10/09/2026
One of the most recorded songs of the twentieth century was written on a battered piano in a college hangout in Bloomington, Indiana, by a lonely 28-year-old who'd just come home.
Hoagy Carmichael grew up in Bloomington and studied law at Indiana University, but music kept pulling him back. In 1927, newly graduated and feeling out of place with his old friends gone and a girl he'd loved no longer around, he found himself at the Book Nook on Indiana Avenue, a Prohibition-era student hangout known for its beat-up upright piano in the corner that regulars considered his. Sitting there one night, a melody came to him so insistent he had to get it down immediately. That melody became "Stardust," and it's gone on to be recorded more times than almost any other American song, by everyone from Louis Armstrong to Willie Nelson.
The Book Nook still stands today, now known as the Gables, and students still walk past it without necessarily knowing a piece of American music history was written right there, at a piano, by a homesick Hoosier.
What other Indiana-made song, invention, or idea do you think deserves more credit than it gets?
