Reality Check
by Samuel Chennault
June 25, 2003

How Hoagy Carmichael, children's music, and a TV station combo played into one of the most collectible records in hip-hop.

TWO YEARS AGO, burrowed inside his Phoenix apartment with a collection of vintage synths and keyboards, jazz musician Monty Stark had no idea that his 30-year-old renditions of children's songs by Hoagy Carmichael were among the most coveted pieces of vinyl for hip-hop's reigning elite. In the past few years legendary producers such as Madlib, Large Professor, and Pete Rock have sampled his funky, psych-jazz reinterpretations of one of America's most prized songwriters, and the original pressing of his album has achieved a mythical status among record collectors, fetching in excess of $500 on the crate-digging circuit. But now the secret's out. Thanks in large part to the dutiful archivists at Stones Throw Records, which has a history of rereleasing such early-'70s obscurities as the critically acclaimed Funky 16 Corners compilation, the public now has access to one of the industry's most well-guarded treasures.

Spanning five decades, at least three disparate music forms, and ever changing cultural milieus, the continued relevance of Carmichael's children's songs is a testament not only to the archivist nature of sample-based hip-hop, but also of the adaptability of the composer-actor's compositions. In 1958, Carmichael – best known for such classic jazz compositions as "Star Dust," "Heart and Soul," and "Georgia (on My Mind)" – recorded Hoagy Carmichael's Havin' a Party (Golden Records), an album of original children's compositions. The songs retained the whimsical jazz inflections of his earlier work while appropriating the gleeful tones of childhood. As with nearly all of the songwriter's projects, the album was well received and readily accepted into the Carmichael canon. Unfortunately, the '60s unfolded and his music was swept beneath the cultural undertow of rock. No one denied that Carmichael was a national treasure, but in light of the Vietnam War and the era's cultural revolution, his music sounded like a relic of a more sentimental time.

TV land

Even though the nation's youth had forgotten Carmichael, his son, Hoagy Bix Carmichael, never lost faith that in the hands of the right musicians his father's music could once again gain a larger audience. As a producer for Boston TV station WGBH, Hoagy Bix was introduced to a young vibraphonist named Monty Stark, who had recorded the theme for the station's series of Afrocentric documentaries, Say Brother, with his band Stark Reality. The Oklahoma native had attended the prestigious Berklee School of Music and had been a fixture on the Boston jazz circuit. Impressed by Stark's chops, Hoagy Bix conceived of an educational television program featuring his father and his children's songs. For his part, Stark was thrilled at the prospect of reinterpreting the famous composer's music for the show. "There was no hesitation," Stark writes via e-mail. "I've always loved Hoagy's songs, and even though I didn't know his children's songs, I was sure that there would be some meat to hang jazz on."

Together with Stark Reality – which consisted of bassist Phil Morrison, drummer Vinnie Johnson, and now legendary jazz guitarist John Abercrombie – Stark entered the studio to record a select few cuts. In the spirit of the era's free jazz and psychedelic rock, there were no parameters established to limit the sound. The only directive that Stark Reality adhered to was an adage of the elder Carmichael, "Don't ever play anything that ain't right."

The irony is that rock 'n' roll, the same cultural force that rendered Carmichael irrelevant in the '60s, was now being used as a template for reinterpreting his music. The result – the 1970 album, The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop (AJP)– had an uncanny sound, borrowing the odd percussive elements of Bitches Brew -era Miles Davis, the wailing psychedelia of Jimi Hendrix, and the surreally skewed perspectives of the children's television programs for which Carmichael's music was originally intended.

Although Hoagy Bix and Stark were satisfied with the results, it took Hoagy Sr. – who had a "lack of cutting-edge understanding," according to his son – a bit longer to grasp the method behind Stark's madness. "Hoagy immediately lit into me about the 'wild' tape of my group one of the producers had sent him, and my strange interpretations of his beloved children's songs," Stark e-mails, recalling a first meeting with Carmichael. Eventually, though, the elder Carmichael warmed to the younger musician's versions, and they ultimately collaborated in the early '70s. "He loved the harmonies and rhythms I gave his melodies," Stark writes. "One Sunday, while the Dallas Cowboys were playing on TV and Hoagy was bouncing around after a great breakfast, I was hitting something new that inspired him.... I still have his hand-written lyric about 'Jethro Pugh,' a defensive lineman!"

Although the music wasn't intended for a wide audience, there was an interest due to the novelty of the project, and Stark Reality appeared on The David Frost Show in 1970 and played with Cannonball Adderley at the now defunct Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. Still, despite these commercial crumbs, a national audience was elusive, and within a year Stark Reality broke up, with Stark retreating back to his Boston apartment to master a variety of vintage synths.

New life

If the story had ended there, it would've been an interesting aside in the history of pop music – the musical equivalent of a collaboration between Norman Rockwell and Andy Warhol. But with the advent of hip-hop sampling, The Stark Reality Discovers Hoagy Carmichael's Music Shop slowly seeped back into the public consciousness. The stringent copyright laws enacted in the early '90s transformed hip-hop, long considered a young man's game, into an almost anthropological activity. Producers were forced to cast aside their copies of James Brown and Isaac Hayes and dig further into their crates for the cultural castoffs that resided beyond the hands of record company lawyers. While it was initially seen as either a major inconvenience or hip-hop's death knell, it ultimately led to the rediscovery of an entire era of lost music. Stark Reality – which had enough funky breaks, jazzy loops, and quirky interludes to make a producer salivate – is a prime example of the genre's ability to resurrect a long-forgotten gem.

The first big break was the sampling of Stark Reality by uber-producer Large Professor on his 1996 single, "The Mad Scientist" (Geffen). After Large Professor, the crate-digging community, a small but obsessive faction of hip-hop producers and record collectors, caught wind of it and interest snowballed. Main Source used it on Fuck What You Think (Wild Pitch), their follow-up to the classic 1991 album, Breaking Atoms (Wild Pitch). Pete Rock compiled it for a BBE funk compilation, Madlib used it for a Lootpack remix, and Jurassic 5 producer Cut Chemist recently culled a sample for an upcoming track.

The record achieved almost mythic status, and the price for an original recording skyrocketed from around $100 in 1995 to $500 in 1999. It was around this time that Eothen "Egon" Alapatt, a young crate digger from Nashville who had recently begun working with Stones Throw, traded for an original pressing after promising that he would not reissue the album. He broke the promise after Stones Throw founder and Bay Area native Peanut Butter Wolf overheard Egon playing it. "One afternoon, while I was just hanging out, Wolf walked by my room and said, 'This is amazing. We should put this out,' " Egon recalls on the phone.

After clearing the publishing rights, the label released the song "Rocket Ship" on last year's critically acclaimed Jukebox 45's, followed up by the reissue last month of the full-length, which has been retitled Now. After being out of the spotlight for 30 years – when "nobody gave a shit" – Stark suddenly found himself in the company of hip-hop's elite. "We had him out to L.A. and did a record-release party for the album at Starshoes in Hollywood," Egon remembers. "We had him on Power 106 with J-Rocc, Mr. Choc, and the Friday Nite Flavors crew.... All the things you would imagine a hip-hop star doing, Monty Stark was doing at the age of 62. And he loved it. Sure, he's moved on in his life, and, like he said, the past is the past, but it's funny to see how that past turns present.... It's one of those magical moments when everything has coalesced and turned into a brand-new whole that has reverence for everything that came out but at the same time is pushing that music in a whole new light.... This is that sort of record."

^ top
< back