Bards Bluegrass Fiddle Tunebook Supplement/Blue Moon of Kentucky

"Blue Moon of Kentucky" is a waltz written in 1946 by bluegrass musician Bill Monroe and recorded by his band, The Blue Grass Boys. The song has since been recorded by many artists, including Elvis Presley.

"Blue Moon of Kentucky" is the official bluegrass song of Kentucky. In 2002, Monroe's version was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the United States Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 2003, CMT ranked "Blue Moon of Kentucky" #11 in its list of the 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music.

Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe wrote the song in 1946, recording it for Columbia Records on September 16. It was released in early 1947. At the time, the Bluegrass Boys included vocalist and guitarist Lester Flatt and banjoist Earl Scruggs, who would later form their own bluegrass band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. Both Flatt and Scruggs performed on the recording, although Bill Monroe supplied the vocals on this recording.

The song, described as a "bluegrass waltz", had become a United States wide hit by 1947 and also became enormously popular with other bluegrass, country, and early rockabilly acts. The song was revered by the Grand Ole' Opry and others; Carl Perkins played an uptempo version of this song in his early live performances.

Elvis Presley
The search for another song to release along with "That's All Right" at Sun Records in July 1954 led to "Blue Moon of Kentucky" via Bill Black. According to Scotty Moore

"We all of us knew we needed something...and things seemed hopeless after a while. Bill is the one who came up with "Blue Moon of Kentucky"...We're taking a little break and he starts beating on the bass and singing "Blue Moon of Kentucky", mocking Bill Monroe, singing the high falsetto voice. Elvis joins in with him, starts playing and singing along with him"

- The Blue Moon Boys - The Story of Elvis Presley's Band

Elvis Presley Scotty and Bill, with the encouragement of Sam Phillips, transformed Monroe's slow waltz in 3/4 time, into an upbeat, blues-flavored tune in 4/4 time.

After an early rendition of the song, Sun Records owner Sam Phillips exclaimed, "Boy, that's fine, that's fine. That's a Pop song now!." Presley responded, "That sounds like Carl Perkins!" As with all of the Presley records issued by Sun, the artists were listed as "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill".

The same night that Dewey Phillips first played the flip side of this first release of Presley's music on WHBQ ("That's All Right"), Sleepy Eye John at WHHM loosed "Blue Moon of Kentucky". Bob Neal of WMPS played the record too. The pop jockeys, entranced by something new, began slipping "That's All Right" and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" in amongst the easy listening pop of Teresa Brewer, Nat Cole, Tony Bennett and others.

With Presley's version of Monroe's song consistently rated higher, both sides began to chart across the Southern United States. Billoard has the song listed only in Memphis, and as #6 with "That's All Right" at #7 on October 9 in the C&W Territorial Best Sellers. By October 23, "Blue Moon" was in the top 10 in Memphis, Nashville, and New Orleans, with "That's All Right" absent from the listings.

Fellow Sun Records artist Charlie Feathers has often claimed that he came up with the arrangement of the song used by Presley.

Other recordings
In 1954, The Stanley Brothers recorded a version of the song using Presley's 4/4 arrangement with bluegrass instrumentation, neatly bridging the stylistic gap between Monroe's and Presley's approaches. Bill Monroe subsequently rerecorded and performed the song using a mixture of the two styles, starting the song in its original triple metre, 3/4 time, arrangement, then launching into an uptempo 4/4 rendition.

Numerous artists have recorded the song, including John Fogerty, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, Ronnie Hawkins, Rory Gallagher, LeAnn Rimes, Paul McCartney, Boxcar Willie, Ray Charles, Jerry Reed, Jimmy Martin, and Raul Seixas.

In 1995, the remaining Beatles - Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr - performed an impromptu 4/4 version of the song that was eventually released on the Bonus DVD of The Beatles Anthology video release. McCartney had earlier performed and released the song in 1991 as part of his appearance on MTV Unplugged.