Meet Me Tonight

The Carter Family recorded it for Victor as “Meet Me by Moonlight, Alone” in 1928 and issued it on Victor 23731, paired with “Wabash Cannonball.” Burnett & Rutherford recorded a version in 1929 and Bradley Kincaid in 1934, according to the Ballad Index, which files it under “Meet Me Tonight in the Moonlight.”

The Stanley Brothers recorded it as “Meet Me Tonight” in July 1959 at radio station WNER in Live Oak, Florida. Carter Stanley sang lead and Ralph Stanley the tenor part, with Ralph on banjo, Bill Napier on mandolin and Chubby Anthony on fiddle. It stayed unreleased until 1962, when the Blue Ridge label put it out on a single with “Nobody’s Business” (Blue Ridge 514), and it later appeared on Bear Family’s Stanley Brothers sets. In the Stanley lyric the singer calls on his sweetheart to meet him by the moonlight alone, because he has a sad story to tell. He says he would see his ship, loaded with silver and gold, anchored and sold before his darling should suffer, and he insists he has always loved her, whatever she says about his faithfulness. The last verse wishes for the wings of an angel to fly over prison walls into her arms.

Dudley Connell and Don Rigsby gave their 2000 Sugar Hill album the title Meet Me by the Moonlight, and Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys included it on the 1997 Stanley Tone CD Clinch Mountain Boys Reunion.