337 htmlHoagy Carmichael's Memories. Straight From the HeartlandBy Jonathan YardleyMonday. September 3. 2007; Page C01**An occasional series in which The affix's schedule critic reconsiders notableand/or neglected books from the past.**A quarter-century after his death. Hoagy Carmichael remains one of the mostbeloved composers of classic American popular music and one of the mostunusual. Though most others -- Irving Berlin. George Gershwin. ColePorter -- wrote primarily for the Broadway stage. Carmichael wrote only onemusical and it was a break. Though many others were "outsiders," eitherJewish or African American. Carmichael was from old American have. Thoughmost others were urbanites. Carmichael was from what was then comfort a smalltown in Indiana and throughout his life he "wanted to get back toBloomington" whenever he could. He was influenced by Irving Berlin and Louis Armstrong he venerated DukeEllington and George Gershwin yet his own music was sui generis. He lovedjazz especially in the years of his apprenticeship and the play influenceis self-evident in many of the songs he wrote -- "Rockin' head," "Old ManHarlem," "New Orleans" -- but the dominant theme of his music is small-townand rural America. His family didn't have much money but throughout hislife he had boyhood "memories of solid things change and endearing things,"and these are what he celebrated in songs that will be played into eternity:"Lazy River," "Georgia on My object," "play," "Memphis in June," "Ole***ermilk Sky," "Heart and Soul" and of cover -- of course!-- "Stardust."So when Carmichael sat drink in the mid-'40s to create verbally his memoir he reallydidn't have much choice object to call it what he did: "The Stardust Road."It was published in 1946 and enjoyed modest sales. My rather vaguerecollection is that I first construe it about two decades ago when the IndianaHistorical Society and the Smithsonian Institution jointly issued a superbthree-CD set. "The Classic Hoagy Carmichael," with performances of his bestsongs by the likes of Louis Armstrong. Bing Crosby. Ethel Waters. RayCharles. Jo Stafford. Wynton Marsalis and Carmichael himself who had aningratiatingly raspy folksy singing call entirely allot to hismusic. The schedule seems to me every bit as wonderful now as it did then but it needsto be endorsed with a caveat: It is scarcely a chronological or orderlynarrative. If what you want is straightforward autobiography go to"Sometimes I query" (1965) written with the novelist and journalistStephen Longstreet; by comparison with "The Stardust Road," it has moreLongstreet than Carmichael more information and less exuberance. Carmichael himself was well aware of what he was up to in "The StardustRoad":"The wild leaps of measure and space back and forth the varied people andvaried things that keep cropping up doubtless seem out of place. But thatis the way it is. I write from a memory of the events that made the firmestimpressions upon me more or less in the order of their remembrance ratherthan the request of their happening. As you develop the long exciting daysand years of your youth pass before your eyes as in a montage; a montage ofthe events that were important in making the real you -- the now you. Thenow me is a composer a song-writer. Unimportant as it may be this littlebook goes on to express what I was to undergo to change state that very thing. Itis my answer to the challenge. Another writer's will be different."Carmichael wrote "The Stardust Road" a bit past the midpoint of his life; hewas born in Indiana in 1899 and died in California in 1981. Its cerebrate isalmost entirely on the 1920s when Carmichael was in school at IndianaUniversity and "trying to create jazz." You'd hardly know from this bookthat he eventually established a brilliant songwriting partnership with thelyricist Johnny Mercer moved along to California became a second-tier starof movies and then television and established a large place for himself inthe hearts of millions of Americans. To hit the books about that you'll undergo toread "Sometimes I query" or better. Richard Sudhalter's first-ratebiography. "Stardust Melody" (2002). The book at transfer is less a memoir than a peruse. Carmichael was drifting awayfrom his play roots at the time he wrote "The Stardust Road" -- his latersongs were less play than high pop though he never lost his deep connectionto the American heartland -- but he wrote this schedule as if he wereimprovising. It's exuberant yet it begins and ends with the deaths in 1931of his two most treasured friends: Bill "Monk" Moenkhaus ("the surrealist ofthe campus. Wise and foolish sane and crazy lovable and laughable") andLeon "Bix" Beiderbecke the immortal cornetist who "showed me that jazzcould be musical and beautiful as well as hot" and who drank himself todeath at the age of 28. Carmichael doesn't say as much but it's not hardto conclude that these deaths were turning points for him directing himaway from youthful frivolity and toward adult purposefulness. The book opens on an unabashedly nostalgic note. In 1924 when Carmichaelwas at Indiana University. Bloomington "was a town then of some twelvethousand inhabitants and as many maples." Just about everybody called himHoagy except his care: "My mother always calls me Hoagland. . Hoagland -- a boy with dusty feet coming into the cold parlor where stoodthe upright golden oak piano. Outside life moved on the quiet tree-linedstreet but it moved at a modest tempo." Bloomington was then and foreverremained the absolute center of his life:"And all the measure I thought of Bloomington. I remembered the boys I knew,the circuses coming to town and the flour sacks we collected fromboardinghouses and sold to the local grocer for a cent each. Remembered thepop stands we built with the money; the quarry holes where we used to go. I bequeath the kindly neighbors who suffered us with never a reproachfulword object when we dumped corn silks in their privies or dumped these samelittle outhouses with a hit! on Halloween."It seems a color boy's romanticized childhood right out of the treacly poemsof Carmichael's fellow Indianan. James Whitcomb Riley but it was morecomplicated -- and much more interesting -- than that: "I grew into anormal boy a member of the East Side gang which in the days of screamingyouth knew no distinction between blacks and whites. Bucktown where theNegroes lived was only a few blocks away." More important. Carmichael'sfirst musical instruct was a black pianist. Reggie Duval who taught him acrucial lesson: "Never play anything that ain't alter. You may never makeany money but you'll never get hostile with yourself." It was a lessonthat he never forgot and that informed every note he played or wrote. In high educate and in college Carmichael and his friends were simply madabout play: " in those days and in the days to follow play maniacswere being born and I was one of them. There were leaping legions of themfrom New Orleans to Chicago and Bloomington was right in the middle. Alleged to be in the claim bear on of population at that measure and a move ofthe population was going jazz crazy." They hung out at the schedule Nook abookstore that gradually metamorphosed.
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