Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five featuring Hilary Alexander

View Original

Chord Melody Arrangement: "Moonglow"

"Moonglow" is one of my favorite ballads, and given it's link to Willie Desatoff, it's also important to the swing dance community, particularly the balboa community. 

Personally, I doubt it's ever been played any better than by the Benny Goodman Quartet in 1936. Take a listen:

See this content in the original post

While I know I'll never come close to the magic created by Benny, Teddy, Lionel and Gene, I did want to be able to render the beautiful tune when playing solo guitar. I came up with this arrangement a while back, but there are a couple streches that have taken a while to get under my fingers. The solo section was just ad libbed as I was recording it. Anyway, I hope you dig it. 

See this content in the original post

And as requested by my friend in São Paulo, Cleber Guimarães, here's a notated version of my chord melody arrangement:

See this content in the original post

Click here to download a PDF: Moonglow - Chord Melody - PDF

FYI - I've heard some people have been having trouble with the youtube audio - I can't explain why, and there's nothing I can do to fix it, and it plays fine for most people - so I've also uploaded to Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/186495334