Happy Birthday To Jazz Legend, Bloomington Native Hoagy Carmichael

Famed songwriter Hoagy Carmichael was born in Bloomington, Indiana on Nov. 22, 1899. His contributions to jazz music helped put Bloomington on the map.

More than 100 years after his birth, Carmichael is still an integral part of his home town.

WFIU Jazz Director David Brent Johnson explains how Carmichael got started and why his work is still critical today:

David Brent Johnson will broadcast his annual Thanksgiving Day tribute to the music of Hoagy Carmichael on his birthday this Thursday from 3-5 p.m. on Just You And Me, including an interview about a newly-discovered Hoagy song. 

What You Should Know About Hoagy Carmichael

Hoagy Carmichael was one of the most successful songwriters to ever come along. And he was really a poet, I think, of the American spirit of the early 20th century and beyond. And he came from Bloomington, Indiana, this little university backwater town in the early 20th century and he wrote songs that went around the world.

Publicity photo of Hoagy Carmichael and George Gobel to promote the fact that both were scheduled to be guest hosts of the NBC television program Saturday Night Revue.

There’s this image of Hoagy as this sleepy, laidback guy with a hat tilted back on his head and a cigarette drooping from his mouth, and he did as much as anybody to propagate that image. But behind that he was actually a pretty driven guy who had a fierce energy to him, and that was what I think propelled his song writing. He was very driven, very committed to his craft, very hardworking.

Writing ‘Stardust’

There’s that sign outside the restaurant where the Book Nook used to be on Indiana Ave. that commemorates the part that that particular building played in the formation of what’s really maybe the most famous song in the world.

Sheet music for the Hoagy Carmichael song ‘Stardust,’ which was at least partially composed at The Book Nook near the IU Sample Gates. (Zach Herndon, WFIU/WTIU News)

There’s that sign outside the restaurant where the Book Nook used to be on Indiana Ave. that commemorates the part that that particular building played in the formation of what’s quite possibly the most famous song in the world.

Hoagy said about writing Stardust that it came to him one night when he was sitting on what was called the “spooning wall: on Indiana Ave. and he was close to a place called The Book Nook and it was closed, it was very late at night, but he said that this melody just came to him and he had to get it down, he had to play it out on the piano and write it down.

So he ran across the street and frantically banged on the door of The Book Nook and managed to implore the owner to open it back up for him so he could go in there and work this melody out on the piano.

Now, some musical scholars have constructed that he actually wrote the whole piece over a longer stretch of time. But it’s not implausible that this part of it actually happened. The owner of The Book Nook talked about it in an interview many years later, so there probably is some truth that at least part of the song did come to him in this manner.

Carmichael’s Lasting Impact

‘Stardust’ is one of the most recorded songs in the history of music, and his songs are still played by jazz musicians today, but what he did also goes beyond jazz. In a way Carmichael was one of the first singer-songwriters, as his biographer put it. When you think about people like Elton John and Billy Joel and other performers who played piano and have written their own songs and performed them, Hoagy was their predecessor, a pioneer at that sort of thing.