Bluebird Released Hoagy Carmichael And Friends April 23, 2002

Bluebird celebrates Hoagy Carmichael’s brilliance as both songwriter and performer with the release of a new, 21-track collection entitled Hoagy Carmichael and Friends: Stardust Melody, which is already in stores. Hailed by renowned American composer Alec Wilder as “the most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented of all the great songwriters – the greatest of the great craftsmen,” Carmichael was one of America’s great songsmiths and an early father of the singer-songwriter pop music movement. He penned such classic songs as “Georgia on My Mind,” “Star Dust,” “Skylark,” “Rockin’ Chair” and “Lazybones.”

The CD features 21 tracks performed by the likes of Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden, Bix Beiderbecke with Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Billy Eckstine, Earl Hines, Hot Lips Page, Ethel Waters and Mildred Bailey as well as by Carmichael alone on piano for three tunes (“Star Dust,” “Cosmic” and “Lazybones”) and leading his orchestra on six others, including a previously unreleased version of “Rockin’ Chair” and the first authorized release of “March of the Hoodlums.” All these vintage recordings have been completely remastered in high-resolution 24-bit audio for optimum sonics.

Such legendary performers as Louis Armstrong, Mildred Bailey, Benny Goodman and Bix Beiderbecke – a close college friend who originally encouraged him to try his hand at writing songs – favored Hoagy Carmichael and his songs. And, unlike most of the great songwriters of his day, Carmichael was also a fine musician who played piano, sang and led his own orchestra. Many of the recordings of his own music in the early ‘30s were made for RCA Victor.

The sessions included here were recorded between 1925 and 1947, with the earliest studio dates by the Benson Orchestra of Chicago (personnel unknown) taking a rousing spin through “Riverboat Shuffle” (1925) and Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orchestra playing a down-home bluesy-to-swinging rendition of “Washboard Blues” (1927). Featured performers in Whiteman’s band included cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, trombonist Tommy Dorsey, clarinetist Jimmy Dorsey and Carmichael on piano and vocals. The latest recordings on the album are the 1945 version of “Skylark” by Earl Hines and His Orchestra (featuring Hines on piano and Billy Eckstine on vocals) and the 1947 live recording of “Rockin’ Chair” by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra (with Pops and Jack Teagarden sharing a turn at the mic).

Noted jazz historian and author Richard M. Sudhalter compiled Hoagy Carmichael and Friends: Stardust Memories for Bluebird. In addition to writing the album’s liner notes, Sudhalter is the author of the new biography Stardust Melodies: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael, published in April 2002 by Oxford University Press. In the liner notes, Sudhalter tells the story of how Carmichael began writing music. The native Midwesterner and Bix Beiderbecke were hanging out at their Kappa Sigma fraternity house in Bloomington, Indiana in 1924, listening to Stravinsky’s Firebird on a windup Victrola, when Beiderbecke suggested that Carmichael write some music.