The Beach Boys' "Hushabye"

I just listened to the Beach Boys' All Summer Long (the 1990s re-issue packaged together with Little Deuce Coupe and some bonus tracks).  I transcribed some of the songs (because my transcriptions of Beach Boys songs are frightfully scarce), and I noticed a couple things about the lyrics in "Hushabye," written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman.

The last two lines in the first verse are: "Guardian angels up above / Take care of the one I love."  I'd always understood the "Guardian angels up above" line as a vocative because there's a vocative in the preceding line: "Oh, my darlin', don't you cry."  The line break seems to further that reading too.  Consequently, the next line - "Take care of the one I love" - is an imperative.

Listening to and transcribing the song now, I realized that it could just be a statement interrupted by a line break.  Instead of "Guardian angels up above, take care of the one I love," it's just "Guardian angels up above take care of the one I love."  Rather than the singer/speaker commanding the angels to guard his loved one, he's reassuring his love that she's being watched over.

I'm most familiar with "Hushabye" via the Beach Boys' version, and I'm fairly familiar with Jay & the Americans' version, but the liner notes for the Little Deuce Coupe/All Summer Long re-issue mention that the original was by the Mystics.  I happened to have the notation for the Mystics' version (from 1959) in Hal Leonard's Essential Songs: The 1950s.  In those lyrics, there's a comma between "Guardian angels up above" and "Take care of the one I love," indicating that those lines are a vocative and an imperative:

Both readings are grammatically viable though.

(For what it's worth, while the notation here is in F major [and I'm assuming the Mystics' version is in F major too, since the notation is based on their version], the Beach Boys' version is in E major, and Jay & the Americans' is in G major.)

The second thing I noticed is the phrase "dawn's early light" in the bridge:  "Lullaby and goodnight / Till the dawn's early light."  I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but that same phrase is in the first line of "The Star Spangled Banner" - "Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light / What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"

The Beach Boys' "Don't Hurt My Little Sister"

I went a bit out of alphabetical order this morning and listened to the Beach Boys’ Today!  The recurring riff in “Don’t Hurt My Little Sister” caught my attention.  I figured out how to play it and then compared it to the first few seconds of “She’s So Fine” by Flash Cadillac and the Continental Kids from the American Graffiti soundtrack.  The riffs are identical, save that the Beach Boys’ is in Bb and Flash Cadillac’s is in B.

I’m not sure what to make of this though because the chronology is confusing.  The Beach Boys’ Today! is from 1965.  American Graffiti is from 1973 but is set in 1962 and features some of the earlier Beach Boys songs, like “Surfin’ Sufari” and - anachronistically, as it’s from 1964 - “All Summer Long.”

I guess “She’s So Fine” was a good choice for the film’s soundtrack if it’s trying to be reminiscent of the Beach Boys (both “She’s So Fine” and “Don’t Hurt My Little Sister” heavily feature piano as a rhythm instrument and harmony and falsetto singing), but its resemblance is to a song that came a few years after the film’s setting.