“Lonesome Moonlight Waltz” is a Bill Monroe composition in F major — an uncommon key for a waltz in the bluegrass and old-time tradition, where G and D dominate. Monroe said he had composed the piece “many years before” first recording it; it appeared on a 1972 single backed with “My Old Kentucky and You.” The F-major tonality gives it a warmer, slightly more introverted quality than Monroe’s G-major waltzes, and the melody’s arc — a long, sighing line over a slow 3/4 pulse — places it firmly in the moonlight-and-loneliness vein that runs through Monroe’s most reflective instrumental writing.
Monroe recorded two versions of the melody with slightly differing second parts, a variation that has persisted in the way players interpret the B section. Sierra Hull, Billy Strings, and Doc Watson (in a recorded performance with Monroe) have all recorded the piece, reflecting its status as one of Monroe’s more accessible and emotionally direct instrumentals — a composition that doesn’t demand virtuosity to convey its feeling, only patience with the phrase.
The featured recording is from The Bluegrass Album Vol. 6: Bluegrass Instrumentals (Rounder, 1996), the final BAB album, produced by Tony Rice. The Vol. 6 lineup included both Bobby Hicks and Vassar Clements on double fiddle alongside Rice, J.D. Crowe, Doyle Lawson, Jerry Douglas, and Todd Phillips — a double-fiddle texture Monroe himself favored in his own late-career recordings of the piece.