“Stick with me baby, I’m the guy that you came in with”*

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of one of my favorites: Frank Loesser (June 29, 1910 – July 28, 1969) who wrote, among a lot of other things, the lyrics and music to Guys and Dolls. Over his career, he won four Tonys, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Academy Award–all richly deserved.

Loesser, we are told, was one of those guys who, when four years old, could play any tune on the piano by ear (he never had a lesson). In WWII he joined the Air Force and wrote “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.” What a guy.

If I hadn’t just watched Guys and Dolls (1955) recently, I would watch it tonight in his honor. Instead I may watch Destry Rides Again (1939) in which Marlene Dietrich sings the Loesser classic “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have.”

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Speaking of westerns, Loesser also wrote the classic “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle” as in “I’ve got spurs that jingle, jangle, jingle/ as I go riding merrily along/And they sing, oh, ain’t you glad you’re single?/And that song ain’t so very far from wrong.” I have known the song forever, but never knew who wrote it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ac5AVosug

So a toast to Frank Loesser tonight! The weekend is almost here. I have no big plans beyond getting ready for the 4th of July holiday when we have guests arriving. And hopefully those wee babes will toddle over on Sunday night.

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Plus: This is a good one from one of my favorite female (Episcopal) clergypersons.

I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

–Ephesians 3:14–21

*”Luck Be a Lady Tonight” by Frank Loesser