“Beside a garden wall
When stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale tells his fairy tale
of paradise where roses grew
Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love’s refrain”

 

 

Attempting to explain the song’s “eternal popularity,” Carmichael biographer Richard M. Sudhalter credits “some combination of young Carmichael’s heartland upbringing, Bix’s uniquely bardic sensibility, and the unself-conscious emotional directness that characterizes much non-urban American pop music.”

 

In Casino Royale, novelist Ian Fleming has René Mathis, one of James Bond’s fictional fellow secret agents, make a remark about Bond looking like Hoagy Carmichael. Later in the novel, after looking at his reflection in a mirror, Bond disagreed.