Lessons from Loesser

Frank Loesser smoked three packs of cigarettes a day, wore crisp, laundered shirts, Shalimar cologne and glassy green pomade in his hair. He also wrote beautiful music and some of the sharpest, funniest lyrics ever sung on a stage. Quite a package, you say? If his personal style is out of date, his music definitely isn't.

I've enjoyed reading about him in preparation for Heart and Soul: Sautee Celebrates the Music of Frank Loesser, a Sautee Supper Club show in which I will perform with buddies Laura Owenby, C.B. Henson and Barbara Luhn the evening of January 23, 2011, at the Sautee Nacoochee Community Center. (Mark your calendar now! It is going to be a great show.)

I like this advice to singers from one of Loesser's letters. The guy didn't mince words. "Don't sustain notes--any notes, I don't care if it's grand opera you're doing--beyond the point where they stop making sense, or beyond the safety limit of your wind or nervous system. Breathe your head off any time you want. Don't sing over-long phrases in one breath, because even a Kenny Baker can't do it without making the next passage suffer from lack of control. It beautifies nothing except your own private opinion of your vocal prowess--which is not what the public wants. They want entertainment."

What is your favorite Frank Loesser song?