WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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This week on Interchange, Host Trish Kerle’ speaks with Pat Kellar, producer of a documentary film about the life and music of native Bloomingtonian, Hoagy Carmichael, considered one of the 20th centuries greatest composers of American popular standards.
Kellar talks about the film, Carmichael’s formative years in Bloomington and Indiana University, his early musical influences, his transition from piano player to singer/songwriter, shift from hot jazz to popular music, and his friendships and collaborations with Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin, Johnny Mercer, and Frank Loesser, among others. Carmichael’s move to NYC in 1929 and, ultimately, to Hollywood to pursue songwriting for the movies, cemented him as not only a musical legend because of hit songs such as Stardust, Skylark, Heart and Soul and the Academy Award winning In the Cool, Cool Cool of the Evening, but because at the peak of his career in the 1940s Hoagy Carmichael had also made his mark as a movie actor, radio star, and published author.
Songs excerpted in the program in the order they are played:
“Georgia on My Mind” – Ray Charles
“Maple Leaf Rag” – Scott Joplin
“Riverboat Shuffle” – Bix Beiderbecke
“Washboard Blues” – Hoagy Carmichael
“Star Dust” – Hoagy Carmichael
“Star Dust” – Isham Jones and His Orchestra
“Rockin’ Chair” – Mildred Bailey
“Lazybones” – Hoagy Carmichael
“Snowball” – Hoagy Carmichael
“Snowball” – Louis Armstrong
“Rockin’ Chair” – Hoagy Carmichael
“Skylark” – Earl Hines featuring Billy Ekstine
“How Little We Know” – Anita Boyer and the Hoagy Carmichael Orchestra
“In the Cool Cool Cool of the Evening” – Hoagy Carmichael
“Can’t Get Indiana Off My Mind” – Kate Smith
