Hoagy Carmichael

Hoagland Howard Carmichael, known professionally as Hoagy Carmichael, was born on November 22, 1899, in Bloomington, Indiana, and died on December 27, 1981. Over the course of his career he worked as a musician, composer, songwriter, actor, author, and lawyer, establishing himself as one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s and 1940s.

Carmichael was the first child and only son of Howard Clyde and Lida Mary Carmichael. His parents named him after a circus troupe called the Hoaglands that had lodged at the family home during his mother's pregnancy. His father worked variously as a horse-drawn taxi driver and electrician, while his mother, a versatile pianist, played accompaniment at local nickelodeons, silent movie theaters, and private parties. Because of his father's unstable employment, the family relocated frequently. In 1910, when Carmichael was approximately eleven years old, the family moved to Missoula, Montana, before eventually returning east to Indianapolis in 1916. Carmichael himself went back to Bloomington three years later, in 1919, to finish high school.

His mother introduced him to singing and piano at an early age. Beyond some piano lessons in Indianapolis with bandleader and pianist Reginald DuValle, known later as the elder statesman of Indiana jazz, Carmichael received no formal academic or professional musical training. DuValle also taught him jazz improvisation. At eighteen, Carmichael supplemented his family's income through manual labor in building construction, at a bicycle chain factory, and in a meat slaughterhouse. His first paid musical engagement came in 1918, when he earned five dollars playing at a college fraternity dance at Indiana University, marking the start of his professional career.

The death of his three-year-old sister Joanne in 1918 affected him deeply. He later wrote that her death, which he attributed to poverty and the inability to afford adequate medical care, motivated him never to be broke again. Carmichael attended Indiana University in Bloomington, earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1925 and a law degree in 1926. He was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity and led his own band, Carmichael's Collegians, performing around Indiana and Ohio during his student years.

Around 1922, Carmichael met cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, and the two became friends and musical collaborators. During a visit to Chicago around 1923, Beiderbecke introduced Carmichael to trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who was then playing with King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. Armstrong's work continued to influence Carmichael's compositions. Carmichael's first recorded song, initially titled Free Wheeling, was written for Beiderbecke, whose band, The Wolverines, recorded it as Riverboat Shuffle in 1924 for Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana. Among his other early compositions were Washboard Blues and Boneyard Shuffle, both recorded by Curtis Hitch and his band at the Gennett Records studio. The May 19, 1925, recording of Washboard Blues was the earliest recording on which Carmichael performed his own material, including an improvised piano solo.

After graduating from law school in 1926, Carmichael moved to Florida and worked as a legal clerk in a West Palm Beach firm, but returned to Indiana in 1927 after failing the Florida bar exam. He joined an Indianapolis law firm and passed the Indiana bar, though he devoted the greater part of his energy to music. During his years in New York City from 1929 to 1936, he wrote songs intended to stand independently of theatrical or film productions, while continuing to incorporate jazz influences. His later years in California, from 1936 until his death in 1981, saw him focus predominantly on instrumental compositions, with nearly four dozen written expressly for or incorporated into motion pictures.

Carmichael composed several hundred songs over his career, fifty of which achieved hit-record status. He is particularly associated with four of the most-recorded American songs of all time. Stardust, composed in 1927 with lyrics later added by Mitchell Parish, remains among his most enduring works. Georgia on My Mind followed in 1930, with lyrics by Stuart Gorrell. The Nearness of You, with lyrics by Ned Washington, dates to 1937, and Heart and Soul, with lyrics by Frank Loesser, to 1938. He also collaborated with lyricist Johnny Mercer on Lazybones in 1933 and Skylark in 1941. His song Ole Buttermilk Sky, the theme from the 1946 Western film Canyon Passage, received an Academy Award nomination in 1947. Carmichael appeared in that film as a ukulele- and guitar-playing balladeer and prospector-miner. Four years later, In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening, again with lyrics by Mercer, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1951.

Beyond film, Carmichael appeared as a character actor and musical performer in fourteen other films, hosted three musical-variety radio programs, and performed on television. He also wrote two autobiographies. Because his voice lacked the projection required for unamplified stage performance, he made extensive use of emerging electrical technologies, including the microphone and sound recording, and was among the first singer-songwriters to leverage radio broadcasts, television, and recorded media to reach mass audiences.

On Broadway, Carmichael contributed as a composer to two productions: the musical Walk With Music and the revue Alive and Kicking. These stage credits placed him among the Broadway composers of his era, complementing a career that spanned Tin Pan Alley songwriting, Hollywood film work, radio, and television across more than five decades.