I worked with Hoagy Carmichael back in th Sixties. I think he was the one who told me the story about someone telling Mitchell Parris's wife that Hoagy Carmichael had written Stardust. She corrected him by saying, "He did not. My husband wrote Stardust, Hoagy Carmichael wrote 'La da da da da di da da da dum dee da dee da da". As I recall, Hoagy used to like to tell that story on himself.

In another thread I wrote about how we were having dinner in a small restaurant in Cambridge, MA when a woman came over to the table and gushed at him, "You're Hoagy Carmichael!" Apparently, she was afraid that this realization might have passed him by. Now that she had established a personal connection with him, she felt free to let him know how much she had enjoyed his performance in "Casablanca"! Without betraying any untoward emotion and without making her feel the least bit uncomfortable, he thanked her and she left happy.

In every way that I could tell over the few months we worked together, he was a gentleman.

A little note about some often overlooked Carmichael tunes: Hoagy wrote a series of songs for his own children. They were published in a hardcover music book which I have in the other room. I can get the title if anyone is interested. I worked on a television series with Hoagy Bix Carmichael, Hoagy's son. He produced a series called "Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop" based on the music his father had written for him and his brother. The music came out on a double LP played by a group called "The Stark Reality". A diehard Carmichael fan might want to locate these recordings because as far as I know they are the only commercial recordings of these twelve or fifteen songs. Sourdough