Fran Landesman

Fran Landesman (born Frances Deitsch; October 21, 1927 – July 23, 2011) was an American lyricist and poet. She grew up in New York City and lived for years in St. Louis, Missouri, where her husband Jay Landesman operated the Crystal Palace nightclub. One of her best-known songs is "Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most".

Early life and education She was born Frances Deitsch in New York City in 1927, Her mother was a journalist and a father was a dress manufacturer. Her brother, Sam Deitsch, founded and operated some neighborhood bars in St. Louis and, with his partner Ed Moose, later founded the Washington Square Bar and Grill in San Francisco.

Deitsch attended private schools through high school. For college, she studied at Temple University in Philadelphia and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. This was a successful venture, attracting big-name acts and producing avant-garde theatre.

After listening to musicians and audiences when sitting in the bar of the Crystal Palace, Fran Landesman was inspired to write song lyrics, from 1952 onwards. 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.

Wolf composed the melodies for the songs for The Nervous Set, a musical with a book by Jay Landesman and lyrics by Fran Landesman. It had a brief run on Broadway, and featured the songs “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.

Fran Landesman also wrote the lyrics for a proposed musical version of A Walk on the Wild Side, adapted from the 1956 novel by Nelson Algren, known for his portrayal of down-and-outers. In 1960, she began writing with singer/pianist/composer Bob Dorough, who was brought to St. Louis by Tommy Wolf to play the lead in the musical. One of those songs, "The Winds of Heaven", was originally recorded in 1968 by Jackie and Roy, and was also covered by The 5th Dimension.

In 1964 the Landesmans left St. Louis to move to London.

Landesman met British composer Simon Wallace in 1994, and collaborated with him for the rest of her life. She and Wallace wrote some 300 songs in total. and re-released under the title Forbidden Games. From 1999 Landesman worked closely with jazz singer Sarah Moule. In 2002 Moule released a collection of Landesman/Wallace songs titled It's A Nice Thought and her three subsequent releases included 27 more Landesman/Wallace compositions. In 2010 Boston-based singer Sheplay Metcalf released a collection of Landesman/Wallace songs, Something Irresistible. In 2012, the award-winning jazz singer, composer and music director Ian Shaw released the critically acclaimed album A Ghost In Every Bar (The Lyrics of Fran Landesman) as a tribute to Landesman. Accompanied by Simon Wallace, four of these songs had never been released before. Shaw had become a close friend of Landesman after working with her son Miles and recorded single tracks with her lyrics on six albums in his back catalogue, but this album fulfilled a promise he made to her to devote an entire album to her songs.

In 1996, Fran Landesman appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs and requested a supply of cannabis seeds as her luxury item. The BBC received a number of complaints.

Poetry and performance In the 1970s, Fran Landesman also began writing and publishing poetry.