense heaven.
The nightingales, the nightingales.
[...]
I marvel how the birds can sing.
There's little difference, in their view,
Betwixt our Tuscan trees that spring
As vital flames into the blue,
And dull round blots of foliage meant
Like saturated sponges here
To suck the fogs up. As content
Is he too in this land, 'tis clear.
And still they sing, the nightingales.
[...]
Some artifacts from this poem might have found their way into Dylan's lyrics and in some way he might have tried to turn Ms. Barrett-Brownings Italian scenery into an American setting, but not with any deep romantic seriousness. There is – as mentioned above - a clearly ironic, nearly playful undertone. Some of the more imperfect rhymes like losin'/Susan, palm/from or crimson/limbs an may also be a reason to think that this song wasn't meant to be as serious as it might look on first sight. This is also evident in the way he sings it on “'Love And Theft'” although less in later live performances. This song has a theatrical quality as most of the other songs on that record.
There is an interesting parallel from the repertoire of songwriter Cole Porter, “Hey Good Lookin'” from the WWII musical Something For The Boys (1943), performed by Ethel Merman (Blossom) and Bill Johnson (Rocky):
BLOSSOM:
When there's a sun above
I always find
Romantic thoughts of love
Never enter my mind
But when the day is done
I find that instead
I just love ev'ryone
And as Elizabeth Barrett Browning once said......
Hey, good-lookin'
Say, what's cookin'?
Do you feel like bookin'
Some fun tonight?
He, hey, hey, hey, good-lookin'
If you're not already tooken
Could you meet me soon
In the moon-
Light?
Why don't we two go roamin'
Through the gloamin'
While the stars are combin'
The skies above?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, good-lookin'
Give in and we'll begin cookin'
That delish
Little dish
Called love
ROCKY:
Your voice, Miss Ovaltine
Has me impressed
You're the missing link between
Lily Pons and Mae West
But I must warn you, Ma'am
If later you're free
That I'm half wolf, my lamb
And as the famous Tallulah muttered to me......
[refrain]
This is a heavy-handed but very amusing parody of the moonlight-cliché, taking place in a world where monogamy was obviously never heard of and where the woman is as active as the man. The song is built around the key-line “could you meet me in the moonlight” and Porter offers a joyful deconstruction of this romantic euphemism. The parodist effect derives from juxtaposing Ms. Barrett-Browning with the very colloquial “Hey Good Lookin'” (a line that may have been borrowed later by Hank Williams) and from using the “moonlight” in the context of a song that is very clearly about a couple looking for sex. Dylan's concept seems to be not that dissimilar from Porter's. Both songs share the suggestiveness of their lyrics, although Dylan is not that direct but more elegant. He may be “half wolf” too but his girl is only a passive listener while Porter has both woman and man asking the same question.
Looking for influences on a particular song – especially when it's a Dylan song – is generally not that simple. Claiming for example Dylan took the “moonlight” - refrain from the Carter Family's recording is surely far away from reality and doesn't do this song justice. Simply by using such a well-known and often used motif as meeting in the moonlight as the core of a song automatically creates a wide and complex frame of reference for the songwriter. Influences might be conscious or unconscious – we will never know for sure – but all related songs and poems are somewhere in the background.
Additional sources & credits:
- Oliver Trager, Keys To The Rain. The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, New York 2004, p.
- Discussions at The Mudcat Café Forum:
Meet Me Tonight In The Moonlight, The Prisoner's Song - Thanks to Monty from the dylanpool forum for pointing out the musical similarities of “Moonlight” and “Stars Fell On Alabama”
© LostChords
lostchords@morerootsofbob.de
MoreRootsOfBob.com
13.07.2007