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It just... so... happened...
That... just as I walked into the room...
I heard a clarinet playing the song... "Stardust."
It was the Lawrence Welk show... an old classic.
(please listen along)
Henry Cuesta on clarinet with Stardust (1978)
The Lawrence Welk Show. Music in the Skies
April 2nd, 1978. Season 23. Episode 29.
Thinking that I had just caught the end of it...
I stood and listened
To what I could of that lovely song...
To catch those beautifully clear notes...
But it continued on and on.
As it happened...
I had caught it just at the beginning.
What a sudden surprise!
It was so... beautiful.
I wanted to hear it again...
And to try to remember the lyrics of it.
I had heard it before on a Johnny Mathis album.
Johnny Mathis - Stardust
He lingers so long... on his notes.
Lovely.
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Lyrics:
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we're apart
You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by.
Sometimes I wonder
Why I spend the lonely nights
Dreaming of a song...
The melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you...
When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration...
But that was long ago
And now my consolation
Is in the stardust of a song
Beside a garden wall, when stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale tells his fairy tale
Of paradise, where roses bloom
Though I dream in vain
In my heart it always will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain.
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In the lyrics it referred to the Nightengale.
Was the songwriter talking about
How the nightengale song brought back a memory?
What does a Nightengale sound like, anyway?
Well... I found this... a daytime recording:
Singing nightingale. The best bird song | Wildlife World
It is not a musical sound...
To really call it "a song."
It is a series of sounds... with clicks.
These bird call recordings were taken in daylight...
Not in the evening...
Although in the song it is twilight...
When birds call their last calls
Before the hush
Of the setting of the sun.
The song... a memory of a love affair... now lost?
It is not the usual thing that a woman
Is the one to leave a man after an affair.
More often... the man leaves the woman.
He takes what he needs... and then moves on.
I wondered if this song sounded altogether different
With a woman singing it.
Sarah Vaughan perhaps?
Stardust - Sarah Vaughan
I wondered...
Maybe the songwriter was
Writing an ode to Florence Nightengale.
Florence Nightengale at wikipedia
She established the nursing profession...
Just one of her many accomplishments.
She wrote books in a style that
Even a poorly educated person could understand.
She created ways of visualizing data collection
To help with the understanding of that data...
The pie chart... for one.
She was an intellectual
And enjoyed mixing with other intellectuals.
She is known as "The Lady with the Lamp."
During the Crimean war, Nightingale gained the
nickname "The Lady with the Lamp" from a phrase in
a report in The Times:
She is a "ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.
— Cited in Cook, E. T. The Life of Florence Nightingale. (1913) Vol 1, p 237.
The phrase was further popularised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":
Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
Very interesting piece of history.
I was glad to remember her...
And to know her a little better.
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Then... I was back at the song "Stardust."
I found the Welk recording of it.
I found several recordings of it.
Stardust by Ella Fitzgerald
Etta Jones: Stardust
Glenn Miller Orchestra - Stardust
Artie Shaw - Stardust
a more beautiful clarinet...
Robert Anchipolovsky Stardust
Robert Anchipolovsky Plays On Limited Edition
Eddie Gofman Rosewood Clarinet
& MARCA REEDS Supérieure 3
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The music was originally written by Hoagy Carmichael.
The lyrics were written later by Mitchell Parish.
Written by Hoagy Carmichael? Who was he?
Hoagy Carmichael - Stardust - at the piano & singing
Stardust:
the history of the song -wikipedia
Following his graduation, Carmichael moved to Florida to work for a law firm. He left the law sector and returned to Indiana, after having learned of the success of one of his compositions. In 1927, after leaving a local university hangout, Carmichael started to whistle a tune that he later developed further. When composing the song, he was inspired by the end of one of his love affairs, and on the suggestion of a university classmate, he decided on its title. The same year, Carmichael recorded an instrumental version of the song for Gennett Records.
In 1928, Carmichael left Indiana after Mills Music hired him as a composer. Mills Music then assigned Mitchell Parish to add words to the song. Don Redman recorded the song the same year, and by 1929, it was performed regularly at the Cotton Club.
Isham Jones's 1930 rendition of the song made it popular on radio, and soon multiple acts had recorded "Stardust". Because of the song's popularity, by 1936, RCA Victor pressed a double-sided version that featured Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman on respective sides.
Hoagy Carmichael
After graduating from IU's law school in 1926, Carmichael moved to Florida, where he worked as a legal clerk in a West Palm Beach legal firm, but he returned to Indiana in 1927 after failing the Florida bar exam. He joined an Indianapolis law firm (Bingham, Mendenhall and Bingham) and passed the Indiana bar, but devoted most of his energies to music. Carmichael had discovered his method of songwriting, which he described later:
"You don't write melodies, you find them…
If you find the beginning of a good song,
and if your fingers do not stray,
the melody should come out of hiding in a short time."
Carmichael composed several hundred songs, including fifty that achieved hit-record status during his long career. In his early days as a songwriter in Indiana (1924–1929), he wrote and performed in the "hot" jazz improvisational style popular with jazz dance bands.
While he was living in New York City (1929–1936), he wrote songs that were intended to stand alone, independent of any other production, such as a theatrical performance or a motion picture. Carmichael's songs from this period continued to include jazz influences. During his later years in California (1936–1981), his songs were predominately instrumentals. Nearly four dozen were written expressly for, or were incorporated into, motion pictures.
On October 31, 1927, Carmichael recorded "Star Dust," one of his most famous songs, at the Gennett Records studio in Richmond, Indiana, playing the piano solo himself.
One of Hoagy's best friends was:
Louis Armstrong - Stardust
Over the years...
Many versions have been recorded.
Most instrumentals are of the clarinet or saxophone.
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Now...
Where does this lead you?
Don't you wonder, too?
Stardust uses in our culture
I could follow this forever...
So many ways to go...
So many possibilities... but now...
I've finished my wonderings.
I remembered something from long ago
When I would sing songs...
Adding my own twists to the music.
I remember thinking...
How some songs... are written...
Or sometimes because of how they evolve...
Perhaps unknowingly...
To be recorded by a specific instrument...
At a specific speed...
By a specific kind of artist...
In a perfect kind of way...
And that someday...
All of our wonderful music...
All of our wonderful songs and arrangements...
Can come back to us in a perfect form...
That someone will perfect that piece...
That song... that poetry... that essence...
And... oh... the lovely time it is to find it...
Or... to be the one to create it...
Like I once wanted to arrange music
To bring out the best in it.
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