Hoagy Carmichael Biography

Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust" (1927), which has been called the most-recorded American song ever written.

Alec Wilder, in his study of the American popular song, concluded that Hoagy Carmichael was the "most talented, inventive, sophisticated, and jazz-oriented" of the few great craftsmen who were the most important innovators among the hundreds of song writers composing competent pop songs in the first half of the 20th century.

Carmichael was born in Bloomington, Indiana. He attended Indiana University, where he received his Bachelor's degree in 1925 and a law degree in 1926. He was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity. He originally studied law while playing music on the side, but he eventually decided to devote his energies to music. Carmichael maintained a lifelong affiliation with the university; in 1937 he wrote the song "Chimes of Indiana" which was presented to the school as a gift by the class of 1935. It was made Indiana University's official alma mater in 1978. Carmichael also holds the distinction of being awarded an honorary doctorate in music by the Indiana University in 1972.

Carmichael joined ASCAP in 1931. Aside from "Stardust", he wrote "Riverboat Shuffle", "Rockin' Chair", "Washboard Blues", "Heart & Soul", "New Orleans", and "Georgia on My Mind"; he also collaborated with Sidney Arodin on the standard "Up a Lazy River". His collaborations with Johnny Mercer, "Lazybones" (1933), "Skylark" (1942), and "In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening", which won the 1952 Oscar for Best Original Song. Carmichael was one of the first ten songwriters inducted into the USA's Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1969.

Hoagy Carmichael appeared as an actor in at least 14 motion pictures (most notably the Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall classic To Have and Have Not, Young Man with a Horn with Bacall and Kirk Douglas and The Best Years of Our Lives with Myrna Loy and Frederic March), often singing and playing the piano on his own compositions. Carmichael wrote two autobiographies: The Stardust Road (1946) and Sometimes I Wonder (1965). He also voiced a stone-age parody of himself, "Stoney Carmichael" on an episode of The Flintstones.

He died of a heart attack in Rancho Mirage, California. He is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington.

Author Ian Fleming wrote in his novels Casino Royale and Moonraker that British secret agent James Bond resembled Carmichael with a scar down one cheek.