Restrained Off-Blue

“I hate radio,” said Hoagy Carmichael. But in the five weeks since the hit songwriter* went on the air coast-to-coast (Sun. 5:30-5:45 p.m., E.S.T., CBS), radio has threatened more & more to become little (5 ft. 7 in.) Hoagy’s big job. Reason: for the first time a wide public has realized that Carmichael is not only a great songwriter, but also an extraordinarily tasteful, idiomatic jazz singer. His style is a restrained off-blue (he calls it “flatsy through the nose”).

On the air, Hoagy honky-tonks around on a baby upright (“It’s got that nice chuckachucka tone”), makes palaver with one Sherlee Turner. He also has another pianist, Buddy Cole, because he cannot play, sing and read lyrics at the same time. And he has to read the lyrics because he never learned to remember them, even his own. (He never learned to read music, either.)

This week Hoagy will broadcast from back home in Indiana, where Indianapolis Mayor Robert H. Tyndall has proclaimed “Hoagy Carmichael Day.” Hoagy (short for Hoagland) was born in Bloomington, Ind. in 1899. His father was an electrician; his mother, an early ragtime pianist, played in a local movie. (Says Hoagy: “She’s 70 now, but she can still swing the bass handle.”) At 20, Hoagy went to Indiana U., then a hotbed of hot music, and promptly began flying about with a flock of undergraduate musicians known as the “Bent Eagles.” Their diversions: “Sensuously . . . stroking lemon meringue pie,” “muggling” (smoking marijuana) and writing such deathless lines as: “One by one a cow goes by.” Their byword: “There are other things in the world besides hot music. I forget what they are, at the moment, but they are around.”

A year and a half after graduation, Hoagy wrote Stardust, and was in. Now, after 47 years with hot music, Hoagy is beginning to cool off. Says he: “Looks to me like jazz is dying out. Nothing new coming down the groove. Same old construction. Everything built on the same old blues chords.” Most jazzmen, he thinks, have lost the spirit epitomized by a colored piano player, who once told him: “Never play anything that ain’t right. You may not make any money but you’ll never get hostile with yourself.”

*A few hits: Stardust (which has earned Carmichael more than $250,000), Lazybones, Rockin’ Chair, Two Sleepy People, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief. His latest, Old Buttermilk Sky, last week was No. 6 on the Hit Parade.