Frank Loesser

Frank Loesser was born in New York City in 1910. His parents were German immigrants, well educated and affluent. His older brother, Arthur, became a well known pianist and author.

Frank Loesser was interested in American popular music from an early age. While attending City College in New York, he started writing songs for college productions. He also worked in vaudeville as a singer and caricaturist.

Loesser published his first song at the age of 21. The song was "In Love with a Memory of You." The music was by Walter Schuman, and Loesser wrote the lyrics. Shortly thereafter, Loesser was hired by RKO Pictures as a staff lyricist. Loesser lived and worked in Hollywood throughout the 1930's. He wrote lyrics with some some of America's greatest composers. For example, in 1938 Loesser collaborated with Hoagy Carmichael on the popular song "Two Sleepy People," which was introduced in the film Thanks for Memory and later recorded by "Fats" Waller. Loesser also wrote the lyrics for the popular WWII song "I Don't Want to Walk Without You," with music by Jule Styne. This song was written for the movie, Sweater Girl, but has been recorded many times since. It even made the Billboard charts as recently as the 1980's when Barry Manilow sang it.

Even though Frank Loesser was a popular and successful lyricist in the 1930's and 40's, he ultimately began writing both music and lyrics. His first major hit song was "On a Slow Boat to China," which was written in 1948 and recorded my numerous singers and orchestras, though it was introduced by Kay Kyser and his orchestra.

Frank Loesser achieved his greatest fame and most substantial accomplishments in the late 1940's and 1950's when be began writing for Broadway. His first show, Where's Charley? featured the enduring standards, "Once in Love with Amy." He quickly followed that success with his greatest Broadway triumph, Guys and Dolls (1950). Jazz artists have found that score to be particularly rich in good songs, including "Luck Be a Lady" and "I've Never Been in Love Before." Loesser's next show, The Most Happy Fella (1956) was more ambitious. It was not a fully developed opera, but combines some elements of opera with other elements of musical comedy. Among the standard songs to emerge from the that show was "Standing on the Corner (Watching all the Girls Go By)."

Frank Loesser's final major Broadway score was for How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), this surprising success (which ran for 1,437 performances on Broadway) included "I Believe in You" and "Brotherhood of Man."

Though not as famous as Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser has much in common with them. Like Porter and Berlin, he wrote both music and lyrics to his songs. He also wrote successfully for both film and Broadway. Stylistically, Frank Loesser has more in common with Cole Porter than Irving Berlin. Like Porter, Loesser has a satirical wit that often pokes fun of middle class values and ideas. The variety and extent of Frank Loesser's work place him high on any informed list of great American composers.

Bibliography

Atteberry Music Database: Accessed Feb 15, 1999, Feb 19,1999.

Furia, Philip. The Poets of Tin Pan Alley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 200-203.

Hyland, William. The Song Is Ended: Songwriters and American Music, 1900-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995: 130-142.

Loesser, Arthur. "My Brother Frank" in Notes. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1950: 47-55.

Wilder, Alec. The American Popular Song, 1900-1950. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972: 153-5.