The music originated three decades earlier as a 1912 ragtime composition by Charles Luckeyeth Roberts called "Ripples of the Nile", described as "a syncopated tune that baffled the arrangers of the day".

"Ripples of the Nile" was a musical challenge: "a fast number with right hand figuration of the greatest technical difficulty, and none of Luckey's pupils, including the great James P. Johnson, could execute it perfectly.

[5] Gannon, who wrote under the nickname "Kim", compared the development of a romantic relationship to the mixing of an alcoholic beverage in "Moonlight Cocktail".

[7] During World War II, the BBC initiated a program called "Victory Through Harmony" that sought to use musical radio broadcasts to maintain wartime morale and increase weapons production.

[18] Nearly sixty years later, Andrea Marcovicci performed the song in her cabaret show "Double Old Fashioned", described as "piercing nostalgia leavened with humor".