Sheet music:Sheet Music: Moonlight Cocktail

Since the middle of the 19th century, Americans purchased pianos in increasing numbers. Families and friends gathered around the piano for evenings of musical fun. Piano players needed sheet music to learn the latest songs and publishers quickly printed everyone's favorite pieces, first in black and white and later with detailed chromolithographed color covers. The advent of radio and even television simply increased public awareness of hit songs, and the production of sheet music still grew. Eventually, use of sheet music lessened along with the popularity of home pianos in the middle and later 20th century. Radio, phonographs, and personal listening devices began to replace the piano in the parlor. The song "Moonlight Cocktail" was first recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The following year, it was the best-selling US record for 10 weeks. In August of 1942, the BBC banned the song as part of its "Victory Through Harmony" program, which used the radio to inscrease morale during the war. It was deemed "sentimental slush" and not worthy of being played.