This is an IHeart podcast.

And we continue with our American stories.

Up next, one of our favorite types of stories about artistic imagination,

about creating something from nothing.

This is the story of a song you all know, but don't know how it came to be.

Some believe it's a song about a girl, Others believe it's a song about a place, a state, the peach tree state.

The two men who wrote the music and lyrics, Hogi Carmichael and Stuart Gorell,

can't answer that question.

They died a long time ago.

But the story of how the song Georgia on my mind came to be,

and a song that the world would come to know is a quintessentially American story.

Hogi Carmichael was born in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1899.

His father, he took on whatever jobs he could to help pay the bills,

first as a horse-drawn taxi driver and later as an electrician.

His mom played piano for a living.

Throughout his youth, his family struggled to make ends meet.

The defining event in his early life sprang from tragedy.

In 1918, the Spanish flu ravaged the country,

and his baby sister Joanna was not spared. Her death was something Carmichael

would never forget, and it would fuel his ambition. Here's a quote from Carmichael. We couldn't

afford a good doctor or good attention, and that's when I vowed I would never again be broke in my life.

He graduated from Indiana University and its law school, and soon began to practice law in

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