On February 8, 1940, Alfred Drake and Frances Comstock introduced “How High the Moon” during the Broadway revue Two for the Show. The musical would run at the Booth Theatre for 124 performances.

An instant hit, Benny Goodman’s recording of “How High the Moon,” featuring vocalist Helen Forrest, entered the pop charts a few weeks after the show opened, rising to number six. Subsequent hit recordings include:

• Mitchell Ayres and His Fashions in Music (1940, Mary Ann Mercer, #18)
• Stan Kenton and His Orchestra (1948, instrumental, #20)
• Les Paul and Mary Ford (1951, #1)

Two for the Show comprised a series of song and dance numbers set in wartime London. It was just one of several Hamilton and Lewis collaborations which include the related One for the Money and Three to Get Ready. Two for the Show starred Alfred Drake, Keenan Wynn, Eve Arden, Richard Haydn, and Betty Hutton in her Broadway debut.
 

In 1951 guitar legend Les Paul and his vocalist wife Mary Ford hit the top of the charts with “How High the Moon” remaining there for nine weeks. The landmark recording was accomplished by using a multi-track tape recorder to overdub the guitar and vocals, allowing the duo to record a full instrumental sound with multi-part vocal harmonies. Paul is credited with perfecting the use of the multi-track tape recorder, a pioneering effort that changed the course of recorded music.

In a December 15, 2003, USATODAY.com interview Paul explained,

I created a little radio show I did every Friday where I could do anything I wanted. As the ideas progressed to do everything in multi-track (I invented the machine, the delay, the echo, all that) … I took this idea of multi-track recording to Capitol Records and hit with “How High the Moon.”

After “Mockingbird Hill,” “How High the Moon” would become the second million-selling recording in 1951 for Les Paul and Mary Ford. Within the year Les Paul would also go on to collaborate with Gibson Guitar Corporation to create the extremely popular “Les Paul” model—a solid-body, electric guitar.

Morgan Lewis wrote “How High the Moon” as a slow ballad. Because of its complex and interesting chord progressions, however, the song became a bebop favorite and is now almost always performed up-tempo. In his book Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs, William Zinsser refers to the song as belonging to “… the elite company of romantic ballads that generations of jazzmen have embraced for their melodic energy and harmonic interest …” Countless jazz musicians have employed it as the basis for new compositions, notably Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology” and John Coltrane’s (note the word play) “Satellite.”

For a time, “How High the Moon” contended for the honor of being the most recorded composition by jazz musicians. Today critics glorify the composition with such arguable titles as “the bop national anthem,” “the bop hymn,” or “the national anthem of the modern jazz movement.” Regardless of such nicknames, a title that is indisputable is “Towering Song,” an honor bestowed by the National Academy of Popular Music at the 1957 annual award ceremony.