1. Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael was an American musician, composer, songwriter, actor, author and lawyer.
59 Facts About Hoagy Carmichael
1. 2.
Hoagy Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including 50 that achieved hit record status.
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Hoagy Carmichael collaborated with famed lyricist-songwriter Johnny Mercer, on "Lazybones", and later "Skylark".
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Hoagy Carmichael's "Ole Buttermilk Sky" of 1946, was an Academy Award nominee for an "Oscar" in the following year of March 1947, with the eponymous theme song from the Western film Canyon Passage, starring Dana Andrews, Brian Donlevy, Susan Hayward and Ward Bond, in which he co-starred as a ukulele and guitar-playing balladeer musician and prospector-miner riding a mule.
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Hoagland Howard Carmichael was born in Bloomington, in central Indiana, on November 22,1899.
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Hoagy Carmichael was the first child and only son of Howard Clyde and Lida Mary Carmichael.
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Hoagy Carmichael's parents named him after a circus troupe called the "Hoaglands" that had stayed at the Carmichael house during his mother's pregnancy.
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Hoagy Carmichael lived most of his early years in Bloomington, the county seat of surrounding Monroe County, Indiana.
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Hoagy Carmichael's mother taught him to sing and play the piano at an early age.
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The family moved back east to Indianapolis when Hoagy Carmichael was age 17 in 1916, but Hoagy Carmichael only followed and returned to Bloomington three years later in 1919 when he was age 20 to complete high school.
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For musical inspiration, Hoagy Carmichael would listen to prominent ragtime music pianists Hank Wells and Hube Hanna.
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At 18, Hoagy Carmichael helped supplement his family's meager income by doing manual jobs in building construction, or at a bicycle chain factory, and in a meat slaughterhouse.
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Hoagy Carmichael earned $5 playing at a college fraternity dance at nearby Indiana University in 1918, marking the beginning of his professional musical career.
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Hoagy Carmichael attended the nearby campus of the Indiana University at Bloomington, where he earned a bachelor of arts academic degree in 1925 and a subsequent law degree in 1926.
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Hoagy Carmichael was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity, and played the piano around Indiana and Ohio with his recently organized band, "Carmichael's Collegians".
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Around 1922, Hoagy Carmichael first met Leon Beiderbecke, a cornetist and sometime pianist from Iowa.
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Hoagy Carmichael was inspired by Beiderbecke's impressionistic and classical music ideas and influences from the master composers of previous centuries.
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Hoagy Carmichael's first recorded song, initially titled "Free Wheeling," was written for Beiderbecke, whose band, The Wolverines, recorded it as "Riverboat Shuffle" in 1924 for Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana.
19.
The band's instrumental rendition of "Washboard Blues," recorded on May 19,1925, was the earliest recording in which Hoagy Carmichael performed his own songs, including an improvised piano solo.
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Hoagy Carmichael joined an Indianapolis law firm and passed the Indiana bar, but devoted most of his energies to music.
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Hoagy Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including fifty that achieved hit-record status during his long career.
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Hoagy Carmichael made hundreds of recordings between 1925 and his death in 1981.
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Hoagy Carmichael appeared on radio and television and in motion pictures and live performances, where he demonstrated his versatility.
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On October 31,1927, Hoagy Carmichael recorded "Star Dust," one of his most famous songs, at the Gennett Records studio in Richmond, Indiana, playing the piano solo himself.
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Hoagy Carmichael received more recognition after Paul Whiteman and his orchestra recorded "Washboard Blues" on Victor Records in Chicago in November 1927, with Hoagy Carmichael singing and playing the piano.
26.
In 1929, after realizing that he preferred making music and had no aptitude for or interest in becoming a lawyer, Hoagy Carmichael moved to New York City, where he worked for a brokerage firm during the weekdays and spent his evenings composing music, including some songs for Hollywood musicals.
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In New York, Hoagy Carmichael met Duke Ellington's agent and sheet music publisher, Irving Mills, and hired him to set up recording dates.
28.
Hoagy Carmichael composed and recorded "Georgia on My Mind" in 1930.
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Hoagy Carmichael arranged and recorded "Up a Lazy River" in 1930, a tune by Sidney Arodin.
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Hoagy Carmichael was fortunate to retain his low-paying but stable job as a songwriter with Southern Music.
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Hoagy Carmichael began to emerge as a solo singer-performer, first at parties, then professionally.
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In 1935 Hoagy Carmichael left Southern Music Company and began composing songs for a division of Warner Brothers, establishing his connection with Hollywood.
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Hoagy Carmichael portrayed a piano player and performed his song "Old Man Moon" in the film.
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Hoagy Carmichael never attempted another musical, resuming his career as a singer-songwriter and character actor in Hollywood.
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Hoagy Carmichael appeared as an actor in 14 motion pictures, performing at least one of his songs in each.
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Hoagy Carmichael composed several songs for the film, including "Ole Buttermilk Sky," an Academy Award nominee.
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Hoagy Carmichael sang in live shows across the United States, and debuted in the United Kingdom at the London Casino in 1948.
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Hoagy Carmichael's perfectionism extended to his clothes, grooming, and eating.
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Hoagy Carmichael found time to write his first autobiography, The Stardust Road, published in 1946.
40.
Between 1944 and 1948, Hoagy Carmichael became a well-known radio personality and hosted three musical-variety programs.
41.
Hoagy Carmichael was a regular cast member in the first season of NBC's western TV series Laramie, playing the character role of Jonesy the ranch hand.
42.
The suite received little notice and only limited success, but Hoagy Carmichael remained financially secure due to the royalties from his past hits.
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Carmichael's second memoir, Sometimes I Wonder: The Story of Hoagy Carmichael, was published in 1965.
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Hoagy Carmichael took up other interests in retirement, including golf, coin collecting, and enjoying his two homes, one on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles and the other in Rancho Mirage, California.
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Hoagy Carmichael appeared on Fred Rogers's PBS show Old Friends, New Friends in 1978.
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Hoagy Carmichael received several honors from the music industry in his later years.
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Hoagy Carmichael was inducted into the USA's Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1971, along with Duke Ellington.
48.
Shortly before his death in 1981, Hoagy Carmichael appeared on a United Kingdom-recorded tribute album, In Hoagland, with Annie Ross and Georgie Fame.
49.
Hoagy Carmichael voted for Wendell Willkie at the 1940 presidential election, and backed Barry Goldwater, the party's candidate, at the 1964 United States presidential election.
50.
Hoagy Carmichael died of a heart attack at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, California, on December 27,1981, at age 82.
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Hoagy Carmichael's remains are buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington, Indiana.
52.
Hoagy Carmichael is considered to be among the most successful of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s, and he was among the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to exploit new communication technologies, such as television and the use of electronic microphones and sound recordings.
53.
Hoagy Carmichael was an industry trailblazer who recorded varied interpretations of his own songs and provided material for many other musicians to interpret.
54.
Hoagy Carmichael's recording of "Star Dust" in 1927 at the Gennett Records studio that includes him playing the piano solo was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
55.
Hoagy Carmichael was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8,1960.
56.
In 2007 Hoagy Carmichael was inducted into the Gennett Records Walk of Fame in Richmond, Indiana.
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Hoagy Carmichael is memorialized with an Indiana state historical marker, installed in 2007 in front of the former Book Nook on South Indiana Avenue, near the corner of Kirkwood and Indiana Streets in Bloomington.
58.
Hoagy Carmichael appeared as a Stone Age version of himself in The Flintstones, in which he sings "The Yabba Dabba Doo Song," written by Barney, and based on an idea from Fred.
59.
Hoagy Carmichael wrote two autobiographies that Da Capo Press combined into a single volume for a paperback, published in 1999:.