Fran Landesman

Fran Landesman (21 October 1927 - 23rd July 2011) was an American lyricist and poet.

Early life

Fran was born Frances Deitsch in New York City. Her father was a dress manufacturer, her mother was a journalist. Her brother Sam Deitsch went on to open and run bars in St Louis before establishing, with partner Ed Moose, The Washington Square Bar and Grill in San Francisco.

Fran was educated at private schools, then at Temple University, Philadelphia, and at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, in whose fashion industry she initially worked.

While in New York she met writer Jay Landesman, the publisher of the short-lived Neurotica magazine, whom she married on July 15, 1950. They had two sons, Cosmo Landesman and Miles Davis Landesman. Producer Rocco Landesman is their nephew.

Lyricist

She and her husband moved to St Louis, his home town where he and his brother Fred started the Crystal Palace nightclub. This was a successful venture, attracting big-name acts as well as producing avant-garde theatre.

Fran Landesman's experiences sitting in the bar of the Crystal Palace, listening to musicians and audiences, led her to begin writing song lyrics in 1952. One of her best-known is "Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most", her exploration of T. S. Eliot's "April is the cruelest month..." The Palace's pianist Tommy Wolf set her lyrics to music, and the song became a hit, leading to more Landesman–Wolf collaborations. He wrote the melodies for the songs for The Nervous Set, a musical with a book by Jay Landesman, which had a brief run on Broadway, which featured "Spring" and "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men". Molly Darling, a musical by Jay Landesman and Martin Quigley, was produced by the St. Louis MUNY Opera). She wrote the lyrics for A Walk on the Wild Side by Nelson Algren.

In 1960 Landesman began writing songs with singer/pianist/composer Bob Dorough who had been brought to St Louis by Tommy Wolf to play the lead in A Walk on the Wild Side. Their song "Nothing Like You" was recorded by Miles Davis and included on his 1967 albumSorcerer. "Small Day Tomorrow" has been recorded by many singers and was the title of Dorough's 2007 CD which featured 12 songs with Landesman lyrics .

In 1964 the Landesmans moved to London, where Fran wrote lyrics for a number of well-known musicians (with an emphasis on jazz) such as Pat Smythe, Georgie Fame, Tom Springfield, Richard Rodney Bennett and Dudley Moore. She continued to write with composers in the USA including Alec Wilder, Steve Allen, Tommy Wolf, Roy Krall, John Simon and Jason McAulliffe. She wrote lyrics for another of her husband's musicals, Dearest Dracula, produced at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 1965.

In the 1970s, Fran Landesman began writing and publishing poetry, for which she became better known than for her lyrics (though there was, of course, much overlap between the two). She published several volumes of poetry, as well as performing pieces at festivals and on BBC Radio.

In 1994 she met British composer Simon Wallace with whom she collaborated for the rest of her life. To date, more than 40 of their songs have been commercially released by singers including Sarah Moule, Ian Shaw, Nicki Leighton -Thomas, Carol Grimes, Shepley Metcalf, Bob Dorough, Carolyn Nelson and Susannah McCorkle</ref>[2]. Theatre shows based on Landesman/Wallace songs include “There’s Something Irresistible in Down” (1996) produced at the Young Vic by members of the Royal Shakespeare Company, “Forbidden Games” (1997) at the Ustinov Theatre Bath, the Pleasance Theatre Edinburgh and the Gdansk Shakespeare Festival and “Queen of the Bohemian Dream” (2007) produced at the Source Theatre Washington DC. “The Decline of the Middle West” (1995) at 'The Supper Club' in New York featured Landesman's lyrics with music by Wolf, Wallace, Allen, Simon and McAuliffe.

In 1996 the BBC received a number of complaints when Landesman appeared on Desert Island Discs and requested a supply of cannabis seeds as her luxury item.

In 1999 Landesman donated her papers to the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where they are held in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection. In 2006, Circumstantial Productions published a new collection of Fran Landesman's lyrics and poems, Small Day Tomorrow, edited by Richard Connolly.

In the last 10 years of her life Fran performed more and more frequently, reciting her poetry, singing her songs and occasionally talking about her life and work. In 2003 she appeared in New York at Joe's Pub with Jackie Cain and Bob Dorough and in October 2008 returned to St Louis to do a one woman show at the Gaslight Theatre. Throughout 2010 and 2011 she made bi- monthly appearances at RADA for Farrago poetry and every six months hosted a lunchtime concert at The 606 Club in London. In May 2010 the South Bank Centre presented 'An Evening with Fran Landesman' at the Purcell Room and in April 2011 the Leicester Square Theatre presented 'A Night Out with Fran Landesman' as part of the 'Art of Song Festival'. Her last appearance was at RADA on July 21st 2011.

External links

• University of Missouri-St Louis — biographical introduction
• Fran's Official Web Site
• "Biography for Fran Landesman", Women of the Beat
• Frances Dietsch Landesman Obituary in the St. Louis Beacon (7.23.11)