Based on “The Bad in Every Man” by Shirley Ross (1934).
First recorded by Ted Fio Rito & His Orchestra (US #2 1934).
Other hit versions by Glen Gray & The Casa Loma Orchestra (US #1 1934), Connee Boswell (US #1 1935), Billy Eckstine (US #21 1949), Mel Tormé (US #20 1949), The Marcels (US #1/R&B #1/UK #1 1961).
Also recorded by Coleman Hawkins with the Michel Warlop Orchestra (1935), Elvis Presley (1954), Sam Cooke (1959).
From the wiki: “The melody to ‘Blue Moon’ goes back further than the first recorded version by Ted Fio Rito & His Orchestra. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in May 1933. They were soon commissioned to write the songs for Hollywood Party. ‘Prayer (Oh Lord, make me a movie star)’ was written for the movie but never recorded.
“Hart wrote new lyrics for the melody to create a title song for the 1934 film Manhattan Melodrama, but it was cut from the film before release. (Manhattan Melodrama wasn’t so much famous for having left what would become ‘Blue Moon’ on the edit room floor but for being the film John Dillinger went to see in the Chicago movie theater where he was gunned down by police bullets at the exit.) Rodgers still liked the melody so Hart wrote a third lyric, ‘The Bad in Every Man,’ which was sung by Shirley Ross. The song, which was also released as sheet music, was not a hit.
“Jack Robbins, the head of MGM studio’s publishing company, decided that the tune was suited to commercial release but needed more romantic lyrics and a punchier title. Hart was initially reluctant to write yet another lyric but was persuaded and the result – the FOURTH use of the melody – was ‘Blue moon/you saw me standing alone/without a dream in my heart/without a love of my own’.”