Stardust

Hoagy Carmichael was on the campus of his alma mater (Indiana University in Bloomington) with a tune in his head he couldn’t shake. At first he whistled it, then he dropped by the Book Nook to write it down. He “tweaked” the melody over the next few months until he was happy with it. He recorded his tune on Halloween in 1927 with the Dorsey Brothers and Emil Seidel and his Orchestra. The original name was two words: Star Dust, but most of the time it shows up as a single word. Like so many other jazz standards, the part of Stardust everyone knows is actually the chorus. It was meant to be preceded by a verse, but it almost never is. There are scores of recordings of Stardust, by almost every singer you can name. But my favorite is Nat King Cole’s; the one you hear in the middle of the 1993 movie Sleepless in Seattle.