Fran Landesman
Fran Landesman (21 October 1927 - 23rd July 2011) was an American lyricist and poet.
Early life
She was born Frances Deitsch in New York City. Her father was a dress manufacturer, her mother was a journalist and she has a brother Sam. Deitsch 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.[1] 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,[2] 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.[3]
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 album "Sorcerer". "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 [4].
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[5] in 1965.[6]
In the 1970s, Fran Landesman began writing and publishing poetry,[7] 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, producing a catalogue of over 400 songs. To date, more than 40 Landesman/Wallace 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 their work includes “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) at the Source Theatre Washington DC. “The Decline of the Middle West” (1995) at 'The Supper Club' in New York featured Fran's lyrics with music by Wolf, Wallace, Allen, Simon and McAuliffe.
In 1996 the BBC received a number of complaints[8] when Landesman appeared on Desert Island Discs and requested a supply of cannabis seeds as her luxury item.[9]
In 1999 Landesman donated her papers to the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where they are held in the Western Historical Manuscript Collection.[10] In 2006, Circumstantial Productions published a new collection of Fran Landesman's lyrics and poems, Small Day Tomorrow, edited by Richard Connolly.
References
- ^ Craig Sams Obituary, The Guardian, 25 February 2011
- ^ Lorraine Treanor "Jay Landesman has made his final exit", DC Theatre Scene (website), 22 february 2011
- ^ "LANDESMAN, FRAN (1927- ), PAPERS, 1959-1998", University of Missouri-St. Louis, accessed 2 Dec 2009
- ^ [1]
- ^ "LANDESMAN, FRAN (1927- ), PAPERS, 1959-1998", University of Missouri-St. Louis, accessed 2 Dec 2009
- ^ William Grimes "Jay Landesman, Beat Writer and Editor, Dies at 91", New York Times, 28 February 2011
- ^ "LANDESMAN, FRAN (1927- ), PAPERS, 1959-1998", University of Missouri-St. Louis, accessed 2 Dec 2009
- ^ "Cannabis Campaign: Tune in for a desert island spliff", The Independent, 24 May 1998
- ^ "Desert Island Discs: Fran Landesman", BBC website [September 1996]
- ^ "LANDESMAN, FRAN (1927- ), PAPERS, 1959-1998", University of Missouri-St. Louis, accessed 2 Dec 2009
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)