Stories of Standards: How High the Moon by Morgan Lewis

Tune in to Jazz with Victor Cooper – weekdays from 6-9 a.m. MT – for Stories of Standards to hear our favorite versions of this song all week long beginning on Monday, February 4 and presented by Rodney Franks!

Stories of Standards is sponsored by ListenUp - If you love music, you’ll love ListenUp.

“How High the Moon” (1940 ) by Morgan Lewis, with lyrics by Nancy Hamilton, was introduced February 8, 1940, as sung by Alfred Drake and Frances Comstock in the musical revue “Two For the Show”, which ran at the Booth Theater for 124 performances. Benny Goodman’s recording, with Helen Forrest vocalizing, went to the pop charts a few weeks after the initial theater performance and shortly thereafter went to #6 on the charts. In 1951 Les Paul and Mary Ford used the only eight-track recording machine in the world on this song and it went straight to #1 and stayed there for nine weeks; the sound was unique. Later that year Paul collaborated with the Gibson Guitar Corp to create the “Les Paul” model (solid-body electric guitar). Originally composed as a slow ballad, the song became a bebop favorite and is almost always played up-tempo. In 1957 The National Academy of Popular Music awarded it the “Towering Song” title. Charlie Parker based his song “Ornithology” on the chord changes of “How High the Moon”.

After Morgan Lewis (26 Dec 1906 – 8 Dec 1968) graduated from Michigan University he went into business as a composer and choreographer. His first collaboration with Nancy Hamilton was for “New Faces of 1934”. They worked together on three more Broadway revues – “One For the Money” (1939), “Two For the Show” (1940) and “Three to Get Ready” (1946). While several of their songs were popular, “How High the Moon” was the best known. Lewis scored Hamilton’s biography of Helen Keller (“The Unconquered”), which won the 1955 Academy Award for Best Documentary; in 19696 he scored “The Madwoman of Chaillot”.

Nancy Hamilton (27 July 1908-18 Feb 1985),  actress, playwright, lyricist, director, and producer, graduated from Smith College and the Sorbonne. During her tenure as president of Smith College’s Dramatic Association she wrote and directed “And So On”, a tropical revue for which she had obtained special permission to include men in the orchestra. The audience was shocked on opening night to discover that many of the men had been incorporated on-stage. In 1954 Hamilton was the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.