FRANKIE FUCHS
NEW YORK CITY NATIVE
Frankie Fuchs was born and raised at Sheepshead Bay in Manhattan Beach, New York, with a first-generation NYPD Homicide Lieutenant for a dad and a passionate, intelligent and political beauty for a mom, resulting in an upbringing that was eclectic and varied. Early on, his mother Shirley Fuchs, emerged as his motivating force by taking him to the theatre district and sharing her love of the arts, especially theatre and dance. It was through dance that Shirley became close friends with Marjorie Guthrie, a dancer with Martha Graham Dance Company, who was also married to folk-singer great Woody Guthrie.
However, it was the music that called to Frankie. In the late fifties, the burgeoning folk/art scene was monsooning New York City...folk singers Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie were galvanizing the social-minded youth of the day, breaking ground for the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Shirley and Frankie became tight family friends with the Guthrie family, Arlo, Nora, Joady and Marjorie, sharing the growing burden of Woody's struggle with and eventual demise from Huntington's Disease.
The Early Years. Music was the road Frankie chose to travel, eschewing more political albeit stable and financially lucrative jobs such as lawyer or judge, urged on him by his father. While in college, Frankie chose to start his first original rock band in Brooklyn. Having cut his teeth, he put together the Double F Band, which played throughout the South, East Coast and New England, as well as the New York rock clubs.
Frankie's songwriting skills soon blossomed, resulting in his first publishing contract with Benny Goodman and his company, Regent Music and Arc Music. The Goodman's published many of the famous blues songs by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry, to name a few, and with their office being in the Brill Building, Frankie found himself at the epicenter of the NY music scene well into the late 1980's.
It was during this period that Frankie went on to sign a publishing deal with Love/Zager Music, co-writing a hit for The Spinners' comeback album entitled Body Language, which resulted in his meeting and establishing relationships with many great recording artists, writing for Melba Moore and Phoebe Snow, among others. This led to his long-term relationship with Cissy Houston, including writing and playing guitar for her band. The turning point of his life came when he debuted an original song with Cissy at Carnegie Hall. There was no longer any doubt that this was his road to follow, ultimately taking him West to Los Angeles.
Frankie returned to New York from Los Angeles in 2001 to work on the Woody Guthrie project Daddy-O Daddy, which reunited him with Cissy Houston on two Woody Guthrie songs, Sleep Eye and Little Seed. This event was a true joy in every way for Frankie, as it joined the two musical families of Frankie's life, the Guthries and the Houstons.
Around the same time, in pursuit of great musicians to add to the Daddy-O Daddy CD, Frankie traveled across the pond to the famous Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales to record Billy Bragg and his band performing the Woody Guthrie song Dry Bed, which had been lost for 50 years in the Archives of the Smithsonian Institute. To date, he travels to New York periodically to assist TRO Records as their premier archivist, as well as pursuing other production and writing assignments.
© Wolfing Lumpkin Music, BMI & Frankie Fuchs. All Rights Reserved.