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Hoagy Carmichael
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Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust" (1927), and "Heart and Soul", two of the most-recorded American songs of all time.
Alec Wilder, in his study of the American popular song, concluded that Hoagy Carmichael was the "most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented" of the hundreds of writers composing pop songs in the first half of the 20th century.
Early life
Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Carmichael was the only son of Howard Clyde Carmichael and Lida Robison.
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Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust" (1927), and "Heart and Soul", two of the most-recorded American songs of all time.
Alec Wilder, in his study of the American popular song, concluded that Hoagy Carmichael was the "most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented" of the hundreds of writers composing pop songs in the first half of the 20th century.
Early life
Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Carmichael was the only son of Howard Clyde Carmichael and Lida Robison. He was named Hoagland after a circus troupe "The Hoaglands" who stayed at the Carmichael house during his mother's pregnancy. Howard was a horse-drawn taxi driver and electrician, and Lida a versatile pianist who played accompaniment at silent movies and for parties. The family moved frequently, as Howard sought better employment for his growing family. At six, Carmichael started to sing and play the piano, absorbing easily his mother's keyboard skills. By high school, the piano was the focus of his after-school life, and for inspiration he would listen to ragtime pianists Hank Wells and Hube Hanna. At eighteen, the small, wiry, pale Carmichael was living in Indianapolis, trying to help his family’s income working in manual jobs in construction, a bicycle chain factory, and a slaughterhouse. The bleak time was partly spelled by four-handed piano duets with his mother and by his strong friendship with Reg DuValle, black bandleader and pianist known as "the elder statesman of Indiana jazz" and "the Rhythm King", who taught him piano jazz improvization.
The death of his three-year-old sister in 1918 affected him deeply, and he wrote "My sister Joanne—the victim of poverty. We couldn’t afford a good doctor or good attention, and that’s when I vowed I would never be broke again in my lifetime." She may have died from influenza, which had swept the world that year. Carmichael earned his first money ($5.00) as a musician playing at a fraternity dance that year and began his musical career.
Carmichael attended Indiana University and the Indiana University School of Law, where he received his Bachelor's degree in 1925 and a law degree in 1926. He was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity and played the piano all around the state with his "Collegians" to support his studies. He met, befriended, and played with Bix Beiderbecke, the great cornetist (and sometime pianist) and fellow Mid-westerner. Under Beiderbecke’s spell, Carmichael started to play the cornet as well, but found that he didn't have the lips for it, and only played it for a short while. He was also influenced by Beiderbecke's impressionistic and classical musical ideas. On a visit to Chicago, Carmichael was introduced by Beiderbecke to Louis Armstrong, who was then playing with King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, and with whom he would collaborate later.
He began to compose songs, "Washboard Blues" and "Boneyard Shuffle" for Curtis Hitch, and also "Riverboat Shuffle", recorded by Beiderbecke, which became a staple of "white" jazz and Carmichael’s first recorded song. After graduating in 1926, he moved to Miami to join a local law firm but, failing the bar exam, returned to Indiana in 1927. He joined an Indiana law firm and passed the state bar, but devoted most of his energies to music, arranging band dates, and "writing tunes". He had discovered his method of songwriting, which he described later: "You don't write melodies, you find them…If you find the beginning of a good song, and if your fingers do not stray, the melody should come out of hiding in a short time."
Early career
Later in 1927, Carmichael’s career got off to a flying start. Carmichael finished and recorded one of his most famous songs, the sophisticated "Star Dust" (later re-named "Stardust", with lyrics added in 1929), at the Gennett Records studio in Richmond, Indiana, with Carmichael doing the piano solo. The song, an idiosyncratic melody in medium tempo, actually a song about a song, later became the quintessential American standard, recorded by dozens of artists. Shortly thereafter, Carmichael got bigtime recognition when Paul Whiteman recorded "Washboard Blues", with Carmichael playing and singing, and the Dorsey brothers and Bix Beiderbecke in the orchestra. Despite his growing fame, at this stage Carmichael was still somewhat handicapped by his inability to sight-read and notate music properly, though clearly innovative and talented. With coaching, he soon became more proficient at arranging his own music.
His first major song with his own lyrics was "Rockin' Chair", recorded by Armstrong and Mildred Bailey. In the future, however, most of his successful songs would have lyrics provided by collaborators. After Carmichael was fired from his law firm, he left law practice forever and headed for Hollywood to try his luck with musicals. He hung out with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra for a while but no work came of it and he moved to New York City in the summer of 1929.
1930s
In New York, Carmichael met up with Duke Ellington's agent and publisher Irving Mills and hired him to set up recording dates. In October of 1929 the stock market crashed and Carmichael's hard-earned savings went south. Fortunately, Louis Armstrong then recorded "Rockin' Chair" at Okeh studios, giving a badly needed boost to Carmichael. Carmichael had begun to work at an investment house and was considering a switch in career when he composed "Georgia on My Mind", perhaps most famous in the Ray Charles rendition recorded many years later.
Carmichael composed and recorded "Up a Lazy River" in 1930 (lyrics by Sidney Arodin) and the first recorded version of "Stardust" with lyrics (by Mitchell Parish) was recorded by Bing Crosby in 1931. He joined ASCAP in 1931 and began working for Ralph Peer’s Southern Music Company in 1932 as a songwriter, the first music firm to occupy the new Brill Building, famous as a New York songwriting mecca. It was a low paying but steady job at a time when the Depression was having a harsh effect on live jazz performance and many musicians were out of work. Bix Beiderbecke’s early death also darkened Carmichael’s mood. Of that time, he wrote later: "I was tiring of jazz and I could see that other musicians were tiring as well. The boys were losing their enthusiasm for the hot stuff…No more hot licks, no more thrills."
The elegy for hot jazz was premature, but Swing was just around the corner and jazz would soon turn in another direction, with new bandleaders like the Dorseys and Benny Goodman, and new singers like Frank Sinatra leading the way. Carmichael’s output soon would be heading in that direction. In 1933 Carmichael began his collaboration with newly arrived lyricist Johnny Mercer on "Thanksgiving", "Moon Country", and "Lazybones", which was a smash hit selling over 350,000 copies in three months. Carmichael's financial condition improved dramatically as royalties started to pour in. Now he was hobnobing with George Gershwin, Fred Astaire, Duke Ellington, and other music giants in the New York scene. His success improved his social life considerably and now he could afford a comfortable apartment and dapper clothes.
Carmichael started to emerge as a solo singer-performer, first at parties, then professionally. He described his unique, laconic voice as being "the way a shaggy dog looks…I have Wabash fog and sycamore twigs in my throat". Some fans were dismayed as he steadily veered away from hot jazz, but recordings by Louis Armstrong continued to "jazz up" Carmichael’s popular songs. In 1935 he left Peers and started composing songs for a division of Warner Brothers, establishing his connection with Hollywood. His song "Moonburn", his first movie song, appeared in the film version of Anything Goes.
In 1935 Carmichael married preacher’s daughter Ruth Menardi. He eventually had two sons by his marriage to Ruth Menardi: Hoagy Bix and Randy Bob. He moved to California and accepted a contract with Paramount for $1,000 a week, joining other famous songwriters working for the Hollywood studios, including Harry Warren (Warners), E. Y. Harburg (MGM), Ralph Rainger and Leo Rubin at Paramount. Soon, the Carmichaels were accepted members of the Hollywood community, attending parties and hanging out in palatial homes. In 1937 Carmichael appeared in the movie Topper, serenading Cary Grant and Constance Bennett with his song "Old Man Moon".
In 1937 he wrote the song Chimes of Indiana which was presented to Indiana University as a gift by the class of 1935. It was made the school's official co-alma mater in 1978. (Carmichael also holds the distinction of being awarded an honorary doctorate in music by the university in 1972.)
With Paramount lyricist Frank Loesser, he wrote "Two Sleepy People" in 1938. Around the same time Carmichael composed, "Heart and Soul", "Small Fry", and "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)" (premiered by Dick Powell in a radio broadcast). However, countering these successes, Carmichael's and Mercer's Broadway score for Walk With Music was unsuccessful. In 1939, Hoagy Bix, the Carmichael’s first child, was born.
1940s
Now living in the former mansion of chewing gum heir William P. Wrigley, Jr., the growing Carmichael family was thriving in Los Angeles as World War II broke out. He maintained a strong personal and professional relationship with Johnny Mercer. That continuing collaboration led to "Skylark" in 1942, recorded almost immediately by Glenn Miller , Dinah Shore, and Helen Forrest (with Harry James). In 1943, Carmichael returned to the movies and played "Cricket" in the screen adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, opposite Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, where he sang "Hong Kong Blues" and "The Rhumba Jumps", and played piano as Bacall sang "How Little We Know". He also contributed to the 1941 animated film, Mister Bug Goes to Town.
Carmichael would appear as an actor in a total of 14 motion pictures, always playing at least one of his songs, including Young Man with a Horn (based on friend Bix Beiderbecke's life) with Bacall and Kirk Douglas, and multi-Academy Award winner The Best Years of Our Lives with Myrna Loy and Fredric March), in which he teaches a disabled veteran with metal prostheses to play "Chop Sticks". He described his screen persona as the "hound-dog-faced old musical philosopher noodling on the honky-tonk piano, saying to a tart with a heart of gold: "He'll be back, honey. He's all man"."
When composing, Carmichael was incessant according to his son Randy, working over a song for days or weeks until it was perfect. His perfectionism extended to his clothes, grooming, and eating as well. Once the work was done, however, Carmichael would cut loose--relax, play golf, drink , and indulge in the Hollywood high life.
Carmichael was a Republican supporter and FDR hater, voting for Wendell Wilkie for president in 1940, and was often aghast at the left-leaning political views of his friends in Hollywood. His contribution to the war effort was similar to other patriotic efforts by Irving Berlin ("This Is the Army, Mr. Jones"), Johnny Mercer ("G.I. Jive"), and Frank Loesser ("Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition"). Carmichael's war time songs (most with lyrics by Paul Francis Webster) included "My Christmas Song for You", "Don't Forget to Say 'No' Baby", "Billy-a-Dick", "The Army of Hippocrates", "Cranky Old Yank", "Eager Beaver", "No More Toujours l'Amour", "Morning Glory", and the never completed "Hitler Blues". He regularly performed on USO shows.
Carmichael's 1943 song "I'm a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama Doin' Those Beat-o, Beat-o Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues" is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the song with the longest title. However Carmichael admitted it was a joke; the title was intended to end with the word 'Yank'.
Between 1944 and 1948, Carmichael was the host of three musical variety radio programs. In 1944–45, the 30-minute Tonight at Hoagy's aired on Mutual Sunday nights at 8:30 pm (Pacific time), sponsored by Safeway supermarkets. Produced by Walter Snow, the show featured Carmichael as host and vocalist. The musicians included Pee Wee Hunt and Joe Venuti. Fans were rather blunt about his singing, with comments like "you can't sing for sour owl" and "your singing is so delightfully awful that it is really funny".
NBC carried the 30-minute Something New at 6 pm (Pacific time) on Mondays in 1945–46. All of the musicians in this show's band, the "Teenagers," were between the ages of 16 and 19. Carol Stewart and Gale Robbins were the vocalists and comedy was supplied by Pinky Lee and the team of Bob Sweeney and Hal March, later of quiz show fame.
The Hoagy Carmichael Show was broadcast by CBS from October 26, 1946 until June 26, 1948. Luden Cough Drops sponsored the 15-minute program until June 1947.
In 1948 Carmichael composed a longer piece called Brown County in Autumn, a nine-minute tone poem which was not well-received by critics.
1950s
"In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening", with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, won Carmichael his first Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Mercer his fourth. In 1952, he played his composition "My Resistance Is Low" in the movie The Las Vegas Story. The song did not catch fire in the U.S. but was a major hit in England, where it charted a second time in 1963 after being covered by Liverpool beat band Buddy Britten and the Regents , also appearing in instrumental form on The Shadows' debut LP.
In the early 1950s, television took off and variety shows were particularly popular. Carmichael hosted Saturday Night Review in June 1953, a summer replacement series, but found the pressure too intense and did not return the following summer. Among his numerous television roles, he was a regular on Laramie (1959-63), co-starred in The Helen Morgan Story on Playhouse 90 (1957) and provided the voice for a stone-age parody of himself, "Stoney Carmichael", in an episode of The Flintstones aired in September, 1961. Around 1955, Carmichael reprised the Dooley Wilson role in a television adaptation of Casablanca, playing "Sam" the piano player.
Carmichael composed seven songs for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes but only two made the final cut "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love" and "When Love Goes Wrong (Nothing Goes Right)", with Jane Russell singing the former.
As Rock and Roll emerged in the mid-1950's, the youth audience was drifting away from standards like Carmichael's, and the music industry found less commercial appeal in his new songs, while jazz aficionados turned their attention to "bebop". Carmichael's marriage also dissolved during this time. As his song writing career started to ebb, Carmichael still received the blessings of his substantial recordings. He also wrote some songs for children.
Later years
In 1960, Ray Charles' version of "Georgia on My Mind" was a hit, receiving Grammys for Best Male Vocal and Best Popular Single. Carmichael's rediscovery, however, did little for his new material, which was all but ignored by the recording industry, including songs such as "The Ballad of Sam Older", "A Perfect Paris Night", "Behold, How Beautiful", "Bamboo Curtains", and "Close Beside You". Jerry Lee Lewis recorded "Hong Kong Blues" during his final Sun sessions in 1963, but it was never released. In 1964, while The Beatles were exploding on the scene, Carmichael lamented, "I'll betcha I have twenty-five songs lying in my trunk" and no one was calling to say "have you got a real good song for such-and such an artist". Nonetheless, royalties of his standards were still bringing in over $300,000 a year.
His attempt to compose movie scores failed when his score for Hatari was replaced by that of Henry Mancini, although his song "Just for Tonight" (a re-working of "A Perfect Paris Night") is used in the film.
With the Johnny Appleseed Suite, Carmichael once again tried his hand at a longer musical composition, but the episodic treatment lacked the compositional unity and momentum of works such as George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
By 1967, Carmichael was spending time back in New York but was still unsuccessful with his new songs.
Carmichael was inducted into the USA's Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971 along with Duke Ellington. The 1970s went by with little musical success and fewer people recognizing him in public. With the help and encouragement of his son Bix, Carmichael participated in the PBS television show Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop, which featured jazz-rock versions of his hits. He appeared on Fred Rogers PBS show Old Friends, New Friends. With time on his hands, he resumed painting.
Former Beatles singer and songwriter John Lennon announced that Hoagy Carmichael was his favourite songwriter. George Harrison was also an avid fan, having covered "Baltimore Oriole" and "Hong Kong Blues".
On his 80th birthday, Carmichael said "I’m a bit disappointed in myself. I know I could have accomplished a hell of a lot more... I could write anything any time I wanted to. But I let other things get in the way... I’ve been floating around in the breeze."
Shortly before his death, Carmichael appeared on a UK-recorded tribute album, In Hoagland (1981), together with Annie Ross and Georgie Fame.
Carmichael died of heart failure in Rancho Mirage, California, on December 27, 1981. He is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington.
In 2007 he was inducted into the Gennett Records Walk of Fame in Richmond, Indiana. A bronze and ceramic plaque is placed near the location of the studio where he first recorded "Stardust."
On July 5, 2008, a mural with his portrait was dedicated to him on the south wall of the Readmore building in Richmond, Indiana. His son Randy played a few songs in the Leland Residence after the ceremony.
Songs with music or lyrics by Carmichael
- "Riverboat Shuffle" (1924) - lyric by Carmichael, Dick Voynow, Irving Mills and Mitchell Parish
- "Washboard Blues" (1925) – lyric by Carmichael, Fred B. Callahan and Irving Mills
- "Stardust" (1929) – lyric by Mitchell Parish
- "Georgia on My Mind" (1930) – lyric by Stuart Gorrell
- "Rockin' Chair" (1930) – lyric by Carmichael
- "Come Easy Go Easy Love" (1931) – lyric by Sunny Clapp
- "(Up a) Lazy River" (1931) – lyric by Carmichael and Sidney Arodin
- "In the Still of the Night" (1932) – lyric by Jo Trent
- "Lazybones" (1933) – lyric by Carmichael and Johnny Mercer
- "One Morning in May" (1933) - lyrics by Mitchell Parish
- "Little Old Lady" (1936) – lyric by Carmichael and Stanley Adams
- "Lyin' to Myself" (1936) – lyric by Stanley Adams
- "Moonburn" (1936) – lyric by Edward Heyman
- "The Nearness of You" (1937) – lyric by Ned Washington
- "Heart and Soul" (1938) – lyric by Frank Loesser
- "Small Fry" (1938) – lyric by Frank Loesser
- "Two Sleepy People" (1938) – lyric by Frank Loesser
- "I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)" (1938) – lyric by Carmichael
- "Hong Kong Blues" (1939) – lyric by Carmichael
- "Riverboat Shuffle" (1939) – lyric by Carmichael, Dick Voynow, Irving Mills and Mitchell Parish
- "Can't get Indiana Off My Mind" (1940) – lyric by Robert DeLeon
- "I Walk With Music" (1940) – lyric by Johnny Mercer
- "Way Back in 1939 A.D." (1940) – lyric by Johnny Mercer
- "Skylark" (1941) – lyric by Johnny Mercer
- "Baltimore Oriole" (1942) – lyric by Paul Francis Webster
- "The Lamplighter's Serenade" (1942) – lyric by Paul Francis Webster
- "Old Music Master" (1943) – lyric by Johnny Mercer
- "Billy-a-Dick" (1945) – lyric by Paul Francis Webster
- "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief" (1945) – lyric by Paul Francis Webster
- "Memphis in June" (1945) – lyric by Paul Francis Webster
- "Ole Buttermilk Sky" (1946) – lyric by Carmichael and Jack Brooks
- "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" (1950) – lyric by Johnny Mercer
- "My Resistance Is Low" (1951) – lyric by Harold Adamson
- "Watermelon Weather" (1952) – lyric by Paul Francis Webster
- "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?" (1953) – lyric by Harold Adamson
- "When Love Goes Wrong (Nothin' Goes Right)" (1953) – lyric by Harold Adamson
Books
Carmichael wrote two autobiographies: The Stardust Road (1946) and Sometimes I Wonder (1965). These were combined into a single volume for a paperback published by Da Capo in 1999.
Author Ian Fleming wrote in his novels Casino Royale and Moonraker that British secret agent James Bond resembled Carmichael, but with a scar down one cheek. In the book Casino Royale, James Bond compares himself unfavorably with Carmichael.
Dick Sudhalter wrote the first full biography, Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael (Oxford University Press, 2002).
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