Margaret Whiting, who died on Monday, was a great interpreter of the American songbook. Long enough ago, for it to be on Social Security, her version of Moonlight in Vermont launched the song into a permanence that makes a song a standard. I want to make the case that both the singer and the song are markers of who Vermont is.
Singers can be roughly categorized as stylists and interpreters. Stylists, as the word implies, put their style on a song and make of it a shiny object. In many ways, they are like opera singers who make beautiful (pronounced be you TI FULL)
sounds.
Interpreters of songs are actors who understand that a song is a one act play with a beginning a middle and an end. From the 20th century to now, the greatest singers as interpreters of song include Frank Sinatra, Mabel Mercer, Barbara Cook and Margaret Whiting. Lena Horne was a brilliant example of a song stylist.
Moonlight in Vermont is a perfect one act play. Its form is AABA meaning four stanzas in which the first, second and fourth are set to the same music (the As) and a bridge or release with different music and form is the B.
While the form is common, the song is unique. Each of the As is a perfect haiku both in terms of form of haiku and the Japanese tradition that nature is its subject. The absence of rhyme not only helps the song to flow apparently aimlessly, but the haiku provides a rigidity that is the opposite of aimless.
Many have found the music difficult to sing. Without getting technical, I want to say that I disagree. What makes the song a great one musically is that it is surprisingly inevitable. It doesn’t go where you think it will go, but once it gets there it could go nowhere else.
The theme is nature, but it is more than a word picture, it is also about how what one sees and feels affects the singer. It is often pointed out that sycamore (“a sycamore” trees are uncommon in Vermont. It would be easy to replace it with “a maple tree” as it would fit the music. Even when the song enters public domain, I would advise not making such a change. Even though sycamore comes from the lyricists imperfect understanding of the flora and fauna (meadowlark), the words so perfectly flow with the melody that any change of vowel or consonant sound would weaken it.
Notice how the pictures being painted are not just of the natural world but of how the human inhabitants have remade that world – pennies, ski trails, telegraph cables, highway, road. In so doing, it makes for a smooth transition to the human point of view. People who meet, romantic. This sets up the final A which is only about nature until the tag on that A – you and I. The song is being sung by one person to another. You, I, Vermont are as one.
Note how A1 suggests fall, A2 is clearly winter thought it does not directly say so and A3 is explicitly summer. Note also how the first two As are not confined by time while the final one (ev’ning) suggests one day in particular. Hypnotized is an action word that shows how the seen world affects singer and hearer.
The song encapsulates what makes Vermont Vermont. Its not a documentary travel bureau scene, but a picture of what a wonderful book calls hands on the land and how this can change us.
Margaret Whiting’s long career is proof of how a great singer as interpreter lasts, while a stylist only survives as long as the style does. The opera diva eventually can no longer make those beautiful sounds, but the work of a great actor or singer can only deepen with age. It will be fun, in another diary, to compare Barbara Cook with Margaret Whiting – one from the stage, the other from popular music, and see how both don’t lose the ability to move and beguile us.
Not only is Moonlight in Vermont a great song, it tells the world who we are. We and the song are so lucky that it was introduced by a great interpreter of song, it speaks to us and doesn’t date. A reader might well have noticed my first paragraph ends with “who Vermont is.” It is the songwriters John Blackburn & Karl Suessdorf and Margaret Whiting who turn the expected what into the deeply felt who – who Vermont is.
Pennies in a stream
Falling leaves, a sycamore
Moonlight in Vermont
Icy finger-waves
Ski trails on a mountainside
Snowlight in Vermont
Telegraph cables, they sing down the highway
And travel each bend in the road
People who meet in this romantic setting
Are so hypnotized by the lovely…
Ev’ning summer breeze
Warbling of a meadowlark
Moonlight in Vermont
Telegraph cables, how they sing down the highway
And they travel each bend in the road
People who meet in this romantic setting
Are so hypnotized by the lovely…
Ev’ning summer breeze
The warbling of a meadowlark
Moonlight in Vermont
You and I and Moonlight in Vermont
–John Blackburn (lyrics) & Karl Suessdorf (music)