By the Light of the Silvery Moon

By the Light of the Silvery Moon

For some reason, moon songs became popular during the first decade of the 20th century, with this gem and Shine On Harvest Moon leading the pack, spurred on by its predecessor, Shine On, Harvest Moon. And by this time, Edwards (no relation) and Madden were popular both as composers and performers (Gus Edwards would appear in some of the early sound shorts of musical acts). Actually, any opportunity to use that titillating rhyming word "spoon" was readily embraced. In Vaudeville, this quickly became a great soft shoe number (essentially shuffling on a sandy stage). The chorus was unusual for its time because it had a lot of space between the words, a vacuum which has long since been relegated to a backup chorus echoing the lead singer.