"Moon Country: Hoagy Carmichael & Johnny Mercer"

[ghost of miles]

Every year around Thanksgiving and Hoagy's birthday I do a Carmichael show on Afterglow. This year, with the Mercer centennial at hand, I devoted the program to digging up as many Carmichael-Mercer collaborations as I could find (not as many as you might think), recorded by Nat King Cole, Helen Forrest, Louis Armstrong, and Carmichael and Mercer themselves. In addition to running down Eddy Arnold's recording of their late-period "Song of Long Ago," I also got some significant help from IU's Archives of Traditional Music, which gave me permission to use some things from their Carmichael collection--Hoagy and Johnny demoing "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" and two other songs for the film KEYSTONE GIRL (which was ultimately never made--I tell the story of how the song eventually found its way into HERE COMES THE GROOM, for which it won an Academy Award), and a couple of other unreleased late-period Hoagy-Johnny collaborations: "A Perfect Paris Night" and "Fleur de Lys." Afterglow founding host Dick Bishop joins me again to discuss Mercer and Carmichael as well.

Moon Country: Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer

Edited November 26, 2009 by ghost of miles

[Lazaro Vega]

Can't beat "Skylark."

[ghost of miles]

I used Helen Forrest's live recording of it with the Harry James big band (from that Hindsight box of James broadcasts).

Also used "Skylark" to end the upcoming Bob Brookmeyer Night Lights program (should air on Blue Lake the night after his 80th birthday).

[AllenLowe]

do you have the Hoagy BMG collections (stuff from 20's and 30/s mostly, as I recall)? should be some things on there.