Hoagy Carmichael has been honored with a steady stream of memorial compilations and tribute albums since the late '80s; Avid Entertainment's ten-CD box In Person 1925-1955 tops them all by augmenting the main body of his oeuvre with rare broadcasts and radio transcripts, privately produced and previously unissued recordings, as well as a fabulous coda CD packed with additional Carmichael tunes interpreted by a wide range of jazz and pop artists. This chronologically precise, intelligently conceived, and beautifully packaged audio portrait gallery traces Carmichael's progress as a recording artist from his first hot jazz sides with Hitch's Happy Harmonists to the Plays Ballads for Dancing album that came out in the mid-'50s; by then Hoagland Carmichael had become as indispensable to U.S. popular culture as the movie theaters, radios, and phonographs that conveyed his music and persona to the public. Richard M. Sudhalter's marvelously insightful and informative essay is peppered with dozens of historical photographs of Carmichael and his many friends. There are two appendices at the end of the booklet: an index of 95 Carmichael compositions heard on this set (usually in only one version, although there are six different interpretations of "Stardust") as well as a rousing roster of titles by other composers (winners in this category are "Cincinnati Dancing Pig" and "Flap Your Elbows, Spin Your Ears and Fly Away").
Rovi