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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Kilgore And Frishberg Head East

July 28, 2009 by Doug Ramsey

I am not in the business of promoting night club engagements. Nor do I intend to be. However, this is so rare an event on the east coast, I would hate to think that Rifftides readers in and about New York might fail to hear about it.

Frishberg Kilgore ad.jpg

As a companion unsolicited plug, allow me to call your attention to the most recent Kilgore-Frishberg collaboration on CD, Why Fight The Feeling, their collection of Frank Loesser songs. Full disclosure: I wrote the liner notes. I got paid, but I’ve spent the money, and I don’t get royalties.
From the notes:
Why Fight The Feeling.jpg

Loesser was a master at converting everyday language into lyrics that, as Frishberg put it, “Take the listener by the ear and lead him around.” A fledgling songwriter in New York in the late 1950s, Frishberg got to know Loesser. He has never forgotten the guidelines the older man gave him:
“Try to make everything refer back to the title. Make the lyric belong to the song, and the title should have something to do with it. Keep focused in on what the title is saying. He told me to avoid colorful language unless I put a rest nearby so that the audience could have time to digest it. Otherwise, they’d be admiring, or wondering, or puzzled about it and lose the next lyric or two, because the purpose of writing is to get their attention and keep it.”
Anyone familiar with Frishberg’s songs knows that Loesser’s advice made an impression, but you’ll have to consult Dave’s recordings for evidence; the only songs here are his mentor’s. In line with their long-time agreement, Dave doesn’t sing when he and Becky perform together. That’s only fair; she doesn’t play piano when he sings.

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Comments

  1. Ken Dryden says

    July 28, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    My wife and I just returned from New York on Sunday, 7/26, where we enjoyed Lee Konitz (w/Paul Motian and Dan Tepfer), Jack Wilkins with Gene Bertoncini, Paul Meyers and up-and-coming pianist/vocalist Champian Fulton. I would have loved to catch Rebecca Kilgore with Dave Frishberg, even at a ridiculously pricey venue like Feinstein’s at the Regency, where we paid over $200 for dinner drinks and tip, even after the $120 in cover charges were waived, in 1997.

  2. Sugar Candelaria says

    August 4, 2009 at 9:22 pm

    So beautiful to see the great Frank Loesser spotlighted.
    Thank you

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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