Hoagy Carmichael

Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor, author and lawyer. Carmichael was one of the most successful Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s and 1940s, and was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to use new communication technologies such as old-time radio broadcasts, television, microphones, and sound recordings (musical records).

Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including 50 that achieved hit record status. He is best known for composing four of the most-recorded American songs of all time: "Stardust" (1927), with lyrics by Mitchell Parish, "Georgia on My Mind" (1930), with lyrics by Stuart Gorrell, "The Nearness of You" (1937), with lyrics by Ned Washington, and "Heart and Soul" (1938), with lyrics by Frank Loesser.

He also collaborated with lyricist-songwriter Johnny Mercer (1909-1976), on "Lazybones" (1933), and later "Skylark" (1941). Carmichael's "Ole Buttermilk Sky" of 1946, was an Academy Award nominee for an Oscar in the following year of March 1947, with the eponymous theme song from the Western film Canyon Passage (1946), starring Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward and Ward Bond, in which he co-starred as a ukulele and guitar-playing balladeer musician and prospector-miner riding a mule.

Four years later, "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening," with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1951. Carmichael also appeared as a character actor and musical performer in 14 other films, hosted three musical-variety radio programs, performed on television, and wrote two autobiographies or memoirs.

Hoagland Howard ("Hoagy") Carmichael was born in Bloomington (Monroe County), in central Indiana, on November 22, 1899. He was the first child and only son of Howard Clyde and Lida Mary (Robison) Carmichael. His parents named him after a circus troupe called the "Hoaglands" that had stayed at the Carmichael house during his mother's pregnancy. Howard worked as a horse-drawn taxi driver and later as an electrician, while Lida, a versatile pianist, played musical accompaniment at local nickelodeons and silent movie theaters and private parties to earn extra income. Hoagy had two younger sisters, Georgia and Joanne.

Because of Howard's unstable job history, the family moved frequently. Hoagy lived most of his early years in Bloomington, the county seat of surrounding Monroe County, Indiana. Bloomington was also a college town (for the main campus of Indiana University) and the nearby state capital town of Indianapolis, Indiana. In 1910, the Carmichaels moved far northwest to Missoula, Montana, when young Hoagland was about 11 years old.

Carmichael's mother taught him to sing and play the piano at an early age. With the exception of some piano lessons in nearby Indianapolis with Reginald DuValle (1893-1953), a bandleader, pianist and accordion-player, known later as "the elder statesman of Indiana jazz" and billed as "the Rhythm King", Carmichael had no other academic or professional musical training.

The family moved back east to Indianapolis when Carmichael was age 17 in 1916, but Carmichael only followed and returned to Bloomington three years later in 1919 when he was age 20 to complete high school. For musical inspiration, Carmichael would listen to prominent ragtime music pianists Hank Wells and Hube Hanna. At 18, Carmichael helped supplement his family's meager income by doing manual jobs in building construction, or at a bicycle chain factory, and in a meat slaughterhouse. This bleak time was partially relieved by piano duets with his mother and by his long friendship with local musician-bandleader DuValle, who taught him piano-jazz improvisation. Carmichael earned $5 playing at a college fraternity dance at nearby Indiana University in 1918, marking the beginning of his professional musical career.