November 3, 2023      —–     Chart #218

Hello Music Friends,

Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. Love this song. It’s a little more challenging to play, but such a wonderfully jazzy tune. “Moondance” is a song recorded by Northern Irish singer and songwriter Van Morrison and is the title song on his third studio album Moondance (1970). It was written by Morrison, and produced by Morrison and Lewis Merenstein.

Morrison did not release the song as a single until September 1977, seven and a half years after the album was released. It debuted two months later where it reached #92, on the US Billboard Hot 100 and #91 on the US Cash Box Top 100.  The single’s B-side, “Cold Wind in August”, had been released in the same year, on his latest album at the time, A Period of Transition. “Moondance” is the song that Van Morrison plays most frequently in concert.

“Moondance” was recorded at the Mastertone Studio in New York City in August 1969, with Lewis Merenstein as producer. The song is played mostly acoustic, anchored by a walking bass line (played on electric bass by John Klingberg), with accompaniment by piano, guitar, saxophones, and flute with the instruments played with a soft jazz swing. It’s a song about autumn, the composer’s favorite season. Towards the end of the song, Morrison imitates a saxophone. The song also features a piano solo, played by Jef Labes, which is immediately followed by an alto saxophone solo by Jack Schroer. The song ends with a trill on the flute during the cadenza that fades out. Schroer’s solo is often noted as one of the most influential saxophone solos in popular music.

“Moondance” was written and developed while Morrison was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has commented, “With ‘Moondance’ I wrote the melody first. I played the melody on a soprano sax and I knew I had a song so I wrote lyrics to go with the melody. That’s the way I wrote that one. I don’t really have any words to particularly describe the song, sophisticated is probably the word I’m looking for. For me, ‘Moondance’ is a sophisticated song. Frank Sinatra wouldn’t be out of place singing that.”

Live in 2008, (so cool):  https://youtu.be/BqGDMNEo5E8?si=9gygIRZkFi0kk4D8

The guitar player in his band at that time, John Sheldon, remembers that during the summer of 1968, at a rehearsal, the band was fooling around with a Broadway tune called “Lazy Afternoon” released in 1967 in a jazz version by Grant Green. Morrison requested some changes and began singing a melody that would eventually become “Moondance.”

“Moondance” is one of the moon-themed songs used in An American Werewolf in London, a comedy-horror film released in 1981.[16] It is heard during the sex scene between David Naughton (as David, the young man bitten by a werewolf) and Jenny Agutter (as Alex, his nurse and eventual girlfriend).

Try playing this one. Experiment with the chord voicings. Get in touch with your jazz side. AND enjoy the ride . . . . .

Keep Rockin’,

Stan Bradshaw