Hoagy Carmichael

HOAGY CARMICHAEL d1981. American composer, pianist, singer, actor and bandleader from Indiana. American composer and author Alec Wilder described Carmichael as the "most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented of all the great craftsmen" of pop songs in the first half of the twentieth century. He was one of the most successful of the Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1930s and was amongst the first singer-songwriters in the age of mass media to exploit new communication technologies including television & the use of electronic microphones and sound recordings. He composed several hundred songs including fifty that achieved hit record status. He is best known for composing the music for "Stardust" / "Georgia on My Mind" / "The Nearness of You" and "Heart and Soul" (four of the most-recorded American songs of all time). His "Ole Buttermilk Sky" was also an Academy Award-nominee in 1946 and "In the Cool Cool Cool of The Evening" won the Academy Award for Best Song of 1951. He also appeared as a character actor and musical performer in fourteen motion pictures, hosted three musical-variety radio programs, performed on television and wrote two autobiographies. He died of heart failure in California aged 82 on December 27th 1981.