King Harvest: "Dancing in the Moonlight" (1973)

This a  very keyboard oriented happy song from the '70's. The Wurlitzer electric piano is right up front on this one.  In fact, King Harvest had three keyboard players in the band, all of whom had been doing session work prior to forming the band.Ron Altback, Sherman Kelly and Davy ‘Doc’ Robinson(all on keyboards), plus Ed Tuleja (guitar), Tony Cahill (bass), Rod Novak (saxophone) and David Montgomery (drums).

According to the band's MySpace page, King Harvest formed in 1970 after four Cornell students met in Ithaca. They would go to Paris. and rode the circuit, even opening for B.B. King. They released "Dancing in the Moonlight" in Europe and it Flopped. They came back to New York and got a contract with a small label called Perception. The first cut released was "Dancing in the Moonlight" which some say was written by Altback and Robinson, but other sources say it was written by Sherman Kelly, the brother of a one time drummer in the band and himself a member of a previous iteration of the band. The soulful pop entry rose to to #13 in the U.S., and stayed on the charts for 20 weeks. They would never really chart again with the exception of "A Little Bit of Magic", which hit #91 the same year. To hear it, you would assume it would be a nice flip side to "Dancing in the Moonlight."They would disband mid-decade.

In 1976, the Beach Boys members Mike Love and Carl Wilson helped them get a record deal with A & M, but no hits came out of the effort.

We get it almost every night
When that moon is big and bright
It's a supernatural delight
Everybody's dancin' in the moonlight

Everybody here is out of sight
They don't bark, and they don't bite
They keep things loose, they keep 'em tight
Everybody was dancin' in the moonlight

Dancin' in the moonlight
Everybody's feelin' warm and bright
It's such a fine and natural sight
Everybody's dancin' in the moonlight

No fewer than 17 bands would cover this song. Of these, the British band Toploader covered the song and it reached #7 on the English charts in 2000. The version has the same happy, party and we're all friends feel, and again, keyboards are integral to the song. No evidence of it having been released in the U.S. We are submitting it as well for your consideration.

Liza Minelli covered the song in 1973 and it is as schmaltzy as you might expect. Good luck getting through that version!