"STAR DUST" (1927)

Indiana native Hoagy Carmichael, the composer of "Star Dust," was supposed to become a lawyer, not a musician. He supported himself by playing piano with dance bands while studying law at Indiana University and did graduate with a law degree. However, he had little interest in practicing law, failing the bar exam and getting fired from a legal firm because he spent afternoons playing piano in clubs rather than doing his legal work. He wrote to a friend, "… the thing that interests me most is writing tunes." He sold his first song, "Riverboat Shuffle," in 1926 and when a second song, "Washboard Blues," was a hit and recorded by Paul Whiteman, whom the media had dubbed the "King of Jazz," Carmichael gave up law for music.
It seems almost churlish to dispute Carmichael’s legendary story of how he came to write "Star Dust," since it fits so well with the song. Will Friedwald, in his book Stardust Melodies, describes Carmichael’s version of the event: "Our hero, while paying a nostalgic visit to his alma mater [Indiana University], happens to pass the campus’s lover’s lane, or "spooning wall" as it was known, and begins thinking about all the girls he’d loved and lost in his college days. While pondering on one old school romance in particular, the kernel of a melody just pops into his head. A frantic Carmichael dashes in search of a piano and locates one in the campus coffee house – a cozy little joint called the "Book Nook" – where, oblivious to all else, our hero works the melody out and gets it down on paper. Shortly afterward, he plays it for a friend and former classmate named Stu Gorrell, who remarks that it reminds him "of the dust from the stars drifting down through a summer night." From there comes the title "Star Dust." "I had no idea what the title meant," Carmichael later said, "but I thought it was gorgeous."
In his biography of Hoagy Carmichael, Stardust Melody, Richard Sudhalter dispels that creation myth, noting that "Star Dust" started as a jam session piece in 1926 based on a fragmentary melody that fascinated Carmichael well before that date. Sudhalter quotes Charles "Bud" Dent, a cornetist and friend of Carmichael who played at that session: "So Hoagy says, ‘Bud, here’s another good tune we can jam with.’ I said, ‘What’s the title?’ and he says, ‘It doesn’t have a title. It’s just a jam tune.’ And he starts playing it at a medium tempo. ..He wasn’t playing much melody. All he had was the opening phrase, an arpeggiated thing, kind of attractive. We jammed it for about fifteen minutes, and got pretty good at it, though I didn’t think too much of it..." Very shortly after that, the melody came to be known as "Star Dust." Apparently, Carmichael worked out the melody for "Star Dust" on several pianos, including one at the family home of Ernie Pyle, who later was to become a celebrated World War II correspondent. Sudhalter reports, "In a 1936 reminiscence, he [Pyle] reports that Hoagy worked out "Star Dust" at the Pyle family’s Indianapolis home. "I’d like to tell you about the evening he wrote it," Pyle declares, "but he asked me not to, because he says that the public likes to think these sweet songs are conceived under moonlight, amid roses and soft breezes." Hoagy himself later told a columnist that he’d worked out part of the melody at the Book Nook "and finished it at home in Indianapolis."
In 1927 Carmichael, with friend Emil Seidel and his band, made the first recording of "Star Dust" as a medium tempo instrumental for Gennett Records, the leading label for jazz and blues in the Midwest. The players were credited as Hoagy Carmichael and His Pals and Carmichael’s piano solo was the high point of the recording. Jazz arranger and bandleader Don Redman with his Detroit-based band, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, made the second recording, and his arrangement, which tightened up Carmichael’s original composition, was influential in the evolution of the song. Mills Music, Carmichael’s publisher, issued four more recordings of "Star Dust" in 1928 and 1929. The song caught on as an instrumental with jazz musicians, and, even though it was not well known by the general public, in 1930 a recording by Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang reached #20 on the pop charts.
The lyrics to "Star Dust" by Mitchell Parish were put together much like a potluck supper with Parish as the chief cook. Carmichael himself wrote the first lyrics in 1928. He made another recording of "Star Dust" with his lyrics, but Gennett Records rejected the recording because the first one had not sold well enough. In 1929 Irving Mills asked Parish, one of his staff writers, to write lyrics for "Star Dust" to improve its sales with the public. Will Friedwald summarizes how Parish developed the lyrics: "The final lyric for "Star Dust" seems to be a crystallization of ideas by Parish, Stu Gorell, and Carmichael himself (who had used the phrase "Star Dust melody" in his original), and the story told in the lyric is consistent with Carmichael’s tale of how the tune happened to come to him. It can be summed up in a single sentence: a fellow alone at night gazes up at the stars and, reflecting on a past love, hums a song in his head." Although Friedwald describes how "Carmichael disavowed the notion of "Star Dust" serving as a love song with lyrics," and said of the final lyric "It didn’t seem a part of me," not only had Carmichael written his own lyrics, but also apparently had collaborated with Parish. Sudhalter reports Parish’s recollection of the writing process: "There was no one special approach," Parish said in 1985. "Sometimes we were both together at the piano. We sometimes met at random, just ran into each other." Sudhalter also reports an intriguing comment by saxophonist Wally Wilson, with whom Carmichael had swapped arrangements in 1926, which suggests that Parish may have borrowed the opening lines of the refrain from him. Wilson said he was unable to get the melody out his mind, and came up with his own lyrics, which included the following:
I sometimes wonder why I spend my time
Dreaming of a song.
A melody
That haunts my reverie...
"Star Dust" with its final lyrics was published in 1929. The first recording to reach #1 on the pop charts didn't include the lyrics; it was an instrumental "pop" version by Isham Jones and his Orchestra in 1931. Friedwald states that while Jones was not the first musician to come up with the innovation of playing "Star Dust" at a slower tempo and in a sentimental style, "There’s no doubt that the Jones record was the first to introduce "Star Dust" to the mass audience." He goes on to say, "However, for all intents and purposes the Mitchell Parish text became part of American musical history with two breakthrough recordings in 1931 by Bing Crosby (August) and by Louis Armstrong (November). These were the two performances that gave "Star Dust" pop and jazz immortality, respectively. Crosby and Armstrong further testify to the close connection between these two forms, in that "Star Dust" came be both things at once – sentimental love song and hot jazz stomp." Click on the following links to listen to these historic recordings:
Crosby - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16_d2-rvLSs
Armstrong - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r94-7nJt-WM
Since 1930 "Star Dust" has appeared in the pop charts over 15 times and is one of the most recorded popular songs; currently there are more than 1300 versions in at least 40 languages. What could account for its endurance as a jazz icon for the past 80 years? Friedwald suggests, "The song's melody and lyric are both uncommonly introspective for a popular song. The tune, especially intricate, but without being fussy, is almost delicate in the way it unfolds, yet at the same time, it's masculine enough to withstand extremely tough treatment at the hands of such macho, hell-for-leather improvisers as Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge. Mitchell Parish's words are, if not as urbane as some by Cole Porter or Lorenz Hart, sensitive in a way that few pop songs are. Yet what makes all this sensitivity unique is the long association of "Star Dust" with male performers, especially boy singers and jazz musicians. Although a number of women have sung it, the major records are predominantly by men... "Star Dust," it would seem, is a love song made for men to express the way they feel about women."