The Stardust Man

Hoagy Carmichael was different than the other great American jazz and pop song stylists of his time like the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin in that his songs only occasionally took romance as a central theme. Carmichael preferred instead to deal with places, times, and mindsets, with a song like "Georgia on My Mind" being a perfect example. It's a love song, certainly, but it's a love song to a place, and more specifically, to a place in time, and (as the title states) a place in mind. Even Carmichael's most famous composition, "Star Dust," isn't so much a song about love as it is a song about thinking about a song about love, which makes it a love song one step removed. Songs like "Rockin' Chair" and "(Up A) Lazy River" may be romantic in tone but they aren't love songs in any normal sense. Perhaps this is why Carmichael's melodies also do so well as instrumentals, since they depend more on mood, time, and feel than any kind of romantic plot line. This set includes versions of three of Carmichael's signature songs, "Star Dust," "Georgia on My Mind," and "(Up A) Lazy River," but at 11 cuts, it's a pretty short playlist, although it's enough to hint at the legacy of a very unique writer, one who wrote love songs to places and ideas, and in doing so, defined the concept of Americana in the purest sense. ~ Steve Leggett