Meet me in the Moonlight

Songs have a way of creeping into people, some you only have to hear ever couple of years to recognize as something special, a song that strikes at some memory or feeling, songs so real that they scrape the mud off your consciousness. Meet Me in the Moonlight is one of those songs. I first heard the song on a compilation CD that serves as a soundtrack to the Bluegrass documentary High and Lonesome. The cut from the compilation is clearly recorded live and its one of the most exciting early bluegrass recordings I can think of. I wish to God I knew when and where the Stanley Brothers recorded this masterpiece. I imagine some hot night, bugs zipping around a under lighted stage somewhere in the Valley of Virginia. Carter Stanley's strong vocal is a perfect indication of why many consider him to be the classic voice of early Bluegrass. Good ears will hear Ralph tell the fiddle player to cut his run by announcing, "ok". Own this version of the song and it will haunt you.

Meet me by the moonlight love meet me
Meet me by the moonlight alone alone
I have a sad story to tell you
All down by the moonlight alone

I've always loved you my darling
You said I've never been true
I'd do anything just to please you
I'd die any day just for you

I have a ship on the ocean
All lined with silver and gold
And before my little darling shall suffer
I'll have the ship anchored and sold

If I had wings like an angel
Over these prison walls I would fly
I'd fly to the arms of my darling
And there I'd be willing to die


After digging into the sources of Meet Me in the Moonlight I discovered it was recorded by the Carter Family. I imagine this is where the Stanley's found the song, both families being native to Southwest Virginia. Ralph talks of working with and knowing A.P. Carter in and around Bristol in the 1940s in his autobiography. The Carter Family version, though not as memorable to me is worth a listen to. Like most Carter family tunes, it has a classic homeliness that begins quaint but finishes as if some immortal source is responsible for its very origin.

It doesn't take long for an amateur Internet sleuth to find, not surprisingly, that the song has far deeper roots than the Carter Family. The song came to the United States from England, as early at 1812. Long history for a good song, but then again, this song is so good that it had to have floated up and down the steep humid hills of Virginia long before the Carters or the Stanleys found it.