Moon River

When a performer owns a performance.

My wife is just about the easiest person in the world to get along with. She insists on very few things, and when she does she’s generally right. So when she puts her foot down, I’ve learned to listen. When we first started advancing my hobby of arranging songs to performing as a duet, she insisted that we include a few songs in our act. One of those songs is “Moon River.”

Moon River, written by composer Henry Mancini and lyricist Johnny Mercer, was first performed by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” An Academy Award and several Grammys followed for Mancini and Mercer. “Moon River” has subsequently been recorded and performed by thousands of artists. It’s also become, through the years, one of the most widely circulated pieces of sheet music ever printed.

The song’s popularity is easy to explain. It’s simply a wonderful song. It’s wistful, longing, romantic and relatable to nearly everyone over the age of 12. If you are old, it’s evocative of a time when you were young and just setting out on your life’s journey. If you are young, it’s a glimpse into the wonderful adventures that lie ahead.

The mood in “Moon River” is set equally by the music and lyrics, which are inseparable. It’s a great song to arrange because it’s melodic and harmonic structures are so wonderful right out of the box. All you have to do is come up with the chords and voicings that suit you and you’re good to go. It’s so well written that it’s hard to mess up.

I like to find out, when arranging a piece, what the original composers were thinking when they wrote it. In the case of “Moon River,” knowing how the song came to be makes it even better.

Show business has always been rough business. If you are a performer or any type of creator, you know this all too well. “Show business” has two parts. The show part is generally rewarding. It’s the business part that frequently sucks.

Audrey Hepburn was already an established star in 1960 when she was cast in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Henry Mancini was an up-and-coming composer who’d spent a decade in the studio system. Johnny Mercer was a Tin Pan Alley era lyricist and singer whose popularity had slipped with changing tastes in popular music — something that was about to change.

Although Ms. Hepburn had sung in earlier films, she was not a trained singer and had a limited vocal range. These days, that problem would either be solved with Autotune or by getting an uncredited singer to perform the song. The original thought, even back then, was to just get someone else to sing the song. But Mancini, after listening to Hepburn sing one night during a rerun of an earlier film of hers, came up with a melody that suited her voice and that she was, with some practice, able to pull off. And more than just pull off, if you ask me.

That right there, kids, is class. Class is doing something that you didn’t have to do that makes the world better for someone else. Actually for all of us, as it turns out.

It took Mancini about a month of tinkering to get what he wanted with the music. He then sent it immediately off to Mercer, who adapted a set of lyrics he’d written earlier for a song to be titled “Blue Moon,” a narrative piece that hearkened back to his youth in Savannah, Georgia. “Blue Moon,” by this time, was taken, so the song became “Moon River.”

During a preview screening at Paramount of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” studio head Martin Rackin told the audience, which included Ms. Hepburn and Mr. Mancini, “I love the picture, fellas. But that song has to go.” Mancini blanched. Hepburn, furious, got out of her seat and confronted Rackin. “Over my dead body.”

The song stayed.

I listened to dozens of versions of “Moon River” to see what I liked or did not about each of them before I sat down and arranged my own. Audrey Hepburn’s version, sung in a wispy voice bereft of any sizzling vocal gymnastics, is far and away my favorite. She absolutely nailed it. Melodic interpretation, phrasing - Ms. Hepburn owns “Moon River.” More than Andy Williams, more than Ella Fitzgerald, more than Louis Armstrong - heck, even more than Frank Sinatra.

Ms. Hepburn, Mr. Mancini and Mr. Mercer all went on to create further memorable works. But in terms of getting as close to perfection as humans can, the three of them did just that with “Moon River.”

So thanks, honey, for making me learn “Moon River.” You were right, as usual.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club award-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding mountain bikes and motorcycles and playing guitars. His commentary may be found on Substack (martinhackworth.substack.com) and and his video blog, “Howlin’ at the Moon in ii-V-I,” may be found at facebook.com/HowlinattheMoonin251 and on YouTube at bit.ly/2SN745k.