Looking at You

Liner Notes

When I needed some help transcribing the lyrics of this recording, it was only natural to turn to the singer that sang them, but I didn’t have Rebecca Kilgore’s phone number. So I rang up Dave Frishberg, her musical partner on this (and several other recordings), to secure it. He gave it to me, but with a piece of advice “Good luck getting in touch with her. She is almost always on the road performing somewhere”. In fact, when I did ring her up in Portland, Oregon, the U.S. hometown she shares with Frishberg, she kindly asked “Can you please call me later? I’m in a recording session right now”.

It is somewhat unusual for artists of Frishberg’s and Kilgore’s caliber to be operating out of such a relatively small U.S. locale as Portland, Oregon. Most performers of their magnitude tend to gravitate to larger metropolises, such as New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles because that’s where, so it goes, “the work is”. And indeed, Frishberg had lived for long periods of time in both N.Y. and L.A.

Fortunately, by the time he relocated from the show biz ground zero of L.A. and out of the immediate glare of the spotlight to hipster-friendly (and artist colony of sorts) Portland the pianist-singer-songwriter was already well enough established nationally, and indeed internationally, to sustain a healthy career in the northeast location.

As such, Minnesota-born Frishberg was something of a pioneer. For when he relocated in the mid-1980s to Portland, where this album was eventually recorded, the city (and its environs) was just beginning to establish itself as a major destination for artists of all disciplines seeking safe harbor from the high tension of the three aforementioned cities. In addition to Frishberg, a few of the other emigres included filmmakers Todd Haynes and Gus Van Sant, and Claymation artist Will Vinton. And as Kilgore informed me in a phone conversation with her in 2010, there is much local emphasis on ballet and the symphony.

Massasschusets-born Kilgore’s move to Portland happened a few years earlier than Frishberg’s. As she tells me:

“My sister moved to Portland first. Then in 1979 I visited her there and I just fell in love with the city. The geography, the surrounding countryside, the quaint downtown area, the friendliness”

Until moving to Portland, Kilgore had never sung publicly, and describes herself as having been, up until that time, a ‘closet singer’ accompanying herself in private on guitar. She was inspired as such by hearing Billie Holiday for the first time ever on a Boston radio program by dee-jay Ron Della Chiesa. And… yes, she is aware that Susannah McCorkle in adulthood also came to singing through the inspiration of Holiday. “Coincidentally,” Kilgore tells me “the first time I ever heard McCorkle sing was on the car radio. I was so moved that I had to stop driving and pull over to the side of the road.”

And how did she make the transition from amateur to pro? In that same 2010 interview, Kilgore informed me that to assuage the loneliness of moving to a new locale, she began to take in the “live” music scene in the city and somehow she mustered the nerve, in 1981, to audition as a replacement for the departing singer-guitarist in the popular local outfit Wholly Cats. And she got the job: a six-nights-a week gig for several years at a local tavern called Father’s. Kilgore’s first recording, in 1982, was with that group. And in addition to a number of releases with her name above the title, she has appeared as vocalist and/or guitarist on a number of recordings by such other outfits and individuals such as John Pizzarelli, ukelele master Lyle Ritz and BED, with which she currently tours with and records.

The history of Frishberg and Kilgore’s coming together is inextricably bound up by the Portland music scene. In that city Frishberg tends to eschew the high profile of jazz in favor of blending in as a sideman in various Portland groups. Notable among these collaborations was a two-night-a-week gig at the Heathman Hotel with Kilgore, beginning in 1991 and running through 1997 (by day, she moonlighted as a computer programmer). lt was not his first long-term partnership with a singer; beginning in 1960 he was employed as a regular accompanist by Carmen McRae for a year-and-a-half. This followed a stint on the road with Kai Winding’s, group, his first major job in music. And in 1962 he wrote his first song, the eventually much-recorded “Peel Me a Grape” for singer Fran Jeffries, for whom he also acted, at the time, as an accompanist (and for her then-husband Dick Haymes). An impressive beginning for a songwriter unfortunately, however, it was another eight years before another Frishberg song was recorded, though he continued to compose. During this time, but a few of the other outfits that employed the pianistic services of Frishberg were those of: Gene Krupa, Ben Webster, and Al Cohn and Zoot Sims (almost ten years). For singer Jimmy Rushing he provided musical direction for the great blues belter’s final album “The You and Me That Used to Be” (1971). Frishberg describes the experience as “a high point of my career.”

In their performances together, singer-pianist-composer Frishberg leaves the vocalizing strictly to Kilgore. The one exception was an engagement a while back at New York’s Feinstein’ s at the Regency. ln that particular high profile venue, there was no way that songwriter Frishberg could get away without singing a few of his popular compositions, such as “My Attorney Bernie,” or “I’m Hip'” (Frishberg-Dorough} and “You Are There” (Frishberg – Mandel). In addition to their hundreds of live dates together, the duo has recorded four releases, of which “Looking at You,” recorded in 1993, was the first. They have also done several highly-lauded concerts on the U.S. network National Public Radio, each one devoted to the music of a particular composer, including Richard Rodgers and Hoagy Carmichael.

Both Kilgore and Frishberg step up to the plate with suggestions for repertoire for their recordings together. Unlike some singers, Kilgore is an inveterate listener to recordings by other vocalists. “‘I always have my feelers out,” she says. “For example, on Looking at You I got ‘Martha’ and ‘Hummin’ to Myself’ from listening to Connee Boswell records. And Dave brought ‘The Old Dream Peddler’ and others.” Among singers, both new and old, that Kilgore likes to listen to are: “Ella, of course.” And the dense stylistic likes of such as: (Portland’s) Nancy King, Chet Baker, (more especially) Irene Krall, Chicago’s Petra Van Nuis, (another Portland singer) Kate Davis, Nellie McKay, Madeline Peyroux, and John Pizzarelli. She rattles off the names of several others, pauses a beat, then says, “I almost forgot Lucy Ann Polle. She embodies just about everything l like, in a singer. Her tone slays me.”

And, apparently, Kilgore slays Frishberg. In a 1996 interview, originally published in The Mississippi Rag, he told writer Phillip D. Atterberry

“Five years ago I started working with Becky Kilgore in Portland. She is such a sweetheart, and she’s introduced me to so much music. She’s a sleuth about songs. She’s still bringing in new stuff every week-very obscure, but very good stuff. That material is not only stimulating for me, but makes me a better, more well-rounded piano player. The longer I live, the more I am struck by the depth of the American popular song. It ls truly remarkable”.

And nothing seems to have changed in the duo’s working relationship in the near decade-and-a-half since then.

— Bill Reed, March 2010