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Frances Faye: Entertainer, Musician, Pioneer.
At this site Frances Faye, an underrated singer, gay icon and pioneer, is rediscovered, demystified and rescued from obscurity. Curiously, Frances Faye is not even listed in so-called jazz and pop encyclopedias even though she recorded more than a dozen albums for most major labels of her time: Decca, Capitol, Bethlehem, Verve, Imperial; and smaller labels: International, GNP, Regina and A&M. In addition to her recording career, Frances was a bright star on 52nd Street during its heyday and a fixture in major nightclubs around the world for 45 years. She played to sold out houses for weeks and months on end and even shattered Peggy Lee's record run at New York's famous Basin Street East in the early 60's. Her style and sound changed and evolved a great deal over the years but her unique sense of rhythm and timing remained a strong constant. Yet her achievements in jazz are being overlooked and forgotten. Since this website was launched years ago, it has been the source for many new articles, other websites and the liner notes for all the new CDs.
Nearly impossible to research, here you will find the facts. It is frustrating that precious little has been indexed or published. I am willing to share information I have uncovered and would love to see what you have found - if anything. Most of what I have learned is documented in the detailed biography that follows. It is the longest article ever published about Frances. She was unconventional and her open bisexuality and lifestyle may have seriously hurt her career and legacy. The site had grown to be so huge that in February of 2006 the Biography and Music Pages were edited to much shorter lengths and 3 additional pages of this site were deleted all together. Still there is plenty of Frances to discover here.
(Photos courtesy of David McCain, David Torresen, Parker Taylor, Mark Trevorrow, Warren G. Harris and from my collection)
Exerpts from Reviews, Articles, Books, & Interviews
VOICE:
...Fast, funny, and fantastically fey. Frances, no lady, orders her sidemen around like a bunch of serfs, sneers at the audience, pounds that old piano as if she were whipping it into submission in a corner, and hits every lyric with aggression, making ‘I love you’ sound hostile (Will Leonard, 10-31-75)
She barks out bits and pieces of songs in a voice trained to cut through the hubbub of a smoke filled room. (John S. Wilson, NYTimes 11-17-78)
Frances rasps in a voice so deep it sound piped through a subway grating. (Rex Reed, Daily News 10-17-75)
She is a singing phenomenon, who tears a song to ribbons, puts it together again with some filigree added, and then tosses it into the faces of the patronage with fantastic calliope bangings on the piano. (Ted Friend, Daily Mirror 11-14-37)
Think of, say, Elaine Stritch and Frances Faye, great singers who sound as if they'd go home after a long show, kick off their shoes and relax by mixing a tall bleach cocktail. (Michael Mascioli, liner notes)
Her voice is throaty--sawdust and sandpaper--with an urban twang; her delivery is declamatory and unrestrainted; and her approach to a song is direct--the Take No Prisoners school of vocalizing. And all these qualities combine with her relaxed sense of phrasing and swing to form a style that is, at the same time, completely natural and very wild (to use one of her favorite phrases). Faye is one of the TRULY great, if overlooked, singers in popular music. (Michael Mascioli, online review)
LOOKS:
One woman customer in back of me said, "If she looks like that now, imagine what she looks like when she gets up in the morning." Frances fools 'em - she doesn't get up in the morning. (Earl Wilson, Post 8-27-56)
The woman at the table next to mine said she looked like a butch teapot. (Reed, 10-17-75)
...a bawdy, old broad, fifty, and she looked it...'she had a face like putty'...Faye's splendid face would have best been left to a painter in the order of Toulouse-Lautrec or Munch. She topped the face off with orange pancake, lurid green eye shadow, and a carrot wig. The woman was a visual feast with a sound bite to match. (Stephen MacLean, 64)
Her hair is cropped so short she must comb it with a toothbrush. A slash of fire-engine red for a mouth, two enormous black olives for eyes...and a riot of jewels that bounce through the night like searchlights...her looks are so startling that you almost forget how talented and musically creative she is. (Reed, 10-17-75)
She's really not my sister; she's my father. (Brother Marty Faye in Time Magazine 1957)
PERSONALITY: Frances Faye is something of a national monument, you pay her a visit with the reverence one reserves for a trip to the Louvre. (Reed 10-17-75)
Working with Frances Faye was the most fun I had in my career. Jack Costanzo
She is truly one of the free people of the world and the wildest woman I ever met. Whatever comic timing I have I got from Frances Faye. Peter Allen (David Smith, Neal Peters, 23)
Frances Faye...may be a weirdie. In and around her slam-bang vocals and hot piano, she jokes about homosexuals, lesbians, and her own looks, wieght, age and Jewishness. (Arthur Alpert, 3-26-62)
She viewed the male-dominated world with a jaundiced but jaunty eye. (Burt Folkart, LA Times 11-16-91)
She is: intense, relaxed, subtle, crude, polished, rough, callous, tender, dynamic and poignant. It's her great talent to combine all these conflicting elements into a consistent and exciting whole. (Variety 7-15-59).
What Miss Faye has developed is jazz comedy. She is truly funny and spontaneous. (Variety 12-23-64)
FANS:
She is one of those fortunate mortals who has rhythm in her body and soul. Irving Berlin
Her musical arrangements influenced many performers, including Peter Allen...and Sammy Davis Jr. (Billboard, 1-4-92)
Her propensity for jazz notwithstanding, she defies categorization. Jazz, R & B, lounge, saloon, honky tonk. She's all of them, and then some. Not just a singer, but an entertainer, and a unique one. Brian M., Fan
I wouldn't come to this toilet if it weren't to see you. Barbara Stanwyck
If anything happens to me, you're the only one left. Sophie Tucker
I've loved Frances ever since I heard Peter Allen's 'Just A Gigolo.' Her voice just cut right through me and I wanted to know who this mystery woman was. M Gallob, Fan
Remember I said that on NO REGRETS Frannie sounds like the love child of Sophie Tucker and Ethel Merman? On closer examination, make that the lovechild of Mae West and Ethel Merman. Ray Hagen, Fan
Caught in the Act was a very popular album among us. It was a big deal that she was so blatant, so publicly open. We had so little. This was so precious. Merril, Fan (JT Sears' Lonely Hunters, http://www.jtsears.com/fayelyric.htm)
WOWZEE-WOW-WOW!, wild, wacky and completely and utterly wonderful. It want to scratch the walls knowing I shall never see one of her live sets, as Frances passed on. Her patter is hilarious, her voice a force of nature, her phrasing and musicality on par with the ultimate best of the best. Adam Dugas
First in a field of one! Don Sherwood
LIFESTYLE:
This is not a scene where Anita Bryant would be at ease. (Leonard Feather LA Times 6-15-78)
She parodied her bisexuality...her antics came during an era when gay male entertainers were trapped in the closet and gay female entertainers were not even imagined. (Folkart, 11-16-91)
She was something of a social revolutionary, openly flaunting her bisexuality at a time when such topics were taboo. (Joseph F Laredo, liner notes)
Frances dared to be bizarre in the up-tight, button-down 50's...I get the feeling that maybe Janis Joplin stumbled across Frances somewhere in a former life or something, and heard that extra-ballsy type singing." Mark Murphy (liner notes "Lucky To Be Me" 2002)
...a sort of latter day Bessie Smith to the hippies. (Variety 4-11-62)
...right in the vanguard of the new hipsters. Miss Faye expresses the new and growing revolutionary spirit abroad in the land, reshaping attitudes. That she is able to do so via hilarious yocks with no hint of somberness is a tribute to her copious talents as a comedienne. (Variety 12-23-64)
She can be the new Elvis Presley or the new Roberta Sherwood...Roberta's a middle-aged mother and Frances says: "So am I. I have four French poodles." (Wilson 8-27-56)
(sources listed on Bio Page)
HORNS UP! Frances Faye Collection
You can find Frances Faye's biography, discography, rarities and other performances on links above. I collect any written material that mentions Faysie and am always looking for photos.
I AM SEEKING:
1. Any Faye stories, photos, sources or memories or any Faye tributes you care to make. I publish stories on the Fayenatics page.
2. April 1957 NBC Nightline Radio Show, Hollywood's Open House, or other radio transciptions.
3. International 78's, any other Faye performances (radio and TV!) and any taped concerts.
4. Info or footage of Frances Faye from the following TV shows:
Copyright Tyler Alpern 2001 - 2007 The website's content is copyrighted. No material from the site may be republished, copied, posted, rewritten, printed, photocopied, broadcast, publicly displayed, or distributed in any way without prior written permission except that you may view many of the site's pages with a web browser and you may print a single copy of those pages for your personal, noncommercial, home use.
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About your host Tyler: 2008 Article in Urban Molecule
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