{"id":448,"featured":0,"modified":"2026-04-17 19:48:36","latitude":39.1681531121972028586242231540381908416748046875,"longitude":-86.527959764935104658434283919632434844970703125,"title":"Hoagy Carmichael's Boyhood Home","subtitle":"","fullsize":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/1c6dff4b50a4bd706274db55ea2ce955.jpg","address":"214 N. Dunn Street, Bloomington, IN 47408","all_locations":[],"zoom":17,"creator":["Monroe County History Center"],"description":"The house on Dunn Street is one of several homes where the Carmichael family lived during Hoagy’s childhood. Born in Bloomington on November 22, 1899, Howard Hoagland was the first child and only son of Howard Clyde (“Cyclone”) and Mary Lida Robison Carmichael. Three girls were to follow. The youngest of them, Joanne, died when she was three, much to her brother’s distress. He blamed her death on the family’s poverty and wrote on the back of a photo of her that her loss made him vow, “I would never be broke again in my lifetime.”
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\r\nCyclone Carmichael held a number of jobs, none of which seemed to last long or pay well. He periodically uprooted the family in pursuit of better opportunities. In 1904 they moved to Indianapolis but were back in Bloomington two years later. A more dramatic move came in 1910 when Cyclone transported the family to Missoula, Montana. It was a vast, cold, and sparsely populated area that ten-year-old Hoagy found bleak and forbidding. As his eldest son Hoagy Bix later recounted, however, the boy discovered that Black musicians played hot ragtime on pianos in local brothels. Hoagy would steal there to listen to them, without his mother’s knowledge. By spring 1911, much to Hoagy’s relief, his father’s Montana dream had ended. The family was back in Bloomington, first at the Dunn Street house again and then at 325 South Fess Avenue, just two blocks away.
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\r\nHoagy’s mother Lida was a skilled pianist. She supplemented the family income by playing at silent movie theaters as well as fraternity and sorority parties on the IU campus, frequently accompanied by her son. Hoagy didn’t reveal a special interest in music, however, until he was eleven years old. He claims he became fascinated with the song “Little Boy Blue” and asked his mother to teach him to sing it. She later taught him to play the piano as well. Their mutual love of music became a lifelong bond between Hoagy and Lida.
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\r\nIn 1916 Cyclone Carmichael once again moved the family to Indianapolis. This disrupted the social and musical life Hoagy, now in high school, had begun to enjoy. He dropped out of Manual High School in Indianapolis when he was sixteen. He then worked a series of jobs on a construction crew, assembly line, and, most grimly, in a slaughterhouse. In early 1919, at the age of eighteen, Hoagy returned to Bloomington. He lived with his Robison grandparents at 907 Atwater St., and re-entered high school, from which he finally graduated in 1920.","sponsor":null,"accessinfo":"","lede":"","website":"","related_resources":[],"factoids":[],"files":{"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/1c6dff4b50a4bd706274db55ea2ce955.jpg":{"id":2027,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Hoagy's Birthplace","description":"You are looking at 214 W Dunn Street as it looks today. This is the home where Hoagy was born in 1899. The house is built in the vernacular bungalow style common in working class neighborhoods of Bloomington. It is located very close to the Indiana University campus and Bloomington's downtown square. The neighborhood was racially integrated at the time and Hoagy's childhood friends reflected that diversity. | Photo Courtesy of Monroe County History Center | 2020 | Rod Spaw","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/1c6dff4b50a4bd706274db55ea2ce955.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/709b5d588a13a35422667b4cf630eca9.jpg":{"id":2026,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Carmichael Family ca. 1903","description":"Born in November, 1899, Howard Hoagland was the first child and only son of Mary Lida and Howard "Cyclone" Carmichael. Three sisters later followed, including Georgia, pictured here, Martha, and Joanne, who died as a toddler. | ca. 1903 | Photo Courtesy of Indiana University Libraries' Archives of Traditional Music, Hoagy Carmichael Collections 1920-1981","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/709b5d588a13a35422667b4cf630eca9.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/eae8f95ce9497bb51901d45db0e8c450.jpg":{"id":2030,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Cyclone Carmichael","description":"Cyclone Carmichael, Hoagy's father, moved his family frequently around the midwest in search of steady work. He had served in the Spanish American War and had earned the nickname “Cyclone” as a middle-weight regimental boxing champion. In 1910 he moved the family to Missoula, Montana where he worked briefly as a telephone lineman. | Photo Courtesy of Indiana University Libraries' Archives of Traditional Music, Hoagy Carmichael Collections 1920-1981 | 1910","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/eae8f95ce9497bb51901d45db0e8c450.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/d3f2d0674b7e42dd8578042338ca1d9a.jpg":{"id":2025,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"4th Grade Class","description":"In this photograph, ten year old Hoagy is standing in the top row, second from the right, with his fourth grade class in Missoula, Montana. Hoagy found Montana bleak and forbidding but he found things he enjoyed, including the hot ragtime music of the black musicians that he heard playing in local clubs and brothels. Hoagy said he would sneak into the back of the clubs to listen to the music when he could. | Photo Courtesy of Indiana University Libraries' Archives of Traditional Music, Hoagy Carmichael Collections 1920-1981 | 1910","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/d3f2d0674b7e42dd8578042338ca1d9a.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/9c6cc5a28a82a66942016f1fed4b7787.jpg":{"id":2028,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"Young Hoagy","description":"By spring of 1911, Howard Carmichael's Montana dream had ended and the family was once again back in Bloomington, first at the Dunn Street house and then later at another house two blocks away. The exact date of this photo of young Hoagy is unknown. | Photo Courtesy of Indiana University Libraries' Archives of Traditional Music, Hoagy Carmichael Collections 1920-1981 | ca. 1911","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/9c6cc5a28a82a66942016f1fed4b7787.jpg"},"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/fullsize/079ca23d4fde0eff808e25afc5b1878d.jpg":{"id":2029,"mime-type":"image/jpeg","title":"First Longs","description":"At the age of 16, while the family was living in Indianapolis, Hoagy dropped out of high school and worked a series of jobs. On the back of this photograph is inscribed "Hoagy in first longs at 16." Receiving a first set of long pants was a rite of passage for young men at the time, as boys wore short pants and stockings. | Photo Courtesy of Indiana University Libraries' Archives of Traditional Music, Hoagy Carmichael Collections 1920-1981 | 1919","thumbnail":"https://discoverindianahistory.org.curatescape7.reclaim.hosting/files/square_thumbnails/079ca23d4fde0eff808e25afc5b1878d.jpg"}}}