1961 Danny Williams: Moon River

I have to confess to a certain ambivalence to 'Moon River' when taken in its original context. First sung by Audrey Hepburn in Blake Edwards' big screen adaptation of 'Breakfast At Tiffany's', Hepburn's 'Holly Golightly' is a world away from the more hard boiled, borderline prostitute of Truman Capote's novella and I've never appreciated this sanding down of the rough edges to the point where the character could sing something so whimsical. It's not how I imagine Golightly to be anyway, the same way that Liza Minelli is far removed from my imagining of Isherwood's Sally Bowles.

Which I suppose means it's just as well that 'Moon River' has long since broken free of the shackles of that parent film anyway. Just as (to give another example) the movie 'Unchained ' doesn't spring to mind whenever 'Unchained Melody' is played, 'Moon River' is classy enough to stand by itself simply by virtue of being what it is - an evocative American romance of unabashed optimism and hope ("Two drifters, off to see the world, there’s such a lot of world to see" - who wouldn't find that aspirational?) that's become a much covered standard.

If there are any flies in this ointment, then it's that 'my Huckleberry friend' line. Pages have been filled with discussions as to what that means to the extent that the debate overshadows the song,* but to me it's always been plain with the "Two drifters" imagery having obvious parallels with Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and their adventures on the Mississippi; an invocation of a carefree life away from adult cares and responsibilities that's always just "waitin' round the bend" for those with the time to wait.

As an evergreen aspiration refreshingly free of cynicism,** 'Moon River' is a feather quilt of a song for dreamers to wrap themselves in and (to get to the single at hand rather than the song) it's why I prefer Williams Andy's version to this one by Williams Danny. Danny nails the lyric's earthreal tone of wonder, but he takes it slightly too hurriedly for my liking. This is one river that's not going to flow too quickly and Andy's vocal floats over its surface like morning fog on water. Just the way it should. But I'm nitpicking now - Danny knows what he's doing here too and this remains a wonderful recording.

* For example, look at this from one Lawson Stone:

"Huckleberry" was commonly used in the 1800's in conjunction with "persimmon" as a small unit of measure. "I'm a huckleberry over your persimmon" meant "I'm just a bit better than you." As a result, "huckleberry" came to denote idiomatically two things. First, it denoted a small unit of measure, a "tad," as it were, and a person who was a huckleberry could be a small, unimportant person--usually expressed ironically in mock self-depreciation.

The second and more common usage came to mean, in the words of the "Dictionary of American Slang: Second Supplemented Edition" (Crowell, 1975): A man; specif., the exact kind of man needed for a particular purpose. 1936: "Well, I'm your huckleberry, Mr. Haney." Tully, "Bruiser," 37. Since 1880, archaic.

The "Historical Dictionary of American Slang" which is a multivolume work, has about a third of a column of citations documenting this meaning all through the latter 19th century.

So "I'm your huckleberry" means "I'm just the man you're looking for!"

** As point of contrast its portrait in the attic would be Paul Simon's 'America', a tale of another duo who "walked off to look for America" but who wind up as lost souls counting cars on the turnpike until oblivion.