The Melody Lingers On: Stardust
When he was 15 years old Tony Thornton heard a song which changed his life.
When I was 15 years old, I belted out rock ’n’ roll records on our radiogram. During a gap when I was changing the record, a song broke through on the wireless. My father stopped me and said, “Listen to this, son. It’s the greatest pop song ever written.”
Well, I listened and although I couldn’t wait to get Cliff Richard back on to the turntable, something stirred. The song was Stardust and although I didn’t know it then, at that moment my life was changed. But that’s another story.
Hoagy Carmichael wrote the music for Stardust in 1927 when he played piano in a college-student jazz group. Even though he wrote it as a fast moving, be-bop tune, his school friend named it Stardust because he said: “It sounded like dust from stars drifting down through the summer sky.”
But the song languished for two years until Mitchel Parish agreed to write his heart-wrenching lyric to it - provided that it be recorded slow. It was only then that the song became understood.
Like so many of these early songs, Stardust has a verse. But unlike the rest, when the song is performed, the verse is always included. It is simply too good to miss out. But even so, it was quite a surprise when Frank Sinatra made a record of the verse only! There are just eight lines so he sang it very slow to fill the time. This was an extraordinary thing to do. It had never happened before and it has never happened since.
Stardust is a song of indescribable beauty yet at the same time it’s an obstacle course. There are only a few people with both the nerve and the ability to sing it. The version by Nat King Cole - the greatest of the romantic ballad singers - is the one I weep to.
Stardust remained top of my list until one day in the summer of 1969. Our band acquired a new arrangement and I was privileged to discover the true nature of the song that replaced it for me as the greatest song ever written. It was Jerome Kern’s All The Things You Are - more of this next time.
The verse to Stardust
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
** If you are interested in taking an on-line writing course please contact Tony. Click on The Memory Lingers On file in the right hand column of this page, then follow the link.
