Shine on Harvey Moon

 Flanagan and Allen were a famous British music hall double act who performed during the middle of the twentieth century.  They were especially popular during the second world war.  They remind me of my grandparents’ generation, who, of course, lived through the war years.   Shine on Harvest Moon is a Tin Pan Alley song.  It was written by Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth in 1908. It was first heard when it was used as the theme tune of a British TV series, Shine on Harvey Moon, which aired during the 1980s and which was set in London’s East End during the 1940s – but it has also fatured in a number of films.  The chord chart and lyrics on this page are for the Flanagan and Allen version of Shine on Harvest Moon that you can hear in the YouTube video.  In America, the song was made famous by Ruth Etting.  Her version – also quite wonderful – features a verse that does not appear in Flanagan and Allen’s rendition. “Shine On, Harvest Moon” is a popular early-1900s song credited to the married vaudeville team Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth. It was one of a series of moon-related Tin Pan Alley songs of the era. The song was debuted by Bayes and Norworth in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1908 to great acclaim. It became a pop standard, and continues to be performed and recorded in the 21st century. During the vaudeville era, songs were often sold outright, and the purchaser would be credited as the songwriter. John Kenrick’s Who’s Who in Musicals credits the song’s writers as Edward Madden and Gus Edwards. However, David Ewen’s All the Years of American Popular Music credits Dave Stamper, who contributed songs to 21 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies and was Bayes’ pianist from 1903 to 1908.[1] Vaudeville comic Eddie Cantor also credited Stamper in his 1934 book Ziegfeld – The Great Glorifier