Presented and performed by Fred Miller.
On Broadway, there was one performer who was truly inimitable. From that historic moment in 1930 when she delivered the Gershwins’ “I Got Rhythm” to a stunned audience, Ethel Merman was and remained Broadway’s greatest (and most bankable) star, the definitive, brassy Voice of the Great White Way, the Classic Belter.
Merman’s mystique lay in the extraordinary power of a voice delivered by a sassy, humorous, no-nonsense dame. She could be touching and feminine, she could be a steamroller. Whatever it was, it was invincibly Merman, and what you saw was what you got.
And what Broadway got was at least a dozen hit shows, none of which ran less than six months thanks to her special brand of exhilarating entertainment.
Fred Miller’s Lectures-In-Song comprise a series of solo programs, each an historical, anecdotal and musical profile of some great personality or important aspect of American Popular Song. These Lectures are delivered by singer/pianist/narrator Miller at the piano, and each reflects his lifetime passion and appreciation for great music. He studied classical piano in his hometown of Albuquerque from ages 7-15 but early on gave up any notion of music as a profession. At that time, Fred assumed a musical career was either one devoted to the rigid discipline of classical music or being a freewheeling rock star, and he accurately decided he had no aptitude for either. However, at age 22, upon hearing Ella Fitzgerald sing Cole Porter, he found his calling and life’s mission.
In presenting history, biography and psychology while sitting at a piano singing the superlative songs of his heroes, Miller has found a single performing medium that utilizes most of his intellectual and musical passions. The list of Lectures-In-Song that began with six in 1999 is now more than seventy(and growing!), a joyful tribute to the boundlessly rich field of American Popular Song.
