Funny Folks
Ray Bolger(1904-1987)
Fanny Brice(1891-1951)
Eddie Cantor(1892-1964)
Jimmy Durante(1893-1980)

If it’s true that “music hath charms to soothe the savage breast” and “laughter is the best medicine,” then the work of successful singing comics has to be as indispensable to our world as that of the most miraculous healer or idealistic politician. 

Among the unforgettable characters who healed and/or soothed millions sans scalpel or stump speech: Fanny Brice, the classic ugly duckling whose talent and drive transformed her into a glamorous swan of stage, film & radio; Eddie Cantor, the bug-eyed, high-octane perennial juvenile father of 5 daughters; Ray Bolger, the rubber-legged Broadway goofball and film’s cerebral dancing Scarecrow, one of the truly universal icons of our age; Jimmy Durante, he of the prominent probiscus and mysterious lady friend whose 1001 talents made him an object of pure, eternal adoration.  

For those who remember them, this Lecture-in-Song look at these Funny Folks provides a sparkling stream of delightful revived memories. For those who do not recall, perhaps it’s time to learn about a golden past when entertainers were paid to entertain and bring levity to an often humorless world.  

They mugged, they cracked wise, they sang, they  made us smile, they made us laugh. For that, they have earned a permanently affectionate place in our collective memory.

If you would like to engage Fred Miller for one of his Lectures-in-Song, please contact him directly at any time. For a full listing of all Lectures, click here.

Fred Miller’s Lectures-In-Song comprise a series of several dozen 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.

Through the Seventies and Eighties, Miller studied and absorbed in minute detail the life and times and songs of nearly all the great American composers and lyricists who thrived during Broadway & Hollywood’s Golden Age between the two World Wars. In 1987, he founded Silver Dollar Productions in order to produce operettas, dramas, musicals and small cabarets. Silver Dollar Productions required ensemble casts, props, costumes and, most significantly, the challenges of publicity and selling tickets, and for a dozen busy years, the company presented an unbroken string of varied and highly lauded performances.

In 1999, Miller was simultaneously underwritten by both his local Hunterdon County Library and the Art Alliance of Philadelphia to present a series of six solo Lectures-In-Song, each devoted to one of the premiere Broadway/Hollywood songwriters: George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Jerome Kern, and Harold Arlen.

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 nearly fifty (and growing!), a joyful tribute to the boundlessly rich field of American Popular Song.