“Sitting Alone in the Moonlight” was written by Bill Monroe and recorded by Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys during the Decca period. The song became a standard of his working repertoire and was carried widely through the bluegrass tradition by the Stanley Brothers, Mac Wiseman, and other 1950s and 1960s acts.
The lyric is a remembrance-and-yearning piece: the narrator sitting alone in the moonlight, his sweetheart gone, the small details of memory closing in on him as the night deepens. The conceit pairs naturally with other Monroe pieces in the slow-and-lonesome register and gave Monroe’s high tenor a setting in which the upper-register grief he excelled at could carry the line.
The Bluegrass Album Band’s 1982 reading on The Bluegrass Album, Vol. 2 is one of the more frequently cited contemporary recordings of the song. The Bluegrass Album Band’s tight contemporary-traditional arrangement, anchored by Tony Rice’s lead vocal and the band’s clean trio harmony, is the reference point for younger pickers learning the piece. It works as a slow vocal feature in G with a clear chorus harmony slot.
