The Melody Haunts My Reverie
by Jay Sherman-Godfrey
On October 31, 1927, a group of former Indiana University fraternity brothers and remnants of the recently-defunct Jean Goldkette Orchestra convened at the offices of the Gennett Recording Company in Richmond, Indiana to cut a few sides. The ringleader was Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael, a newly-minted lawyer, semi-professional piano player, and fledgling songwriter. He was at a crossroads of sorts, just back from a half-hearted attempt at practicing law full time in Florida and now residing with his parents in Indianapolis. He was a little deflated at having slunk back home, and at 28, feeling long in the tooth for a fresh start, he was determined to make another go at music.
The Halloween date was apropos, because a haunting was involved. Not the ghostly kind, mind you. The haunter was an odd little tune. It had first crept into his mind some time ago, and nestled there, nagging at him. It was as much a feeling as a tune, but he knew it was special, and so he nurtured and refined it on any nearby piano whenever he had a moment or two. And now, even though it still felt half finished, he coaxed together a band to cut a rather tentative version that nonetheless showed the promise of a greatness. When quizzed by one of the musicians for a title, Carmichael replied, “Just call it Stardust.” Years later, Carmichael would craft a predictable, Hollywood-buffed story for the origins of "Star Dust" (the title was changed to two words in 1929 when the lyric was added). In it, he received the tune whole-hog from the heavens one steamy summer night, lovelorn, gazing into the sky from atop the campus spooning wall. In truth, the song was the creation of four men (three directly, one in spirit), and transformed into the song we know today by a keen-eared bandleader and fast-rising jazz singer from Tacoma, Washington by the name of Crosby.
In May 1928, Carmichael and His Collegians were back in the studio and took another crack at Stardust (sadly, the recording does not survive). This time it had a lyric, and Star Dust’s peculiar life as a song about a song (indeed about itself) began with Hoagy’s self-penned opening line, “Stardust melody, you hold a charm throughout the years.” I’d like to imagine the power of the tune itself suggested this. "I've been up here in your head so long, Hoagy, what else could I be about?" And a powerful tune it was. Wally Wilson, a saxophonist and fellow IU alum, couldn’t get it out of his head either. He took the Stardust chart with him to med school at USC. The SoCal kids dug it hard, and he found himself playing it half a dozen times at dances by request. Awakened one one night by a nightmare, he jotted down a lyric. His woozy scribblings included these now familiar lines: “I sometimes wonder why I spend my time dreaming of a song. A melody haunts my reverie.”
By 1929, Hoagy was getting established in New York working for publisher Ralph Peer. The original Gennett side hadn't sold much, but it was widely admired by musicians and had begun to spread. Sensing further commercial potential, Peer commissioned veteran Tin Pan Alley lyricist Mitchell Parrish ("Deep Purple," "Sophisticated Lady," "Sleigh Ride," among others) for a proper lyric. He took Hoagy's moonlight-on-campus setting and song-about-a-song concept, kept Wilson’s key lines, and ran with it. He artfully massaged Wilson’s refrain-opening line, extending the pickup from one beat to three, creating the instantly recognizable, rising three-note figure that has become as crucial to the song as Hoagy's rangy, rhythmically supple tune. “Sometimes I wonder why I spend the lonely nights dreaming of a song,” has got to be among the greatest opening lines in pop music. It distills not only the bittersweet detritus of love lost, but also the universal, haunted condition of the songwriter. Indeed, we ask ourselves this question as the notes simultaneously cloud and focus the mind, sending us to our instruments, like Carmichael over those two searching years, to try in vain to purge them through our fingers and out to the world.
In 1930, bandleader Isham Jones made the now-seemingly-obvious choice of refiguring Star Dust as a ballad and took it to #1. Picking up on Jones, Bing Crosby cut the benchmark vocal version the song the next year, amping up the melodrama and taking it another step further from its hot-jazz roots. Swing was in the wind, and the hot and sweet bands would soon be a memory, but "Star Dust" would last.
As Hoagy would tell you, the fourth mind behind Star Dust was Bix Beiderbecke, his close friend and musical idol. And as trumpeter Richard Suldhalter observes in his book Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael, "Star Dust" is infused with Bix’s structural approach to melody and his musical spirit. In many ways, "Star Dust" could be a transcribed Bix solo. Perhaps that's where the haunting fragment was born. Several years in decline, Bix would die at 28 in Sunnyside, Queens on August 6, 1931, just 13 days before an ascendant Crosby would record his definitive version a few miles away in midtown Manhattan, certifying Carmichael as a bona fide hit songwriter. "Star Dust" was on her own now, but the ghost of Bix would haunt Hoagy for the rest of his life.
Download:
"Star Dust" mp3
by Hoagy Carmichael, 1942.
available on Stardust Melody
"Hong Kong Blues" mp3
by Hoagy Carmichael, 1942.
available on Stardust Melody
Here's Hoagy covering himself in 1942, fifteen years on. He lops off the introductory verse – just a short intro and then straight into the refrain, which has become customary. He takes the author's liberty with the melody and puts some blues back into it, channeling Bix for the whistling chorus. The flipside, "Hong Kong Blues" is another beautifully eccentric Carmichael classic.
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"Stardust" mp3
by Carmichael’s Collegians, 1927.
(Original Gennett Recording)
available on The First of the Singer Songwriters: Key Cuts 1924-1946
The first tentative take on "Stardust."
Note: Hoagy's modernistic piano chorus.
"Star Dust" mp3
by Isham Jones and His Orchestra, 1930.
available on Swingin' Down the Lane
"Star Dust" mp3
by Bing Crosby with Victor Young and his Orchestra, 1931.
available on The Definitive Collection
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"Singing the Blues" mp3
by Frankie Trambauer and his Orchestra, 1927.
featuring Bix Beiderbecke
available on Bix Beiderbecke, Vol. 1: Singin' the Blues
You can hear echoes of Bix's solo here in "Star Dust."
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"Hong Kong Blues" mp3
by Laura Cantrell, 2002.
Peel Session
BBC Radio
This arrangement is one Laura, Nancy Lynn Howell, and Robin Goldwasser performed as the Watchbirds. Robin taught it to me when we both played with Laura. That's Jon Graboff counting it in and playing mandolin, Francis MacDonald on drums, Ivor Ottley on fiddle. I can't for the life of me remember the bass player's name. We made this for a Peel session in London in Nov. 2002 at the BBC's Maida Vale studios.
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Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael
by Richard Sudhalter
Oxford University Press © 2002
more on Hoagy Carmichael HERE
