Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Members Recordings - Pianist Corner Ivy (Hoagy Carmichael, 1957) on a period instrument

For the last week and a half, I've been working on a 1952 Cable 40" console piano at the old Schiller piano factory, now the Conover Square Mall, in Oregon, IL. Eventually, the piano will be displayed in a gallery at the mall as an example of one of the instruments built there in the Conover/Cable era. This piano needed some TLC, and it is getting closer to fine. It still needs work, but the mall was relatively quiet toward the end of the day, today, and the piano was starting to sound nice, so I made this recording. The playing is a little un-even. There are a few pedalling mistakes. Blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc. ... This is just for fun.

"Ivy," written by Hoagy Carmichael, was published in 1957. The sheet music cover says it was "Inspired by the Sam Wood Production, 'Ivy.'"



Since Damon seems to like adding noise to pianos and recordings, I dressed this version up in 33 rpm hi-fi:

"Ivy" by Hoagy Carmichael (1957) on a 1952 Cable 40" console piano

--Andy

Andy, this is the first time I've heard a Hoagy Carmichael song from the 1950's! Serves to remind us that he was still capable of writing elegant, beautifully crafted songs, although he seemed to fall off the radar screen after WWII. To me, he certainly belongs in the same league as Porter, Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin, Arlen, and Porter; and, with "Stardust", he owns the most recorded and played of all the American Popular Standards, except for Berlin's "White Christmas". I'll have to Google him and find out what he did in his later years.

The piano sounds good, Andy! And, as always, your treatment is straightforward and elegant, serving the music well. Thanks for sharing!

Sorry chaps ... can’t resist bringing this up ... way back in 1955 I was lucky enough to be in the London Paladium audience for the Hoagy Carmichael Show. Cost 2/6 sitting in the Gods to hear Hoagy sing through his amazing repertoire of of original songs

Stardust
Rockin’ Chair
Georgia on My Mind
Lazy River
Small Fry
Lazybones
The Nearness of You
Two Sleepy People
Skylark
‘Ole Buttermilk Sky

Over the years I have learnt to play the lot on my Grotrian Steinweg ... strangely the recent viewing of the movie “Sleepless in Seattle” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan there is a nostalgic scene where Nat King Cole sings the classic “Stardust”.

Well Done!

Neuhaus, in his book, the Art of Pinao Playing, says this...

'It is very difficult to speak of rhythmic harmony although it is extremely easy to feel it. It is irresistible. when it is achieved in a performance, it is felt by literally everyone.'

When I hear your playing, the rhythmic foundation is always presented well. As always, thanks for sharing!

Forrest

This sounds a lot better than the Baldwin console I inherited recently. It needs a huge amount of work. (Maybe you can fix it )

Nice feel in this piece. The tuning doesn't sound like your trademark, though. Am I wrong?

I don't know, Damon. I think it's EBVT III (Bill Bremmer's trademark, and my prefered temperament ). At least, I used a preset in the electronic tuner made to fit a similar sized piano. But here's the thing:

This piano has unusually soft hammers. I think they had been filed by the previous tech, then a lot of the hammer felts came unglued after that filing was done (not a causal relationship), so I glued them back. Here's that thread in the Tuner/Tech forum.

The other thing to consider is that the sound processing may have hidden the temperament. EBVT III is a mild well temperament, and with the warm tube distortion and the slight EQ touches I made, you probably couldn't hear it all that definitively.

@ Forrest, btb, and Tim--Thanks for listening, my friends, and thanks for your comments! I can always count on youze guyz to lerrn me somptin I dint know!

As to the Baldwin, Damon--it depends on what year it is. Is it clicky clacky? Or is it just in rough shape?

Andy -

Thanks for sending me the sheet music for this one. I went online to find out more about the movie itself - and guess what - both the film and the song actually date back to 1947 (not 1957).

Still, the 1952 Cable 40" console is definitely an instrument from that period !!

Loved the 33rpm hi-fi special effect !!!!!!

I guess I don't know how to read Roman numerals? At least your Internet check brings Tim's post into cleaner focus! Thanks, Carey!

Hi, Andy -- Just out of curiosity, I googled Hoagy Carmichael, and found out that he did write his final "monster" hit in 1951 -- "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening", written for a movie (I forget which), and for which he won an Oscar. After that, he continued to write sophisticated songs; but, along with Harold Arlen in particular, the audience for that type of writing virtually disappeared in the mid to late '50s -- replaced by Rock-'n'- Roll. It appears that, along with Arlen, he accepted his "fate" with reasonable grace.

This is very good. And the piano sounds good too. 33 rpm hi-fi effect is very interesting too.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like your recordings a lot.

But for the purpose of this forum, do you think these as "classical" music and hence post here ?

Why not post these type of recordings in the "non-classical" member recordings sub forum ?
Just curious.

Just rough shape. Some keys are on the verge of not sounding and it's not holding a tune well. I'm not good at tuning but I thought I would try to get it close for awhile before I hired a real tuner. It was fairly flat as my folks never tuned it. It was mostly bait for me to visit more often.

Perhaps I should look into getting an electronic tuner, your work sounds a lot better than mine.

And just what is the purpose of this forum? The way I see it, the endeavor is to take those little black dots and squiggles on the lines and try to get them to come out of my fingers in a right and pleasing way. Whether I am reading a Bach Partita or an Irving Belin song, the pursuit is the same--take something that someone else wrote, respect it, and bring it out with depth of feeling and understanding. To me, that is a much different pursuit than the more spontaneous jazz-making endeavors. And I also think that there is a TON of popular music, much of it in dance and/or song form, written in the first half of the twentieth century, that is every bit as beautiful and well crafted as anything that Schubert or Chopin ever wrote. It follows rules. It has conventions. Look at it this way: Handel wrote music in dance form. Bach wrote music in dance form. Chopin wrote music in dance form. What is a foxtrot but a dance form? Schubert wrote lieder. Schumann wrote lieder. What is "Ivy" but a lied? And kudos to the arrangers who boiled down the melodies and harmonies of the popular music of the time and put them on cheap paper for non-virtuoso parlor pianists like me to enjoy. They sure knew what the were doing.

I think this music can and should be taken every bit as seriously as Beethoven's Bagatelles, kept alive in the same way, and so in sharing it here, I hope people can appreciate the craftsmanship that went into the composing of it and the arranging of it. Also, does not the fact that it is played on a period instrument grant it some degree of additional interest for the odd classically minded musicologist?

I hope that answers your question. Thank you so much for listening, Hakki! I am glad to have you in my imaginary audience whenever I record!

--Andy

Thank you Andy, for the detailed answer. That sure answers my question. Though I have to admit that I don't agree.

I listen to your songs and like them, in which case I wouldn't, if you had posted them in the non-classical forum.
However, the same might be true for non-classical members who are not following this forum. They might be simply missing your songs.

Maybe you can post these songs in both forums.

Hakki/CB, just a general observation on my end -- I only rarely see a recording posted in the Non-Classical Forum. To me, it seems to be just a "quirk" of the PW site. Performances of ragtime music also seem to get posted here, but I don't relate to that idiom as "classical", either. Same with contemporary pop efforts, which I also see now and again (also less than in the past).