This week we’ve been looking at Bix Beiderbecke on film. Now let’s listen to his friend and collaborator Hoagy Carmichael for a few minutes discussing Bix. I don’t know when this radio interview is from nor who the English chap is conducting it. But he manages to get the normally mild Carmichael worked up into something more than just a testy snit. The question has to do with how much Bix’s solos influenced Carmichael’s songwriting. This clearly is a sensitive subject for Carmichael and he beings to rail against a recent biography that he feels implies that Carmichael ‘borrowed’ ideas. By the time Hoagy’s rant has peaked, he using words like ‘plagiarism’ and one suspects that Bix did indeed influence his writing and that Hoagy was sick of having to defend himself. The interview ends after a few minutes (did Hoagy walk out?) and we hear a recording of a silly Carmichael song called ‘Old Man Harlem’. That’s Carmichael on the vocal of course. Below I’ve posted the fascinating first recording ever of ‘Stardust’ performed by ‘Hoagy Carmichael and His Pals’. The Mitchell Parish lyric has not yet been set. Carmichael plays the piano–not well, to be honest–and the guitarist swamps another soloist with wrong chords. But its a strange and oddly poignant thing to hear one of the most famous songs ever written played before anyone knew quite how much of a beloved hit the song was going to eventually become.