Frank Loesser, songwriter: reference sources (web and print); selected songs; recordings, videos; miscellany

Overview and Commentary Frank Loesser

Composer Jule Styne recounts that [in 1941] he was working at Republic Pictures, not one of the more glamorous Hollywood studios, where he was supposed to to write songs, but wound up doing just about everything else. When he finally did get the chance to compose, the Republic people asked him who he wanted to write the lyrics. He said, "'Frank Loesser.' 'Where's he?' "Paramount.' So they made a trade. They swapped John Wayne [who was at that time under contract to Republic] for a picture to get Frank Loesser; that was the deal." When Loesser got there, Styne recalls, "He hated me because I'd degraded him" ( Wilk, pp. 182-183).

Loesser's first published song was "In Love with a Memory of You" music by William Schuman (Wilk 320) and first professionally performed lyric was for "A Waltz Was Born in Vienna" music by Frederick Loewe from 1936 (Wilk 317).

Ed's. note: As it turned out the two of them didn't really score big together until Styne got traded to Paramount and the two collaborated to write songs for the 1942 movie Sweater Girl, which included what became an American standard song, "I Don't Want To Walk without You, Baby."

Where's Charley, Loesser's first Broadway show, for which he wrote both words and music, opened on October 11, 1948. Max Wilk quotes Ernie Martin, a Hollywood music director who encouraged Loesser to go to New York to write the show:

It [ Where's Charley ] didn't make much of a splash at the beginning, we didn't get great notices at all. But there were telegrams from all the other composers -- Rodgers, Hammerstein, Cole Porter -- congratulating him on his brilliant work. Cole was always so starry-eyed about other people's work. With Loesser, he used to sit there and say, "How can he have thought of a thing like that?" . . . . Arthur Schwartz wrote a piece in The New York Times Sunday section saying that Frank was the greatest undiscovered composer in America . . . . Then people started to pay attention (Wilk, p. 325).

Cafe Songbook Music-Video Cabinet: Frank Loesser

An Evening with
Frank Loesser
( An Evening with Frank Loesser "contains performances associated with three Frank Loesser shows [with Loesser himself doing much of the performing] — Guys and Dolls, The Most Happy Fella, and How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying" --from the iTunes review. Click album cover for the remainder.)

• Baby It's Cold Outside
• Cant' Get Out of This Mood
• Heart and Soul
• How Sweet You Are
• I Believe in You
• I Don't Want To Walk without You, Baby
• I Hear Music
• I Wish I Didn't Love You So
• If I Were a Bell
• I've Never Been in Love Before
• The Lady's in Love with You
• Let's Get Lost
• Moments Like This
• Never Will I Marry
• On a Slow Boat to China
• Once in Love with Amy
• Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
• Sand in My Shoes
• Say It (over and over again)
• Says My Heart
• Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat
• Small Fry
  
• Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year
• They're Either Too Young or Too Old
  
• Two Sleepy People
• What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Research Resources: Frank Loesser

• Amazon (publications by and about, recordings, videos, sheet music, etc.)
• DBOPM (Database Of Popular Music: song list; awards; hit songs; co-writers)
• Indiana University Sheet Music Collection: Frank Loesser.
• Internet Broadway Database (Broadway productions and song credits)
• Internet Movie Database (brief biography, filmography, movie song credits)
• FrankLoesser.com (The Frank Loesser Website)
• New York Public Library (catalog entries for books, personal papers, recordings, scores, etc.)
• The New York Times (articles about or related to the songwriter)
• NPR Music (archive of relevant programs often including audio segments)
• Songwriters Hall of Fame (biography and song list)
• Wikipedia (Frank Loesser article)
• ASCAP Biographical Dictionary, New York: American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, Cattell/Bowker, Fourth edition, 1980 (dates, collaborators, shows/movies, songs, etc., entry p. 307-308).
• Max Wilk. They're Playing Our Song: Conversations with America's Classic Songwriters. New York and Stratford, CT: Easton Studio Press, 2008. (originally published 1973 as They're Playing Our Song: From Jerome Kern to Stephen Sondheim—The Stories behind the Words and Music of Two Generations) -- chapter on Loesser.
• Roy Hemming. The Melody Lingers on: The Great Songwriters and Their Movie Musicals. New York: Newmarket Press, 1986 (paperbound edition, 1999) --chapter on Loesser including annotated filmography.
• Gerald Mast. Can't Help Singin' The American Musical on Stage and Screen. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1987 (multiple references to Loesser).
• David Ewen. American Songwriters, An H. W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary. New York: The H. W. Wilson Co., 1987 (includes 146 bios of composers and lyricists). -- a wide selection of used copies is available at abebooks.com (entry, pp. 260-265, hard cover ed.).
• Thomas S. Hischak. Word Crazy: Broadway Lyricists from Cohan to Sondheim. New York: Praeger, 1991 (pp. 113-118).
• Gary Marmorstein. Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and Its Makers 1900-1975. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997 (pp. 179-181 and others).
• William Zinsser. Easy to Remember The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs. Jaffrey, New Hampshire: David R. Godine, 2000 (chapter on plus multiple other references to Loesser).
• Robert Kimball and Steve Nelson, Eds. The Complete Lyrics of Frank Loesser. New York: Alfred A. Knoph, 2003. David Lehman. "The Man Who Rhymed 'Barbasol.'" The New York Times. Dec. 7, 2003 (review of The Complete Lyrics of Frank Loesser).
• Ken Bloom. The American Songbook, The Singers, The Songwriters and the Songs. New York: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2005 (entry--pp. 264-266 and others).
• Wilfred Sheed. The House That George Built: with a Little Help from Irving, Cole and a Crew of about Fifty. New York: Random House, 2007 (chapter on Loesser).
• Thomas S. Hischak. The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008 (entry--pp. 448-449).
• Thomas L. Riis. Frank Loesser. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008 (a book in the Yale Broadway Masters Series).
• Philip Furia and Laurie Patterson. The Songs of Hollywood. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010 (multiple references to Loesser).
• Tribute to Loesser: Opera Omaha;
• Vivian Blaine: AcornTVLive
  
• Don Ameche/Mary Martin: ashtonjoliet;

Notes

• Where's Charley ? (original London cast 1958 )
• Frank Sings Loesser (Frank Loesser singing many of his lesser known songs.)
• Thomas L. Riis Frank Loesser (Yale Broadway Masters Series) New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008

Cite this page: Frank Loesser, songwriter: reference sources (web and print); selected songs; recordings, videos; miscellany, Cafe Songbook, https://greatamericansongbook.net/pages/songwriters/l_sws/loesser_frank.html