Flashback, October 1940: Artie Shaw Records “Stardust”

Big-band leader Artie Shaw went into the studio on October 7, 1940 to record a tune already covered upteen times by other swing orchestras: “Stardust,” with lyrics by Mitchell Parish and music by Hoagy Carmichael. By the time he was through, the great clarinetist had produced what a disk-jockey poll sponsored by Billboard would vote as the greatest record of all time.

Over the years, members of my family came to know that “Stardust” was the wedding song of my dear, late Aunt Mary and Uncle Al. It’s one of the deepest ironies I can imagine that the eight-times-married Shaw provided the great background music for more than six decades of married life for the most devoted couple I’ve ever known.

Additionally, Shaw, like my aunt and uncle, lived into his 90s with all his faculties intact—meaning that this restless musical taskmaster, who walked away from the music business for good in 1954, heard this major hit of his played for another five decades after he laid his instrument down for good.

In Stardust Memories: A Biography of 12 of America’s Most Popular Songs, music critic Will Friedwald traces the genesis of the Carmichael-Parish tune (Carmichael, then a restless, unhappy lawyer, was inspired one night at a local campus watering hole by the memory of a past love to sit down and write the melody), as well as its innumerable pop vocal and instrumental versions.

Isha Jones’ first pop recording of the song (1930) set off a floodtide of interpretations. You name it--virtually every big band of the Depression Era played it--Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Jimmy Lunceford, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller.

Shaw himself had recorded it in 1938. But a year later, now with one of those different versions of his ensemble that he kept formatting every couple of years, as his ability to cope with fame waxed and waned, Shaw felt he could lead his so-called “West Coast Orchestra” through another version of the song, this time for Victor Records.The result was, according to this bandleader who was never shy about (literally) tooting his own horn, “the definitive big-band version of ‘Star Dust.’” (Note: The song title was originally two words before being shortened into its present one-word form.)

I don’t think my aunt and uncle would have minded Shaw’s immodesty in the least. More than five decades later, at a celebration of their anniversary, they were caught up again in the song’s romantic swirl, just as they had been around the time they met.Time has claimed these two people who loved each other so much, along with many of those who loved them as well. I am left thinking of their slow, happy movement around the dance floor, and Parish’s lyric echoing in my head: “But that was long ago--now my consolation is in the stardust of a song.”