"Stardust" is a 1927 song composed by Hoagy Carmichael, with lyrics later added by Mitchell Parish. It has been recorded as an instrumental or vocal track over 1,500 times. Carmichael developed a taste for jazz while attending Indiana University. He formed his own band and played at local events in Indiana and Ohio. Following his graduation, Carmichael moved to Florida to work for a law firm. He left the law sector and returned to Indiana, after learning of the success of one of his compositions. In 1927, after leaving a local university hangout, Carmichael started to whistle a tune that he later developed further. When composing the song, he was inspired by the end of one of his love affairs, and on the suggestion of a university classmate, he decided on its title. The same year, Carmichael recorded an instrumental version of the song for Gennett Records.
In 1928, Carmichael left Indiana after Mills Music hired him as a composer. Mills Music then assigned Mitchell Parish to add words to the song. Don Redman recorded the song in the same year, and by 1929 it was performed regularly at the Cotton Club. Isham Jones's 1930 rendition of the song made it popular on radio, and soon multiple acts had recorded "Stardust". Because of the song's popularity, by 1936, RCA Victor pressed a double-sided version that featured Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman on respective sides.
By 1940 the song was considered a standard, and it was later included in the Great American Songbook. That year, RCA Victor released two more recordings of "Stardust": one by Dorsey featuring Frank Sinatra as the singer, and one by Artie Shaw. Shaw's recording sold one million copies, and Glenn Miller's rendition was published in the same year. Artists including Jo Stafford, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Billy Ward and his Dominoes, Ringo Starr, and Willie Nelson have recorded "Stardust". The song was featured in several films, including The Man Who Fell to Earth, My Favorite Year, Goodfellas, Sleepless in Seattle, and Casino. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995 and added to the National Recording Registry in 2004.
Background Soon after entering Indiana University, Carmichael developed a taste for jazz music. He had learned to play the piano with his mother, who performed at dances and movie theaters. In 1922, Carmichael met and befriended Bix Beiderbecke. Carmichael often played with Beiderbecke, and he became acquainted with his band, the Wolverines, who recorded his original composition "Riverboat Shuffle" in 1924. While still attending Indiana University, the singer formed a band called Carmichael's Collegians. Carmichael and his band performed locally in Indiana and around Ohio. The band appeared at 50 events between 1924 and 1925, while between 1925 and 1926, they played three to five nights a week at different engagements. Carmichael received his bachelor's degree in 1925 and had earned a Bachelor of Laws by 1926. In the same year he worked as a law clerk in Miami, but he returned to Indiana after failing the Florida Bar examination. However, he passed the Indiana State Bar Association examination and worked for a law firm in that state. With the success of Red Nichols' 1927 recording of Carmichael's original "Washboard Blues", the composer decided to leave the practice of law in pursuit of a career in music.
Composition, first recording and addition of lyrics
Carmichael wrote the song with inspiration from the end of his love affair with Kathryn Moore, who would later marry Art Baker, the trumpet player in Carmichael's Collegians. While Carmichael related several explanations of how he was inspired to write it on the University campus, biographer Richard Sudhalter deemed the stories "encrusted in myth, much of it the composer's own creation". One night after leaving the Book Nook, a university hangout, Carmichael whistled what would become the opening of the song. The composer later declared that he felt that the tune "had something very strange and different". He worked on the details with different pianos, including one at the Book Nook. According to Ernie Pyle, the composer did further work at the Carmichael family's home. While he visited Carmichael, Pyle asked him to play the song he had been working on.
Pyle later commented that Carmichael asked him not to reveal the details of the night he worked on the song with the family's piano, saying "the public likes to think these sweet songs are conceived under the moonlight, amid roses and soft breezes". Carmichael finished the details of the composition on a grand piano that was later thrown away because of its poor state. Baker and Carmichael's Collegians' singer Violet Deckard Gardner remembered Carmichael humming the tune of the incomplete composition before 1926. Fellow student Stuart Gorrell suggested the title "Star Dust"; Gorrell felt the tune sounded like "dust from stars drifting down through the summer sky".
Recording After working out the details with the band, Carmichael booked a recording session with Gennett Records for October 31, 1927. Since he had not written any sheet music for the song, he had to whistle the tune to the musicians. Carmichael played the piano, backed by Emil Seidel and his orchestra: Byron Smart (trumpet), Oscar Rossberg (trombone), Dick Kent and Gene Wood (alto saxophones), Maurice Bennett (tenor saxophone), Don Kimmel (guitar), Paul Brown (tuba), Cliff Williams (drums). The session took place at Gennett's studio in Richmond, Indiana. The recording featured a "medium fast and jazzy tempo" with no lyrics. Under the single-word title "Stardust," it was placed on the flipside of "One Night In Havana", assigned the release number 6311, and credited to Hoagy Carmichael and His Pals.
Carmichael received a one-sided pressing of "Stardust" from the studio, before he left Indiana in 1928 to work for Mills Music as a composer. The first manuscript for the song was deposited at the United States Copyright Office on January 5, 1928. The sheet music featured a tune in a key of D with no indication of tempo and no lyrics. Mills Music then published different sheet music for the song on January 19, 1929, as a piano composition. Don Redman, who worked for Mills Music, often played the song. After hearing Redman's rendition of it, a company arranger suggested playing the song at a "slower tempo and in a sentimental style". Feeling it could be a potential success, Irving Mills "decided on the song having lyrics added.
Lyrics Mills assigned lyricist Mitchell Parish to add the words to Carmichael's "Star Dust". Parish used as a working title "Then I Will Be Satisfied", but he accepted Redman's suggestion to re-title the song to "Stardust". Author Gene Fernett suggested Redman wrote the verse of the song, but his claim could not be supported. (The verse music is present on the original 1927 Gennett recording.) Parish wrote the song using Carmichael's account of how he was inspired to compose the melody, while the lyricist developed a story focused in the concept of lost love. The sheet music for the vocal composition was published as "Star Dust" on May 10, 1929 in the key of C major.
Analysis The song's structure has two introductory verses that are sometimes omitted. These are followed by a 32-bar chorus in ABAC form (instead of the traditional AABA form) that is often repeated. The intriguing opening harmonic progression of the chorus starts on the IV chord for two bars which then changes from major to minor, a method also used by two contemporary songs: "After You’ve Gone" (1918) and "I’ll See You In My Dreams" (1924).
The melody fluctuates between minor and major third intervals in range of an octave and a third to "heighten drama".
Early recordings
In early 1929, Redman and his band The Chocolate Dandies released "Star Dust" on Okeh 8668. The recording retained Carmichael's original key of D. The song soon circulated among black musicians and jazz interpreters, and it was often performed at the Cotton Club after being introduced in 1929. Duke Ellington performed the song at the club. The revue Hot Chocolates featured a version by Louis Armstrong, which was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009.
While Carmichael worked for RCA Records as a session jazz ensemble leader, journalist Walter Winchell promoted the song. His writings attracted the attention of Isham Jones, who recorded a version with his orchestra as a slow ballad. Jones's session took place on May 14, 1930, in Chicago, and Brunswick Records released it under catalog number 4856, with the title once again "Stardust." The 1931 release became one of his most popular recordings. By 1931, "Stardust" was often played by the orchestras of several US radio stations. While remarking on the popularity of the tune on the radio, the Calgary Herald opined of Jones's version: "This beautiful melody seems destined to achieve the popularity which it so richly deserves and which is so long overdue." In August 1931, Bing Crosby released the song as "Star Dust" on Brunswick Records. The same year, Lee Sims also released "Stardust" on Brunswick 6132, a version that the Sydney Morning Herald called "a melody of a considerable intensity and with dramatic outbursts," with a "realistic and very full" piano reproduction. Throughout the 1930s, record labels used both the one and two-word versions of the title, though Carmichael himself favored the one-word title, as evidenced by his private correspondence and his 1946 memoir The Stardust Road.
Big band era and success By 1935, while radio announcers commonly credited the orchestra only, Carmichael was mentioned as the composer of the song during introductions because of its popularity. The same year, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins recorded the song on March 2 in Paris. Compagnie de Gramophone Française released it with the catalog number K-7527. The song was often performed by Art Tatum, Garnet Clark, and Fats Waller. Mills recorded the song himself with his multiple bands, and recorded versions by the Mills Blue Rhythm Band and Cab Calloway. In 1936, for the first time in its history, RCA Records pressed two versions of the same song by two different artists on a single record: Tommy Dorsey on one side and Benny Goodman on the other. Goodman used an arrangement by Fletcher Henderson, while Dorsey's version featured the vocals of Edythe Wright. By 1937, Goodman remarked that Carmichael's tune was the most popular dance number of his repertoire. "Stardust" became a standard of big band music.