Stardust (song)

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Stardust is the title of a pop song by Hoagy Carmichael from 1927, which became one of the most covered songs of all time and a jazz standard and evergreen as a classic of the big band era .

History of origin

Hoagy Carmichael - Stardust

The song was initially composed as a 32- bar instrumental piece. Allegedly, the song came to mind while law student Carmichael was taking an evening stroll across the Indiana campus when he thought of the suicide note from his student lover. Immediately afterwards he sat down at the piano in the Book Nook student club to play the melody. The song was first recorded by Hoagy Carmichael and His Pals on October 31, 1927 for Gennett Records (catalog # 6311) as a medium-tempo jazz song on the B-side. The recording studio was not one of the famous in New York, but that of Gennett Records in Richmond, Virginia . For the recordings he recruited band leader Emil Seidel and his band, but also Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey . Carmichael allegedly got the sound engineer Harold Soule out of bed on Halloween night at 3 a.m., the first take was ready at 5 a.m. "Hoagy fell backwards from his piano chair and said: 'My masterpiece', that was it." According to Carmichael, he was inspired by the improvisations of Bix Beiderbeckes . Initially, after its release in January 1928 , Stardust was only moderately received, mainly by musician friends, some of whom (including Don Redman ) recorded their own version.

Features of the song

According to Alec Wilder , Stardust is "very unusual for a pop song " with its unusual ABAC song form and its melody that is not easy to sing . After a chromatic prelude (hc-c sharp) the melody goes down in quarter notes (dcafd), then up again (faee). Although the song is notated in C major , the song begins in F major to lead through F minor, E minor and D minor to the dominant in G major .

Expansion of the song

In 1929 Carmichael reworked the song into a slow ballad and allegedly only now wrote a preliminary verse , for the melody of which he built on bar 7 of the chorus . Mitchell Parish wrote a text that recalled the supposed genesis: "Sometimes I ask myself why I spent the lonely night dreaming of a song." Irving Mills took his hotsy totsy walk (with Jimmy Dorsey , clarinet, and Carmichael, Piano) Carmichael's new arrangement of the song, now published as Star Dust by his publisher Mills Music , came up on September 20, 1929 and, after its publication in January 1930, reached number 20 on the American charts. On May 15, 1930, the band leader Isham Jones also played the song in an instrumental version and thus reached the top of the charts on April 18, 1931. His version made Stardust a classic. The version by Ben Selvin (1931) is probably the first recording with text; shortly afterwards Jack Purvis also sang the lyrics with Ted Wallace and his Campus Boys . The versions by Bing Crosby (# 15, 1931) and by Louis Armstrong (# 16, 1931), which secured Stardust his "immortality", were more successful .

Big band versions

Artie Shaw - Star Dust

After the recording by Jimmie Lunceford (# 10, 1935), Stardust became a standard of the big band era and was covered by almost every well-known band leader and singer of this generation. Glenn Miller's arrangement was also very successful and reached number 3 on the charts. Stardust first appeared as a track that was recorded by two bands on both sides of a record, namely by Tommy Dorsey (recorded April 15, 1936) and Benny Goodman (April 23, 1936), published in May 1936 on Victor # 25320 ( # 8 for Dorsey, # 2 for Goodman). Even Sammy Kaye (# 16, 1939), Artie Shaw (# 2, 1941) and Frank Sinatra (# 7, 1941) participated in the success of Stardust part. Artie Shaw's version was the most successful. It was created on October 7, 1940 (Victor # 27230), was published in December 1940 and reached second place on the charts. The lyrical trumpet solo by Billy Butterfield at the beginning and Jack Jenney's brilliant trombone solo at the end give this recording a special touch.

The further way to the jazz standard

The song was also recorded by Billie Holiday , Nat King Cole , Ella Fitzgerald and by instrumentalists like Django Reinhardt with Stéphane Grappelli (on piano). Further recordings, from Art Tatum to Ben Webster to John Coltrane , prove that the pop song became a starting point for jazz interpretations. The popularity remains, as shown by versions by Pee Wee Ellis (1994) or Philip Catherine . Younger musicians such as Harry Connick Jr. , Lou Donaldson , Ernestine Anderson or Wynton Marsalis have also interpreted the jazz standard. Some critics see Stardust as the most beautiful love ballad that has ever been written: Parish's haunting text, which evokes loneliness and nostalgia, is perfectly integrated into the course of Carmichael's melody.

statistics

With over 1,800 recordings, Stardust is one of the most frequently recorded songs of the 20th century and is the third most frequently produced song in the USA after Silent Night and the St. Louis Blues . The ASCAP lists 152 versions of this.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In fact, Carmichael has been fine-tuning the song since 1926. See Will Friedwald Stardust Melodies , p. 4, who refers to unpublished communications from Dick Sudhalter .
  2. ↑ The A-side One Night in Havana also comes from Carmichael's pen.
  3. ↑ Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, Die Evergreen-Story , 1990, p. 272
  4. ↑ Hoagy Carmichael & His Pals (Redhotjazz)
  5. ↑ Ricky Kennedy / Randy McNutt, Little Labels - Big Sound Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1999, pp. 11f. Kennedy and McNutt rely on an interview with Harold Soul from 1964. Carmichael had already recorded other titles for Gennett three days earlier.
  6. ↑ HJ Schaal Jazz Standards , p. 459
  7. ↑ W. Friedwald Stardust Melodies (p. 6) points out that there is a very similar prelude to the recording from 1927, which is interpreted there by the guitar.
  8. ↑ "Sometimes I wonder why I spent the lonely night dreaming of a song."
  9. ^ W. Friedwald Stardust Melodies , p. 13f.
  10. ↑ W. Friedwald Stardust Melodies , p. 14
  11. ↑ Dietrich Schulz-Köhn, Die Evergreen-Story , 1990, p. 274
  12. ↑ ASCAP entry for Stardust