Books, Arts & Manners: From Hoagy to Nancy

One of the abounding talents of our times was Hoagland Howard Carmichael, known to a grateful world as Hoagy. He was a sound jazz pianist, a topnotch writer of music, and an excellent performer and actor. He played with the legendary Bix Beiderbecke, for whom he held an almost rapturous admiration until his dying day, and he stole a scene or two from Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not, a film far better than the Hemingway novel on which it was putatively based. He wrote some of the most lyrical and beautifully contrived songs of our times—and many of the standards that still send our great jazzmen.

Now the Smithsonian Institution and the Indiana Historical Society—Hoagy was a Hoosier—have put together with love and good sense a four-LP album that includes most of Hoagy’s recorded oeuvre. (Most, that is, of his compositions, not most of the hundreds of recordings made by hundreds of soloists and orchestras.) It comes with a distinguished pamphlet of history, analysis, and appreciation by John Edward Hasse, who was also the producer of the album. Here Louis Armstrong, Mildred Bailey, Frank Sinatra, Ethel Waters, Bing Crosby, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Hoagy himself, with plenty of et ceteras, give us single and multiple versions of “Stardust,” “Lazy River,” “Skylark,” “Hong Kong Blues,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Rockin’ Chair”—you name it. One is impressed by the sheer creativity of these songs, and the musical subtlety with which they are crafted—both accentuated by the styles and approaches of this galaxy of performers (Smithsonian 2300, available from Smithsonian Recordings, Box 10230, Des Moines, Iowa 50381-0230).

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Ralph de Toledano

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One of the abounding talents of our times was Hoagland Howard Carmichael, known to a grateful world as Hoagy. He was a sound jazz pianist, a topnotch writer of music, and an excellent performer and actor. He played with the legendary Bix Beiderbecke, for whom he held an almost rapturous admiration until his dying day, and he stole a scene or two from Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not, a film far better than the Hemingway novel on which it was putatively based. He wrote some of the most lyrical and beautifully contrived songs of our times—and many of the standards that still send our great jazzmen.

Now the Smithsonian Institution and the Indiana Historical Society—Hoagy was a Hoosier—have put together with love and good sense a four-LP album that includes most of Hoagy’s recorded oeuvre. (Most, that is, of his compositions, not most of the hundreds of recordings made by hundreds of soloists and orchestras.) It comes with a distinguished pamphlet of history, analysis, and appreciation by John Edward Hasse, who was also the producer of the album. Here Louis Armstrong, Mildred Bailey, Frank Sinatra, Ethel Waters, Bing Crosby, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Hoagy himself, with plenty of et ceteras, give us single and multiple versions of “Stardust,” “Lazy River,” “Skylark,” “Hong Kong Blues,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Rockin’ Chair”—you name it. One is impressed by the sheer creativity of these songs, and the musical subtlety with which they are crafted—both accentuated by the styles and approaches of this galaxy of performers (Smithsonian 2300, available from Smithsonian Recordings, Box 10230, Des Moines, Iowa 50381-0230).