Moonlight in Vermont
It's been a few years now that my wife and I visited Vermont. We happened to be there at the beginning of the time that Noah Kahan would call "the season of the sticks". Other places call it "shoulder season" I think. It's when the ski season hasn't started yet, but the summer and fall foliage seasons are fading away. The photos I have from that trip show that the leaf colors were quite muted even in the middle of October, and in some cases there weren't any leaves at all.
It rained a good portion of the time we were there which made it a bit difficult to really enjoy our trip, but we still made the best of it and did some really cool things. It's definitely an area I wouldn't mind going back to one day. The landscapes as you will see in my photos are beautiful, and the food and atmosphere is nothing short of amazing.
In case you haven't guessed, our #threetunetuesday post this week sponsored by @ablaze brings us to Vermont. While I knew photos would be easy for this post since I have actually been there a couple of times, music would probably be a bit more difficult. Sure, I could have stuck with the Noah Kahan which I referenced above, but as I got digging into the research for Vermont a bit more, I found something really interesting that I decided to share with you instead.
It was a tough call though because there are some really good songs that mention Vermont in the title or lyrics. Some that even I haven't heard of before. For example, "Letter to American Fan 1967" by David Bowie is one I hadn't heard of that I would have loved to share. I'm not going to though, as I said, I decided to take things in a different direction.
We spent the majority of our time in Vermont in the Burlington area, but we did take a few side trips that turned out to be really great. We had some amazing food, a tour through the Ben and Jerry's facility, and a lot of really great sights. Like I said, I would love to go back to the whole New England area again sometime soon.
As I was searching through the songs that have Vermont in either the title or lyrics, I kept coming across one song in particular. It turns out that a ton of different artists have covered this song, so that's how I got the idea that instead of sharing three different songs, I would share the same song by three different artists.
This isn't the first time I have done this sort of thing in a #threetunetuesday post, but I feel like it has been a while since I colored a bit outside of the lines with my self-made rules.
These songs are going to be a bit different than what you may have come to expect from me, but I hope that you enjoy them anyway.
If you haven't guessed by the title of the post, the song I am talking about is called "Moonlight in Vermont". It's another one of those songs that appears to be a classic, but I can't say as though I have ever heard it before. However, as soon as I saw that Frank Sinatra had a version of it, I knew I had to share it here. Sinatra had a truly amazing voice, and his life in general was pretty interesting if you really dig into it. If you are into all that mob and gangster type stuff, there is simply no way you can't appreciate Frank.
Even if you don't like this style of music, you still have to give a little nod of respect to "old blue eyes". Rumor has it, he might have been a bit of a diva in his day, but I don't think anyone would have wanted to mess with him given his ties to organized crime.
If you like this version of the song, there is another version where Frank sings it as a duet with Linda Ronstadt, and that is absolutely phenomenal. Of course, I am a bit biased because I think Linda has an absolutely amazing voice, but that's just me.
It wasn't until I realized there was a version of this song covered by Willie Nelson that I decided I absolutely had to just do a single post sharing three different versions of the same song. I actually take back what I said before too. I own the Willie Nelson Stardust album on vinyl, so there is zero chance I had never heard this song before. I'm just getting old and I didn't remember that I had.
Of course, Willie does the song in the only way that Willie can. This whole Stardust album is absolutely amazing if you ever get the chance to listen to it. I highly recommend it.
Finally, we have this absolutely iconic version of the song by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Talk about incomparable! The song "Moonlight in Vermont" was actually written by a guy named John Blackburn along with Karl Suessdorf. Blackburn wrote the lyrics when he was visiting Vermont from Cleveland Ohio with his traveling puppet show.
Blackburn and Suessdorf decided to make the whole song "rhymeless" which was kind of a big deal back in 1944 when it was created. Another thing I learned on Wikipedia is that all of the verses of the song minus the bridge are haiku's. Which is kind of cool when you think about it.
This song has become the defacto state song of Vermont and no matter who you enjoy singing it, it is a pretty cool tune!
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Sounds like you managed to catch a really specific slice of the year — that in-between window that most people plan around rather than into. Muted colors or not, there's something nice about seeing a place stripped of its "peak season" glow; it usually shows you a quieter, more honest side of it. Do you remember if the town still felt lively despite being off-season, or had things mostly wound down?
Oh yes, there was still quite a bit going on. They had a nice street fair and there was some live music at a couple of places in the downtown area.
!BBH I enjoyed the Shelbourne museum when I was in Vermont.
Is that the farm just south of Burlington? We were going to go there, but the day we had in mind it was raining so we ended up skipping it.
Yes, you take the one interstate south just a bit.
These songs are for the all times!
Pure classics!