Hoagy Carmichael: A music man's days in the desert

One of the most recognizable and widely known tunes in western culture had a rather inauspicious beginning, and has an amazing connection to the desert.  

The melody was composed by Howard Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael, who also wrote American Standards, “Stardust, Small Fry, Two Sleepy People,” currently being covered by Seth McFarland, and “Georgia on My Mind.”  

The tune languished immediately after he wrote it, two years after the melody, Frank Loesser added the lyrics and “Heart and Soul” was born.  The song knocked around Paramount Studios until it was recorded by Bea Wain with the Larry Clinton Band and was included in the 1938 short film “A Song is Born.” It quickly went to number one on the Hit Parade and launched a legend. 

In 1950, a simplified version became a ubiquitous duet among American children learning to play piano.

After it skyrocketed to number one, “Heart and Soul” launched Carmichael’s career.  Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and both Dorsey brothers were playing and recording his tunes. Carmichael compositions were regularly being played on the radio.

But Carmichael himself was still mostly unknown. In 1936, he moved to Hollywood where, he wrote in his memoir, “the rainbow hits the ground for composers.”

During the next decade, Carmichael moved in front of the camera, appearing at first in small parts playing piano and then having bigger roles, and appearing on radio as himself and on stage, winning an Oscar with Johnny Mercer for the song “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” in 1951, the same year that Thunderbird Country Club opened.

Carmichael frequented the desert through the 1940s with the rest of the affluent Hollywood crowd and looked at purchasing land. By the time he did actually purchase, prices had gone up ten times.  He settled on a stunning midcentury home designed by William Cody, located on the 8th green of the prestigious golf club with gorgeous views.

He was a regular on the links, along with his movie star friends.  He continued to write individual songs, collaborating with many different lyricists, most notably Johnny Mercer who lived down the way in Palm Springs.  Carmichael was comfortably earning some three-hundred thousand dollars a year in royalties.

He was an avid coin collector, having guests at his Thunderbird house sift through piles of coins on the floor after dinner looking for buffalo nickels.  Carmichael prized a coin given to him by Jacqueline Kennedy that the President had in his pocket when he was shot in Dallas.

He was a regular at Thunderbird activities and parties and he loved to play golf.  His son recalled to the New York Times, “He made two holes-in-one in his life… After the first one he stopped the game and made everyone wait saying, ‘Let me hit another shot, I think I’ve got it.’”

In the history section written by William Wheatley on the Hoagy Carmichael website, Carmichael described his record-breaking appearance at the London Palladium that year: “I wore my hat on the back of my head and no tie, with a cigarette drooping from my lips, and I lazied through the entire performance.”

The lazy image of the handsome, worldly piano player translating the human experience through lyrics set to a perfect tune was his image ever after, and was a transformation from the poor boy who turned pages for his piano playing mother in an Indiana movie theater to being atop the song-writing world from the most exclusive enclave in the desert.