Blue Moon

Music: Richard Rodgers
Lyrics: Lorenz Hart

"Blue Moon" is a 1934 song by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, one of the most recorded popular songs of the century. This page has the Blue Moon chords, the melody and a slow swing backing track you can transpose for a singer.

Who wrote "Blue Moon"

Richard Rodgers wrote the music and Lorenz Hart the lyrics. The melody went through several versions with different lyrics for MGM films before Hart wrote the words that made it famous, and "Blue Moon" was published in 1934. It was a success from the start and has never stopped being recorded, in jazz, pop, doo-wop and rock and roll.

Recordings that made it a standard

Mel Tormé (1949) — a hit vocal that helped make the song a standard of the postwar years.
Elvis Presley (1956) — a slow, eerie version recorded at Sun Records in Memphis.
The Marcels (1961) — a doo-wop version that reached number one, with its famous bass-voice introduction.

The changes

The form is 32 bars, AABA, in C major, played here as a slow swing at 97 bpm. The melody is included. This chart writes the first A once with two endings.

The A section is the I-vi-ii-V progression, repeated: C Am | Dm G9, four times, with the last bars turning C F | C G9. That progression is so tied to this song that it is often called "the Blue Moon changes". The second ending closes Dm G9 | C Dm7 | C.

The last A repeats the I-vi-ii-V pattern and ends C Dm7 | C G7. The song is easy to learn, and the move to E-flat in the bridge is the only surprise; let it stand out.

For a singer, the melody lies in a comfortable range and repeats the same shape over the I-vi-ii-V, so the challenge is to keep it from sounding the same each time. Vary the phrasing in each A section, and make the bridge the high point. For an instrumental version, the included melody shows how simple the tune is at its core.