Hoagy Carmichael’s 116th birthday celebration began with a few chords on the piano.
Monika Herzig prepared for the first song of the evening with Janiece Jaffe, one of the contributing vocalists of the event, as guests squeezed into the gallery space. The large audience spread from the intimate gallery out onto the front patio area.
The Venue Fine Art & Gifts had the birthday party event Tuesday night to honor Carmichael’s origins and legacy.
Herzig, a senior lecturer in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, played the jazz piano in tribute to Carmichael and delivered a talk in between each of the musical and dance performances.
“Just a warning — this will be interactive,” Herzig said. “We will be singing and answering trivia questions.”
The talk was mostly structured by alternating between performance by Herzig on piano and other community members on vocals.
From there, the talk was a chronological glimpse at the musician and was filled with trivia about Carmichael’s life in Bloomington, his family and his career.
“What I want to do is give you little segments of history,” Herzig said.
The first fun fact Herzig shared was in regards to the name Hoagy. Herzig said Carmichael’s mother actually chose the name because of a love for the Hoagland traveling circus group, whose performances she loved.
Herzig said Carmichael’s father was an electrician who worked multiple odd jobs and moved his family around during Carmichael’s childhood, though the family always ended up back in Bloomington.
“Hoagy never had formal lessons, but his mom was a piano player for the silent movies at the Von Lee and the Buskirk-Chumley,” Herzig said. “She would play, and little Hoagy would be on his little cradle on two chairs, soaking it all in.”
Jaffe came onstage after a bit more background to sing “Georgia on My Mind,” one of many songs Carmichael contributed to but did not write lyrics for. The song was about his sister, Georgia, rather than the state.
One of the trivia questions of the night dealt with a dance hall that fired Carmichael and his group for playing music with too much of a modern lean. The Columbia Club in Indianapolis, the club that fired Carmichael, preferred more classical music for its dance.
“Nowadays, though, they have his piano proudly displayed,” Herzig said. “The Columbia Club thought, at that time, ‘This band is a little too advanced — we like our waltzes.’ They didn’t play their waltzes like they were supposed to. They had a lot of this jazzy stuff in there.”
Herzig said Carmichael found his passion for music from the washboard blues he heard after graduating with his law degree from IU. He came back to Bloomington and decided to leave the world of law behind and pursue music.
Before Jaffee sang “Stardust,” the next Carmichael classic, Herzig played Carmichael’s own vocal rendition of the song, which did not follow the melody exactly as he wrote it. Jaffe drew on some advice from David Baker, a composer at the Jacobs School of Music.
“Carmichael messed it up,” Jaffee said. “David Baker once said, if you’re going to improvise, you have to know where it is to know where it’s not.”
One of the next pieces included a tap-dancing performance by local dancer Allana Radecki.
Radecki took advantage of the small, uncarpeted area by the piano as she tapped along to “Lazybones.”
The end of the talk revolved around the fall of Carmichael’s fame during the British pop invasion of the late 20th century.
Herzig said Carmichael also received an honorary doctorate in music from IU in 1972.
Carmichael was also celebrated during one year’s Newport Jazz Festival, which honored the musician’s 80th birthday, Herzig said. Carmichael died in 1981 at the age of 82.
Roznowski, a local songwriter and singer, accompanied Herzig on vocals during a couple of the other songs of the evening, including the song “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.”
The event ended with a group performance of Carmichael’s commemorative “Chimes of Indiana,” a round of “Happy Birthday” and some cake for all the audience members.
In terms of remembering the artist, Herzig said there are locations on campus that celebrate Carmichael every day.
“If you’re interested, you should visit Morrison Hall,” Herzig said. “There’s his piano, there’s a lot of things to see and touch and look at.”
Herzig also mentioned how Carmichael’s musical legacy lives on through local musicians like Roznowski and others.
She took a moment to acknowledge the various styles of tribute that others engage in with the late legend.
“Tom (Roznowski) always loves to tell the story of how he goes over to the cemetery and puts a quarter and pays tribute,” Herzig said. “Mark back there just told me he learned to sing and play ‘Stardust,’ and he’ll take his guitar and actually play for him at his grave.”
