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Songs We Sing - Shine on Harvest Moon, 1908

Jack Norworth wrote the words, and Nora Bayes wrote the music They were a vaudeville couple who introduced the song in "The Follies of 1908."

Here's an excerpt from album notes from an early 1950's recording by the Cities Service Green and White Quartet, thanks to Joseph Schlesinger, Houston, who seems to have a recording of every barbershop quartet ever recorded.

"Barbershop quartet singing brings back memories of an unashamedly sentimental era. It calls to mind qualities that have, regrettably, fallen by the wayside in the slashing swirl of modern living. The composers of one song in this RCA Victor collection serve to illustrate the point. The song, SHINE ON, HARVEST MOON, was written and made famous by Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes, singing sweethearts of many years ago. And when the loving pair played any theater, the lights out front blazed with a chivalrous message: 'Nora Bayes, assisted and admired by Jack Norworth,'"

Big D Bulletin, March 2000, Grent Carson, editor


Seasons Greetings to everyone from the Pitchburgh Press

Answers to Barbershop History Quiz on page 9:

1 - By passing proclamations (not such a big deal) and by raising tons of money (a very big deal - see question #3).

2 - By providing quartets to entertain the troops stationed in the USA, and at war bond drives.

3 -$1.2 million, which is approx. $12.5 million in 2004 dollars.

4 - It provided funding for two (!) B-29 bombers. Wow! The planes were appropriately named "The Spirit of Harmony" and Close Harmony."

5 - Its name, if it had one, and the identities of the bass and the tenor are lost to history. You may have heard of the lead and the baritone, however. Respectively, they were Bing Crosby and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

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