Dave Frishberg didn’t look like what the public considers a star in the musical world. He was balding, slight and had a voice that would never be compared to Sinatra.
And yet the jazz songwriter had that intangible “it,” the gift that separates flash in the pan artists from those who leave behind a body of work that stands the test of time.
Frishberg, 88, died this week in Portland.
In his 2017 memoir, “My Dear Departed Past,” Frishberg details the story of his remarkable life and career, one that took him from the best-known jazz clubs in New York City to Portland, where he played piano at the Heathman Hotel, backing vocalist Rebecca Kilgore.
Perhaps his widest audience knew him for his work that appeared on Saturday morning television as part of the animated series “Schoolhouse Rock.”
The publisher’s description of his book summed Frishberg up this way:
If you attended public school in the United States between 1973 and today, odds are you’ve heard Dave Frishberg’s songs – just see if any of these “Schoolhouse Rock” classics ring a bell: “The Number Cruncher,” “Seven Fifty Once a Week,” “Dollars and Sense,” “Walking on Wall Street,” “Hardware” and, of course, the classic “I’m Just a Bill.”
He was profiled in The Atlantic in 1998.
This excerpt gives a sense of the man as an artist:
A typical Frishberg vocal is a series of witty asides, delivered in a small, reedy tenor at once tenacious and unassuming -- not a singer’s voice, as Frishberg would be the first to admit, but that of a songwriter and pianist overcoming his inhibitions and giving a lyric his best shot. As a singer, he is the very definition of an acquired taste.
According to Oregon ArtsWatch, Frishberg moved to Los Angeles in in 1971, where he worked as a studio musician and wrote his songs, and then moved to Portland in 1986. He was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
-- Tom Hallman Jr; thallman@oregonian.com; 503-221-8224; @thallmanjr