December 22, 2025 • 22 mins
“Dancing in the Moonlight” is one of the most joyful, carefree songs ever recorded — a soundtrack to weddings, summer nights, and open windows.
But its origin is anything but light. In this episode of Jonny’s Dead Air, we uncover the true, harrowing story behind the song — born not from celebration, but from survival. A violent night on a Caribbean island. A brutal attack. A love forever changed. And a songwriter who responded not with vengeance, but with imagination. This is the story of how unimaginable darkness gave rise to a song that has brought joy to millions — and why knowing the truth behind it changes the way you hear it forever.
Listener discretion advised.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Jonny Hartwell
Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
A iHeart Radio Production
DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.
Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.
Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
But its origin is anything but light. In this episode of Jonny’s Dead Air, we uncover the true, harrowing story behind the song — born not from celebration, but from survival. A violent night on a Caribbean island. A brutal attack. A love forever changed. And a songwriter who responded not with vengeance, but with imagination. This is the story of how unimaginable darkness gave rise to a song that has brought joy to millions — and why knowing the truth behind it changes the way you hear it forever.
Listener discretion advised.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Jonny Hartwell
Voiced by Jonny Hartwell
Music Credit: Reel World Audio.
A iHeart Radio Production
DISCLAIMER: This podcast contains discussions of sensitive topics...Listener discretion is strongly advised. While the stories you’ll hear are rooted in real events, not every detail is strictly historical—some moments are dramatized with creative license to bring the narrative to life. Please keep this in mind as you listen.
Jonny’s Dead Air Podcast
Written, hosted, and produced by Jonny Hartwell.
A production of iHeartRadio Pittsburgh.
Thanks for listening—and for keeping the light on.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And welcome in. I'm Johnny Hartwell and this is Johnny's
Dead Air Podcast, a production of iHeartRadio. Here we go
again with another story from music's dark side. There's a
song that seems to smile when you hear it, you know,
the one, bright as a jukebox quarter, easiest summer air.
(00:21):
You can't escape it, and truth be told, you don't
want to. It drifts through grocery stores and parking lots,
wedding receptions and Sunday drives. It's the sound of a
good mood you didn't know you needed. And every time
that piano riff begins, every time the singer grins through
the microphone and invites you to dance beneath the stars,
the world feels briefly, mercifully harmless. It's the kind of
(00:46):
song that doesn't just get played. It lives. It's a
friend you grew up with. It never raises its voice,
never shows its age, and it's always right on time.
But songs like people have histories that don't alway fit
their smiles, and sometimes the brightest ones are born in darkness. Tonight,
we're going to talk about one of those songs, a
(01:07):
song that promised joy because it's writer had already met despair.
You know the melody, you know the rhythm, you know
the feeling, but maybe you don't know where it came from.
This is script number twenty two, The Dark Side of
Dancing in the Moonlight, Act one, the Vacation. His name
(01:29):
was Sherman Kelly, a musician, a dreamer, a gentle soul
who believed that music could make a crooked world stand
up straighter. He was nineteen seventy. The war was still
on television, the country was still trying to figure out
how to forgive itself, and Sherman, like many young artists
of his time, was tired. Tired of headlines, tired of
city noise, tired of playing gigs that never paid quite
(01:52):
enough to cover the gas to get to the next one.
So he booked a trip not to find inspiration. He
wasn't thinking about writing at all. He went for peace,
for color, for warmth. So we went to Saint Croix,
a Caribbean island where the beaches look like postcards and
the night sky looked like a starry expanse of diamonds.
He arrived with a notebook, a guitar, and a heart
(02:14):
full of good intentions. The locals were kind, the rum
was cheap. The world, for once, seems simple. In the daytime,
Sherman wandered the beaches, collecting shells and melodies. He wrote
a few lines that didn't mean much, yet he was
saving them for later. He told a friend that what
he loved most about the island was the moonlight, how
(02:34):
it spread across the water like spilled silver, How it
made strangers look like friends. He said. When I look
at that, I feel like people could be better than
they are. A nice thought for a man on vacation.
But Paradise, as it turns out, keeps its own calendar,
and on one particular night, Paradise missed its appointment act too.
(02:57):
The night the morning began with the kind of sunlight
that makes you believe in easy days. Sherman and Adriane
sat together on the porch of their small villa outside Christianstead,
sharing a plate of fruit and the kind of silence
that only exists between people who have already said everything important.
Adrianne was a painter. She saw color of the way
(03:19):
musicians here notes, vibrant, essential, alive. She'd been working on
a watercolor of the bay, brushing the blues into one
another so softly they looked like they were still moving.
Sherman watched her more than the canvas. Are you ever
going back to New York at this rate? He teased, maybe,
she said, dipping her brush again. If you give me
(03:40):
a reason, he laughed, I might need one myself. Before
he could say, more of their friends burst into the villa, Phil,
Becky and Tommy, full of energy and sunburn from the
day before, boats leaving in twenty minutes. Tommy shouted, you
two love birds coming. Adrianne looked at Sherman expectantly. He
looked back jeepishly. I think we're gonna this one out,
(04:00):
he said. Something's been buzzing in my head all morning.
I want to catch it before it flies off. Adriane
raised an eyebrow a melody something like that. Tommy groaned,
you're on vacation, man. Adriane squeeze Sherman's arm. I'm gonna
go with them. We'll be back before midnight. You sure,
she smiled. I love that you want to write. Besides,
those fools need a responsible adult, Phil saluted her. Becky
(04:24):
rolled her eyes. Sherman leaned in and kissed adrian gently,
slow enough to mean something. Don't be too long, he whispered,
If you finish that song before I'm back, I want
to hear it first, she said, Promise me, I promise.
He watched him walk down the road towards the dock,
Adrian turning once to wave, the evening sun catching her
hair like a copper wire. He sat with his guitar
(04:46):
for a while, but couldn't find that melody that had
been teasing him, so he walked the shoreline. He sketched
a few words in his notebook. Ate alone watched the
moon rise like a polished coin over the water, and
he thought about Adrian, the way she painted with her
whole wrist, not just her fingers, how she leaned into
him during storms hours past, the island shifted moods. The
(05:10):
daytime postcard dissolved into a cinematic dusk, the shadows growing
long and thoughtful. Sherman headed into town following the hum
of music from an open air bar. Adrian would have
loved it. Steel drums, warm air lanterns strung like fireflies.
He stayed only long enough for a drink rum no ice.
The sweetness burned all the way down. When last call
(05:33):
came He thanked the bartender and stepped out into the night.
The air smelt of wet leaves and something else, metallic, distant,
like a storm that changed its mind. A few minutes later,
heard footsteps behind him, then a voice suman. He turned.
Adrian was jogging towards him from up the road, breathless
(05:53):
and smiling. He scared the hell out of me, he said,
laughing with relief. The boat came back early, she said,
storm rolled in around the reef. They dropped me off first,
so I could surprise you. He kissed her longer than
he meant to. Well you did. They walked together, hands intertwined,
the moon overhead glowing like a promise. Kept it's so quiet,
Adrian whispered, too quiet, No, just enough to hear you think.
(06:17):
He squeezed her hand. You know what I was thinking
about all day? I hope it was me. Well, you're
not wrong. They laughed, softly, the kind of laughter you
whisper when you don't want to wake the night. The
villa wasn't far now, maybe ten minutes or so. Then
they heard it low and slurred a different kind of laughter.
(06:39):
Adrian stiffened. What was that? Sherman didn't know, didn't want
to know, but he recognized something in the tone, something
that didn't belong in the moonlight. Act three Dark Dancing,
Next three Dark Dancing. They kept walking, the voices grew closer.
(07:05):
Five shadows appeared around the ben. Local men young, unsteady,
too self assured. Sherman felt Adrian's fingers tighten around his
In the evening, he said, forcing calm, trying not to
get noticed. The men spread out across the narrow road tourists.
The tallest one asked the way he said. The word
felt like an accusation. We're heading home, Sherman replied, long day,
(07:28):
Just want to get some sleep. Adriane added, our friends
are right behind us. It wasn't true, and they all
knew it. The tallest man's eyes lingered on Adrian in
a moment too long. He said something in a dialect
to the others, something Sherman didn't catch but didn't need to.
Sherman moved instinctively, placing himself in front of Adrian. Please
(07:48):
take what you want, just let us go. It was
the wrong thing to say. One of the men laughed,
a short, sharp sound that made Adrian flinch. Another produced
a bat or a club. A third one took a
step toward wards her Sherman shoved him back. The response
was immediate. A fist slammed into Sherman's jaw, snapping his
head sideways. He tasted blood before he hit the ground.
Hands grabbed him arms, shoulders, hair, dragging him down, pinning
(08:11):
him to the road. Adrianne screamed, let him go, please, please.
Someone grabbed her by the hair. She stumbled. Sherman thrashed,
wild and useless. A boot came down on his ribs
once twice. He felt something give away inside him. Air
exploded from his lungs, and the sound that didn't feel human.
He tried to get up. They didn't let him. A
knee pressed into his back, Gravel ground into his cheek.
He was being beaten by fists, kicks, clubs. He heard
(08:34):
his own bones in his face cracking through the blur,
he saw adrian being pulled away from him. He screamed
her name. She screamed his. Then her voice changed a scream.
Someone kicked Sherman in the head again. The word flashed white.
He barely felt the next blows, only the weight of them, heavy, rhythmic,
and without mercy. He heard her again, her voice muffled,
as if her mouth was being covered. The sound of
her clothing being torn. Her pleas for help were muffled.
(08:56):
Someone laughed low and satisfied. Then the sound of belt
buckles unfastening. Sherman did everything he could to stand, but
there was too many of them. He tried to scream,
but a hand covered his mouth, not to silence him,
but to make him listen. All he could muster was
a low, guttural er. Sherman sensed the blow before came
the sound of wood hitting his skull, then the pain.
(09:18):
His vision collapsed inward. The moon above splintered into fragments
of light. Adrian's voice faded, not because she stopped making sound,
but because the Knight took it somewhere he could not follow.
In that moment before darkness finally claimed him, Sherman understood
the full horror of it. They're hurting her because they could,
(09:42):
and they were breaking him, so he would have to
live with it. The island went still, Even the breeze
seemed to pause, as if unwilling to witness what came next.
At four, the after next act for the after, At first,
(10:07):
there was nothing, not darkness, not silence, just nothing, a
place without shape, without pain, without memory, a waiting room
between worlds. Then slowly, something began to pull him upward,
a weight, a pulse, a coldness that didn't belong to dreams.
He felt his body before he remembered he had one.
(10:30):
His ribs spoke, first sharp, CUsing, then his legs, then
the back of his skull, throbbing in a rhythm that
belonged to the night before. He tried to open his eyes,
but the world was too bright. He tried to move,
but the world was too heavy. Someone was saying his name, softly,
as if they were afraid he'd break. Sherman, Sherman, Sherman.
(10:58):
The voice didn't belong to the men on the road.
They were steadier, older, trained to deliver bad news gently.
He forced his eyes open. A face hovered above him.
It was a doctor with lines carved into his forehead,
eyes red from too many overnight shifts. You're safe, the
doctor said. You're in a hospital. You've been unconscious for
(11:18):
quite a while. Sherman tried to speak, but only a
rasp came out. Every bone in his face ached. The
doctor leaned closer. You're going to be all right. You're
badly bruised, some broken bones, but you're alive. You're lucky.
We've been trying to wake you up for hours. Sherman
swallowed through the burn in his throat. Only one word formed, barely,
(11:45):
A treann. The doctor hesitated, heavy pause. Then she's here.
Relief washed through him. He felt tears slipped down his
temples before he even knew he was crying. She stable,
the doctor said, shaken, frightened, But she's alive. She's resting
(12:07):
a few rooms down. They did things, Sherman, but she's alive.
Sherman closed his eyes tight in disbelief, and in relief too.
He added, she said to tell you she's still holding
your hand, even if you can't feel it. Sherman let
out a shaky laugh, the kind that breaks on the
(12:29):
way up. Of course, she would say that time passed
in strange elastic stretches. Nurses drifted in and out, Visitors
whispered in the hallway. Someone turned the lights down. He slept,
and woke, and slept again. He lay there in the quiet,
staring at the pattern of shadows on the ceiling. They
(12:50):
moved gently whenever someone passed the doorway. Soft shapes drifting
like leaves in a slow wind. Somewhere in those hours
between medication and memory. The moon, not the hospital ceiling,
not the dim lamp by his bed, the moon from
the road, wide and tender. He remembered that moment just
before the world vanished, Adriane's hand in his, her breath quickening,
(13:14):
the echo of laughter that didn't belong to Joy, the
shadows closing in this sudden weight of bodies, her scream,
his own voice, calling her name. He gasped, awake, heart racing,
But the doctor was right. He was safe, she was safe,
and both alive. He drifted back to sleep, and back
(13:36):
to dreaming of Adrian and her calling his name. Sherman, Sherman, Sherman, honey,
are you awake? His eyes fluttered open. Adrian was above him, smiling,
and even though her face was badly bruised, to him,
it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. He
(13:57):
gave her a relieved smile, faint but sincere, he mustered
a Hi baby. She kissed him gently on the lips.
He closed his eyes in a way of thanking her
for the affection. Without moving his lips, he quietly asked
what happened She gave him a faint smile on almost
(14:21):
an apology. They did things to me, Sherman. Sherman winced,
tears forming in the corner of his eyes. He swallowed hard,
knowing his worst fear actually occurred. No, no, no, no,
don't cry. We're alive. That's all that matters. They threw
a towel over my head, and if I made a sound,
(14:43):
they would beat me. Sherman closed his eyes again, not
sure he wanted to hear any more of this story.
After the first man was done, she caught her breath
gave him a faint smile, accepting the truth. Then I
heard this wild animal growling. Sherman gave her a questioning shrug.
It sounded like a hound from hell. He grunted, what
(15:07):
animal you don't remember, giving almost an amused smile. No,
it was you, It was usilly. Sherman's eyes opened slightly,
indicating he wanted to know more.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
She explained. She explained, we heard this gut awful growl.
I threw off the towel, and there you were, back
from the dead, screaming like a wild banshee. Sherman's eyes
widened and shocked. Your face was so bloody. Oh, it
was pretty scary enough to scare them all away. And
then she paused and said, Sherman, you saved my life.
(15:43):
Tears streamed from both of their eyes, then, as softly
as a whisper, something from the ether, maybe from the
part of him that refused to let the night win,
Maybe from the part that remembered Adrian reaching back him
even as he fell, Maybe from the moon itself, steady
and unblinking, insisting the world could still be beautiful. Sherman
(16:10):
closed his eyes again, exhausted. The melody settled beside him,
like a patient friend, a small light in a dark room,
a promise. He closed his eyes and listened. The melody
grew stronger, a little brighter, a little braver, and suddenly
words appeared, uninvited but welcome. It wasn't a song yet,
(16:36):
not fully, just a world he wanted to live in.
Back five, the becoming next Back five, the becoming. Sherman
didn't leave the hospital for several weeks, quite a few surgeries.
(16:58):
They saw each other only in brief, gentle moments, the
kind of reunions where reaching for someone's hand feels like
a victory. The doctor's encouraged rest quiet in time. Time
was the hardest. It stretched oddly, like a fabric that
didn't quite fit right. Sherman spent his hours sitting beside
the window, staring at the same moon that had looked
(17:18):
so different only nights before. It was rounder now and kinder.
He didn't trust it yet, not entirely, but he listened
to it. The melody that had first arrived in the
dark hospital room kept returning, growing clearer with each sunrise.
He scribbled notes on scraps of paper, borrowed pens from nurses,
hummed softly when he thought nobody was listening. Adrian heard
(17:42):
him once and smile and slow, tired, but real, that's pretty,
she whispered. It's something I heard he said in here,
she asked, tapping her temple. No there, as he tapped
his heart. That's beautiful, she whispered. It sounds like a
world that didn't hurt her us. Sherman nodded, Yeah, that's
(18:03):
exactly what I wanted to be. Friends heard the song next,
and they felt its softness, its invitation, its hope. A
small band, Baffa Longo, recorded it. The world nodded politely
and well moved on. But music has a way of
biding its time, of waiting for the right hands. And
(18:26):
those hands came sooner than he expected. Act six, Waiting
for the Right Night. Next Act six, waiting for the
Right Night. Yes, those hands came sooner than he expected.
(18:46):
They belonged to a band living far from home, Americans
adrift in Paris, chasing music the way some people chase weather.
They called themselves King Harvest, a name that suggested gathering
something that had been waiting all along. One evening, someone
played them a record that never quite found its moment,
a buffo lungo album, a song tucked inside like a
(19:08):
pressed flower. The room changed when it came on. No
one spoke, no one laughed. They just listened. It didn't
sound like a hit. It sounded better than that. It
sounded real. In a small Paris studio, King Harvest found
the pulse the song had been waiting for. The bass
walked easy and human, the piano smiled. The vocal sounded
(19:32):
like someone who trusted the room. When they finished recording it,
they knew they hadn't captured lightning. They captured warmth. When
the song was released in nineteen seventy two, it didn't explode.
It spread slowly, patiently, like something meant to last. Radio
stations played at once, then again and again. Listeners called
(19:56):
DJ's notice. People didn't change the dial. Climbed the charts quietly,
top twenty in the Pop charts, Top five Adult Contemporary.
But more importantly, it stayed. It became the song people
didn't turn off for Sherman. The success changed things in
practical ways. Royalties arrived, bill stopped being emergencies. Music no
(20:18):
longer felt like a gamble he might lose. But something
else happened too. He heard the song in public, in
cars and diners, in places he hadn't been invited. He
realized the Knight no longer belonged only to him. It
belonged to everyone. Adrienne heard it too. Sometimes they heard
it together, sometimes apart. They remained close for a time,
(20:40):
bound by a night neither could forget, and by a
song that rewrote it. But survival doesn't always mean permanence.
Love can be real without being forever. What mattered was this,
They had walked out of the darkness together, and sometimes
beautiful followed them. Years past, the song Refuse to Age.
(21:01):
It returned in the nineteen nineties, then again in the
two thousands each time a new generation claimed it as
their own, unaware they were dancing to an act of defiance.
Weddings and graduation summer nights, open windows, bare feet on
warm pavement, A song written after violence became shorthand for joy,
(21:22):
and Sherman led it. When asked late in life why
he thought the song endured, he didn't mention charts or sales,
he said, because it's about people being kind to each other,
and that never goes out of style.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
That's the quiet miracle here, not that something terrible produced
something beautiful, but that something beautiful refused to let the
terrible have the final word. Every time the song plays,
the night is rewritten, every time people sing along the
road in Saint Croix loses a little of its power.
Every time someone smiles without knowing why. The world imagine
(21:59):
under the moonlight briefly becomes real. And that's the strange,
generous gift of music. It remembered what hurt and then
chooses joy. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Script number twenty two,
The Dark Side of Dancing in the Moonlight. This has
(22:21):
been Johnny's Dead Air podcast. I'm Johnny heart Well, thank
you so much. For listening,
And welcome in. I'm Johnny Hartwell and this is Johnny's
Dead Air Podcast, a production of iHeartRadio. Here we go
again with another story from music's dark side. There's a
song that seems to smile when you hear it, you know,
the one, bright as a jukebox quarter, easiest summer air.
(00:21):
You can't escape it, and truth be told, you don't
want to. It drifts through grocery stores and parking lots,
wedding receptions and Sunday drives. It's the sound of a
good mood you didn't know you needed. And every time
that piano riff begins, every time the singer grins through
the microphone and invites you to dance beneath the stars,
the world feels briefly, mercifully harmless. It's the kind of
(00:46):
song that doesn't just get played. It lives. It's a
friend you grew up with. It never raises its voice,
never shows its age, and it's always right on time.
But songs like people have histories that don't alway fit
their smiles, and sometimes the brightest ones are born in darkness. Tonight,
we're going to talk about one of those songs, a
(01:07):
song that promised joy because it's writer had already met despair.
You know the melody, you know the rhythm, you know
the feeling, but maybe you don't know where it came from.
This is script number twenty two, The Dark Side of
Dancing in the Moonlight, Act one, the Vacation. His name
(01:29):
was Sherman Kelly, a musician, a dreamer, a gentle soul
who believed that music could make a crooked world stand
up straighter. He was nineteen seventy. The war was still
on television, the country was still trying to figure out
how to forgive itself, and Sherman, like many young artists
of his time, was tired. Tired of headlines, tired of
city noise, tired of playing gigs that never paid quite
(01:52):
enough to cover the gas to get to the next one.
So he booked a trip not to find inspiration. He
wasn't thinking about writing at all. He went for peace,
for color, for warmth. So we went to Saint Croix,
a Caribbean island where the beaches look like postcards and
the night sky looked like a starry expanse of diamonds.
He arrived with a notebook, a guitar, and a heart
(02:14):
full of good intentions. The locals were kind, the rum
was cheap. The world, for once, seems simple. In the daytime,
Sherman wandered the beaches, collecting shells and melodies. He wrote
a few lines that didn't mean much, yet he was
saving them for later. He told a friend that what
he loved most about the island was the moonlight, how
(02:34):
it spread across the water like spilled silver, How it
made strangers look like friends. He said. When I look
at that, I feel like people could be better than
they are. A nice thought for a man on vacation.
But Paradise, as it turns out, keeps its own calendar,
and on one particular night, Paradise missed its appointment act too.
(02:57):
The night the morning began with the kind of sunlight
that makes you believe in easy days. Sherman and Adriane
sat together on the porch of their small villa outside Christianstead,
sharing a plate of fruit and the kind of silence
that only exists between people who have already said everything important.
Adrianne was a painter. She saw color of the way
(03:19):
musicians here notes, vibrant, essential, alive. She'd been working on
a watercolor of the bay, brushing the blues into one
another so softly they looked like they were still moving.
Sherman watched her more than the canvas. Are you ever
going back to New York at this rate? He teased, maybe,
she said, dipping her brush again. If you give me
(03:40):
a reason, he laughed, I might need one myself. Before
he could say, more of their friends burst into the villa, Phil,
Becky and Tommy, full of energy and sunburn from the
day before, boats leaving in twenty minutes. Tommy shouted, you
two love birds coming. Adrianne looked at Sherman expectantly. He
looked back jeepishly. I think we're gonna this one out,
(04:00):
he said. Something's been buzzing in my head all morning.
I want to catch it before it flies off. Adriane
raised an eyebrow a melody something like that. Tommy groaned,
you're on vacation, man. Adriane squeeze Sherman's arm. I'm gonna
go with them. We'll be back before midnight. You sure,
she smiled. I love that you want to write. Besides,
those fools need a responsible adult, Phil saluted her. Becky
(04:24):
rolled her eyes. Sherman leaned in and kissed adrian gently,
slow enough to mean something. Don't be too long, he whispered,
If you finish that song before I'm back, I want
to hear it first, she said, Promise me, I promise.
He watched him walk down the road towards the dock,
Adrian turning once to wave, the evening sun catching her
hair like a copper wire. He sat with his guitar
(04:46):
for a while, but couldn't find that melody that had
been teasing him, so he walked the shoreline. He sketched
a few words in his notebook. Ate alone watched the
moon rise like a polished coin over the water, and
he thought about Adrian, the way she painted with her
whole wrist, not just her fingers, how she leaned into
him during storms hours past, the island shifted moods. The
(05:10):
daytime postcard dissolved into a cinematic dusk, the shadows growing
long and thoughtful. Sherman headed into town following the hum
of music from an open air bar. Adrian would have
loved it. Steel drums, warm air lanterns strung like fireflies.
He stayed only long enough for a drink rum no ice.
The sweetness burned all the way down. When last call
(05:33):
came He thanked the bartender and stepped out into the night.
The air smelt of wet leaves and something else, metallic, distant,
like a storm that changed its mind. A few minutes later,
heard footsteps behind him, then a voice suman. He turned.
Adrian was jogging towards him from up the road, breathless
(05:53):
and smiling. He scared the hell out of me, he said,
laughing with relief. The boat came back early, she said,
storm rolled in around the reef. They dropped me off first,
so I could surprise you. He kissed her longer than
he meant to. Well you did. They walked together, hands intertwined,
the moon overhead glowing like a promise. Kept it's so quiet,
Adrian whispered, too quiet, No, just enough to hear you think.
(06:17):
He squeezed her hand. You know what I was thinking
about all day? I hope it was me. Well, you're
not wrong. They laughed, softly, the kind of laughter you
whisper when you don't want to wake the night. The
villa wasn't far now, maybe ten minutes or so. Then
they heard it low and slurred a different kind of laughter.
(06:39):
Adrian stiffened. What was that? Sherman didn't know, didn't want
to know, but he recognized something in the tone, something
that didn't belong in the moonlight. Act three Dark Dancing,
Next three Dark Dancing. They kept walking, the voices grew closer.
(07:05):
Five shadows appeared around the ben. Local men young, unsteady,
too self assured. Sherman felt Adrian's fingers tighten around his
In the evening, he said, forcing calm, trying not to
get noticed. The men spread out across the narrow road tourists.
The tallest one asked the way he said. The word
felt like an accusation. We're heading home, Sherman replied, long day,
(07:28):
Just want to get some sleep. Adriane added, our friends
are right behind us. It wasn't true, and they all
knew it. The tallest man's eyes lingered on Adrian in
a moment too long. He said something in a dialect
to the others, something Sherman didn't catch but didn't need to.
Sherman moved instinctively, placing himself in front of Adrian. Please
(07:48):
take what you want, just let us go. It was
the wrong thing to say. One of the men laughed,
a short, sharp sound that made Adrian flinch. Another produced
a bat or a club. A third one took a
step toward wards her Sherman shoved him back. The response
was immediate. A fist slammed into Sherman's jaw, snapping his
head sideways. He tasted blood before he hit the ground.
Hands grabbed him arms, shoulders, hair, dragging him down, pinning
(08:11):
him to the road. Adrianne screamed, let him go, please, please.
Someone grabbed her by the hair. She stumbled. Sherman thrashed,
wild and useless. A boot came down on his ribs
once twice. He felt something give away inside him. Air
exploded from his lungs, and the sound that didn't feel human.
He tried to get up. They didn't let him. A
knee pressed into his back, Gravel ground into his cheek.
He was being beaten by fists, kicks, clubs. He heard
(08:34):
his own bones in his face cracking through the blur,
he saw adrian being pulled away from him. He screamed
her name. She screamed his. Then her voice changed a scream.
Someone kicked Sherman in the head again. The word flashed white.
He barely felt the next blows, only the weight of them, heavy, rhythmic,
and without mercy. He heard her again, her voice muffled,
as if her mouth was being covered. The sound of
her clothing being torn. Her pleas for help were muffled.
(08:56):
Someone laughed low and satisfied. Then the sound of belt
buckles unfastening. Sherman did everything he could to stand, but
there was too many of them. He tried to scream,
but a hand covered his mouth, not to silence him,
but to make him listen. All he could muster was
a low, guttural er. Sherman sensed the blow before came
the sound of wood hitting his skull, then the pain.
(09:18):
His vision collapsed inward. The moon above splintered into fragments
of light. Adrian's voice faded, not because she stopped making sound,
but because the Knight took it somewhere he could not follow.
In that moment before darkness finally claimed him, Sherman understood
the full horror of it. They're hurting her because they could,
(09:42):
and they were breaking him, so he would have to
live with it. The island went still, Even the breeze
seemed to pause, as if unwilling to witness what came next.
At four, the after next act for the after, At first,
(10:07):
there was nothing, not darkness, not silence, just nothing, a
place without shape, without pain, without memory, a waiting room
between worlds. Then slowly, something began to pull him upward,
a weight, a pulse, a coldness that didn't belong to dreams.
He felt his body before he remembered he had one.
(10:30):
His ribs spoke, first sharp, CUsing, then his legs, then
the back of his skull, throbbing in a rhythm that
belonged to the night before. He tried to open his eyes,
but the world was too bright. He tried to move,
but the world was too heavy. Someone was saying his name, softly,
as if they were afraid he'd break. Sherman, Sherman, Sherman.
(10:58):
The voice didn't belong to the men on the road.
They were steadier, older, trained to deliver bad news gently.
He forced his eyes open. A face hovered above him.
It was a doctor with lines carved into his forehead,
eyes red from too many overnight shifts. You're safe, the
doctor said. You're in a hospital. You've been unconscious for
(11:18):
quite a while. Sherman tried to speak, but only a
rasp came out. Every bone in his face ached. The
doctor leaned closer. You're going to be all right. You're
badly bruised, some broken bones, but you're alive. You're lucky.
We've been trying to wake you up for hours. Sherman
swallowed through the burn in his throat. Only one word formed, barely,
(11:45):
A treann. The doctor hesitated, heavy pause. Then she's here.
Relief washed through him. He felt tears slipped down his
temples before he even knew he was crying. She stable,
the doctor said, shaken, frightened, But she's alive. She's resting
(12:07):
a few rooms down. They did things, Sherman, but she's alive.
Sherman closed his eyes tight in disbelief, and in relief too.
He added, she said to tell you she's still holding
your hand, even if you can't feel it. Sherman let
out a shaky laugh, the kind that breaks on the
(12:29):
way up. Of course, she would say that time passed
in strange elastic stretches. Nurses drifted in and out, Visitors
whispered in the hallway. Someone turned the lights down. He slept,
and woke, and slept again. He lay there in the quiet,
staring at the pattern of shadows on the ceiling. They
(12:50):
moved gently whenever someone passed the doorway. Soft shapes drifting
like leaves in a slow wind. Somewhere in those hours
between medication and memory. The moon, not the hospital ceiling,
not the dim lamp by his bed, the moon from
the road, wide and tender. He remembered that moment just
before the world vanished, Adriane's hand in his, her breath quickening,
(13:14):
the echo of laughter that didn't belong to Joy, the
shadows closing in this sudden weight of bodies, her scream,
his own voice, calling her name. He gasped, awake, heart racing,
But the doctor was right. He was safe, she was safe,
and both alive. He drifted back to sleep, and back
(13:36):
to dreaming of Adrian and her calling his name. Sherman, Sherman, Sherman, honey,
are you awake? His eyes fluttered open. Adrian was above him, smiling,
and even though her face was badly bruised, to him,
it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. He
(13:57):
gave her a relieved smile, faint but sincere, he mustered
a Hi baby. She kissed him gently on the lips.
He closed his eyes in a way of thanking her
for the affection. Without moving his lips, he quietly asked
what happened She gave him a faint smile on almost
(14:21):
an apology. They did things to me, Sherman. Sherman winced,
tears forming in the corner of his eyes. He swallowed hard,
knowing his worst fear actually occurred. No, no, no, no,
don't cry. We're alive. That's all that matters. They threw
a towel over my head, and if I made a sound,
(14:43):
they would beat me. Sherman closed his eyes again, not
sure he wanted to hear any more of this story.
After the first man was done, she caught her breath
gave him a faint smile, accepting the truth. Then I
heard this wild animal growling. Sherman gave her a questioning shrug.
It sounded like a hound from hell. He grunted, what
(15:07):
animal you don't remember, giving almost an amused smile. No,
it was you, It was usilly. Sherman's eyes opened slightly,
indicating he wanted to know more.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
She explained. She explained, we heard this gut awful growl.
I threw off the towel, and there you were, back
from the dead, screaming like a wild banshee. Sherman's eyes
widened and shocked. Your face was so bloody. Oh, it
was pretty scary enough to scare them all away. And
then she paused and said, Sherman, you saved my life.
(15:43):
Tears streamed from both of their eyes, then, as softly
as a whisper, something from the ether, maybe from the
part of him that refused to let the night win,
Maybe from the part that remembered Adrian reaching back him
even as he fell, Maybe from the moon itself, steady
and unblinking, insisting the world could still be beautiful. Sherman
(16:10):
closed his eyes again, exhausted. The melody settled beside him,
like a patient friend, a small light in a dark room,
a promise. He closed his eyes and listened. The melody
grew stronger, a little brighter, a little braver, and suddenly
words appeared, uninvited but welcome. It wasn't a song yet,
(16:36):
not fully, just a world he wanted to live in.
Back five, the becoming next Back five, the becoming. Sherman
didn't leave the hospital for several weeks, quite a few surgeries.
(16:58):
They saw each other only in brief, gentle moments, the
kind of reunions where reaching for someone's hand feels like
a victory. The doctor's encouraged rest quiet in time. Time
was the hardest. It stretched oddly, like a fabric that
didn't quite fit right. Sherman spent his hours sitting beside
the window, staring at the same moon that had looked
(17:18):
so different only nights before. It was rounder now and kinder.
He didn't trust it yet, not entirely, but he listened
to it. The melody that had first arrived in the
dark hospital room kept returning, growing clearer with each sunrise.
He scribbled notes on scraps of paper, borrowed pens from nurses,
hummed softly when he thought nobody was listening. Adrian heard
(17:42):
him once and smile and slow, tired, but real, that's pretty,
she whispered. It's something I heard he said in here,
she asked, tapping her temple. No there, as he tapped
his heart. That's beautiful, she whispered. It sounds like a
world that didn't hurt her us. Sherman nodded, Yeah, that's
(18:03):
exactly what I wanted to be. Friends heard the song next,
and they felt its softness, its invitation, its hope. A
small band, Baffa Longo, recorded it. The world nodded politely
and well moved on. But music has a way of
biding its time, of waiting for the right hands. And
(18:26):
those hands came sooner than he expected. Act six, Waiting
for the Right Night. Next Act six, waiting for the
Right Night. Yes, those hands came sooner than he expected.
(18:46):
They belonged to a band living far from home, Americans
adrift in Paris, chasing music the way some people chase weather.
They called themselves King Harvest, a name that suggested gathering
something that had been waiting all along. One evening, someone
played them a record that never quite found its moment,
a buffo lungo album, a song tucked inside like a
(19:08):
pressed flower. The room changed when it came on. No
one spoke, no one laughed. They just listened. It didn't
sound like a hit. It sounded better than that. It
sounded real. In a small Paris studio, King Harvest found
the pulse the song had been waiting for. The bass
walked easy and human, the piano smiled. The vocal sounded
(19:32):
like someone who trusted the room. When they finished recording it,
they knew they hadn't captured lightning. They captured warmth. When
the song was released in nineteen seventy two, it didn't explode.
It spread slowly, patiently, like something meant to last. Radio
stations played at once, then again and again. Listeners called
(19:56):
DJ's notice. People didn't change the dial. Climbed the charts quietly,
top twenty in the Pop charts, Top five Adult Contemporary.
But more importantly, it stayed. It became the song people
didn't turn off for Sherman. The success changed things in
practical ways. Royalties arrived, bill stopped being emergencies. Music no
(20:18):
longer felt like a gamble he might lose. But something
else happened too. He heard the song in public, in
cars and diners, in places he hadn't been invited. He
realized the Knight no longer belonged only to him. It
belonged to everyone. Adrienne heard it too. Sometimes they heard
it together, sometimes apart. They remained close for a time,
(20:40):
bound by a night neither could forget, and by a
song that rewrote it. But survival doesn't always mean permanence.
Love can be real without being forever. What mattered was this,
They had walked out of the darkness together, and sometimes
beautiful followed them. Years past, the song Refuse to Age.
(21:01):
It returned in the nineteen nineties, then again in the
two thousands each time a new generation claimed it as
their own, unaware they were dancing to an act of defiance.
Weddings and graduation summer nights, open windows, bare feet on
warm pavement, A song written after violence became shorthand for joy,
(21:22):
and Sherman led it. When asked late in life why
he thought the song endured, he didn't mention charts or sales,
he said, because it's about people being kind to each other,
and that never goes out of style.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
That's the quiet miracle here, not that something terrible produced
something beautiful, but that something beautiful refused to let the
terrible have the final word. Every time the song plays,
the night is rewritten, every time people sing along the
road in Saint Croix loses a little of its power.
Every time someone smiles without knowing why. The world imagine
(21:59):
under the moonlight briefly becomes real. And that's the strange,
generous gift of music. It remembered what hurt and then
chooses joy. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Script number twenty two,
The Dark Side of Dancing in the Moonlight. This has
(22:21):
been Johnny's Dead Air podcast. I'm Johnny heart Well, thank
you so much. For listening,
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