Even though his earliest compositions were instrumental, most of Hoagy Carmichael’s compositions are songs strongly associated with his own performances of them, to the point where he is almost the only composer of popular song to be identified with the song titles, e.g. "Hoagy Carmichael's immortal 'Stardust'." The lyrics of Carmichael’s songs are often colloquial and regional in nature. Often the region evoked is the South, even though Carmichael was from Indiana, and the images are rural ("Lazy River", "Geor­gia On My Mind", "Moon Country"). Some of his finest songs, however, evoke much more poetic images -- "Star Dust", "One Morning In May" and the superb "Sky­lark", the latter written with Mercer. Others were written to be sung by Car­michael himself for the character roles he portrayed in films -- "Balti­more Oriole", "Hong Kong Blues", and our own regional favorite, "Rogue River Valley". The Jazz Kings will be presenting a broad spectrum of Hoagy's best songs.