Eight thousand dollars bought “Love for Sale”Įight times. Discounts were neither demanded nor offered. Gangsters, including Al Capone, adored her, some paying $1,000 a pop for requests. Faye scored her first gig at 15, quit school and before she was 20 played the Cotton Club and David Daniel Kaminsky - Danny Kaye - was a second cousin. Faye’s mother was a Russian immigrant, her fatherĪn electrician and arsonist familiar with Sing Sing. If you knew nothing of Frances Faye, saw a clip and thought, That woman could only be from Brooklyn, like Fanny Brice could only be from Brooklyn, you’d be correct. Is no biography of Faye, Alpern’s site will have to do. Though if you dig deep you will also find some adamant score-settling: “I keep reading that although a top-notch entertainer, Frances Faye ‘did not have a great voice.’ I disagree!” As there Since then, Alpern has traced Faye’s life in a rambling essay that runs to more than 18,000 words on his Web site,

Later he found a mention in a biography of Peter Allen. Alpern began listening to Faye in 1988 but was frustrated by the lack of information about her. They still do.įor Faye’s longtime fans as well as those new to the party, all roads lead to Tyler Alpern, 45, of Boulder, Colo. “They’re so aggressive when they’re drinking.” The gays loved Fraaahncis. Go with girls,” she’d say when a woman hollered from ringside. Of Weber’s all-time heroes - mischievously changed “him” to “her” when singing love songs and peppered her sets with L.L.J. (Shepherd still has the house they shared in the Hollywood Hills.) Onstage, Faye - one In his film “The Chop Suey Club,” she and Faye were a couple for 31 years when Frances died in 1991 at age 79. She had been married twice when, in the mid-’50s, she met Teri Shepherd, who was some 20 years her junior and became her manager. Also, he’s not a girl.įaye’s music and sexual identity were inseparable. His chirpy, wide-eyed approach is at odds with her material. Christo is an Australian singer whose entire show is devoted to Faye. She does not want to be Frances Faye she does make you understand why she’s so important. So is Terese Genecco, who performs songs identified with Faye at If you own nothing of Faye’s, “Caught in the Act” is a good place to start. Faye was partial to a Latin beat,Īnd Jack Costanzo, the great bongoist, often supplied it. Is Faye’s brash recording of “Am I Blue” the most knowing version on the books? People who thought Teddi King and Mildred Bailey and Felicia Sanders said it all have concludedįaye made more than a dozen albums, collaborating with the aristocrats of pop-jazz arrangers, Dave Cavanaugh, Marty Paich and Russ Garcia, and musicians like Maynard Ferguson and Herbie Mann. She had a dry, gruff voice she put in the service of a deadpan, declamatory style, nudging listeners to consider standards in a different way: Slapping the piano keys and inquiring, “Gay, gay, gay, is there another way?”įrances Faye was that rare thing, a white chick who could not only shout but swing. A robust performer even on a bad day, Faye could be heard through the floorboards, violently Jorgensen’s set included “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” sung, apparently, without irony. Jorgensen played the Interlude įaye the Crescendo downstairs. In the late 1950s, the cabaret scene on the Sunset Strip was so feverish, you could hear Christine Jorgensen and Frances Faye in different rooms on the same night without leaving the building.

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