Hoagy Carmichael and Friends: Stardust Melody

"'Say, Hoagy, why don't you try writing music?' The way Hoagy Carmichael remembered it, he and Bix Beiderbecke were lazing around the Kappa Sigma fraternity house in Bloomington, Indiana, one evening in 1924, listening to Stravinsky's The Firebird on a windup Victrola, when Bix popped his question. Carmichael said nothing, but he thought about it. He'd been considering the idea for some while, but it took his friend's nudge to get the machinery moving. Of all the aspects of Bix's playing, what fascinated Hoagy most was his way of appearing to compose jazz cornet solos. ... Hoagland Howard Carmichael was 24, more than three years older than Bix, but musically far his junior. Though officially studying law at Indiana University, he spent most of his time at the piano, especially the battered upright at the Book Nook, a campus hangout. Within days after his conversation with Bix, Hoagy unveiled his first effort, a band number he called Free Wheeling. Beiderbecke liked it right off, changed the title to Riverboat Shuffle and scheduled it for his next recording date. The tune spread through the emergent hot music world of the mid-1920s; all sorts of groups, including the prestigious Benson Orchestra of Chicago, began putting it on record. ..." (liner notes by Richard M. Sudhalter).

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