Celebrating Hoagy
 

Dave Anderson who stars as Hoagy Carmichael in Stardust

DAVE ANDERSON tells Kenny Mathieson how Hoagy Carmichael’s autobiography provided the inspiration for his latest one-man touring show dedicated to the great American songwriter
 

THE PERIPATETIC DAVE ANDERSON is currently engaged in celebrating the genius of one of America’s greatest songwriters in his one-man show Stardust. Hoagy Carmichael established himself as one of the greatest songwriters of the so-called golden age of popular song, from the "Jazz Age" of the Twenties through to the rise of rock and roll in the mid-Fifties. Those parameters define the major part of his own career, which slid into slow decline in a fast changing world.
 

Carmichael began his musical odyssey in jazz. An actor as well as a singer and songwriter, he created his most fully realised film role in another jazz context, the film Young Man With A Horn, which was loosely based on the life of trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke, who had been a major influence on his musical development.
 

The Stardust project arose when Anderson’s long-standing collaborator from the early days of 7:84 and Wildcat Theatre, David MacLennan, picked up a copy of Carmichael’s autobiography.
 

“He was delighted by it,” Anderson explained, “and he knew I was really keen on the songs anyway, and had been for many years. He suggested we put a show together that would mix up the songs with some of Hoagy’s lovely stories from the book, and that is pretty much how we have done it – the narrative sections are basically Hoagy telling his own story, and we invoke quite a range of colourful characters, from his Grandma through to Irving Berlin and Bix Beiderbecke.
 

“The autobiography doesn’t take a neat biographical approach, it reads more as if he remembered one memory and wrote it down, then remembered something else and wrote that down, and so it went. The effect is quite charming, and we have taken a similar approach, which turned out quite well as a structure for the show.”
 

Carmichael became a success in Hollywood (although never on Broadway), both as a songwriter and as an actor, and evolved a trademark cameo role as a laid-back, wise-cracking musician. He grew up in the mid-west state of Indiana, and his greatest songs were rooted in an idealised, pastoral, timeless America.
 

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