Fred Astaire: Biography

• Overview
• Discography
• Biography
• Related Artists

• Bing Crosby
• Cliff "Ukelele Ike" Edwards
• Gene Kelly
• Johnny Mercer
• Maurice Chevalier
• Whispering Jack Smith
• Jimmy Durante

• Irving Berlin
• Hoagy Carmichael
• Rudy Vallée
• Al Jolson

• David Jordan
• Dean Martin
• Madeleine Peyroux
• Perry Como
• Mary Cleere Haran
• Judy Garland/Liza Minnelli
• Bobby Short

• Larry Adler

• Jimmy McHugh
• Cole Porter
• Dorothy Fields
• Jerome Kern
• Nigel Stock
• Edward Eliscu
• Harry Ruby

Birth Name:

Frederick Austerlitz

Born:

Dec 31, 1969 in Omaha, NE

Died:

Jun 22, 1987 in Los Angeles, CA

Genres:

Music, Standards & Vocal Music, Show Tunes, Classical Music, Traditional Pop Vocal Music

Decades Active:

1920's|1930's|1940's|1950's|1960's|1970's|1980's

Artistic Quality

High

Cultural Impact

High

Popularity

High

Ratings Guide

Without question, one of the greatest all-around performers in motion picture history, though his vocal skills were among the least of his talents. Indeed, to overstate Astaire's average musical ability (as has become inexplicably common lately among certain jazz critics) only serves to demean his genius as a dancer. The extreme athleticism and rhythmic sophistication of his dance was masked by an air of off-handed suaveness that emphasized an utter control of his medium. That same delivery, transposed to song, revealed a genial, somewhat rhythmically astute, but ultimately unexceptional vocalist, whose limitations could not be hidden by strong material and/or a winning personality. Astaire's warbling mezzo tenor was little more than a slightly melodicized extension of his speaking voice -- charming, perhaps, and certainly effective given the relatively low artistic standards of the run-of-the-mill Hollywood film, yet no more profound than one of their typically threadbare plots. Astaire himself had no illusions about his singing, either.

Astaire was practically born into vaudeville; he began on stage at the age of five with his sister Adele. Their collaboration produced a significant success on Broadway. It lasted into the '30s, when she gave up show business for marriage. An infamous screen test from 1932 (the evaluation of the studio functionary responsible supposedly read, "can't act, slightly bald, can dance a little") led to Astaire's teaming with Ginger Rogers. In the '30s they co-starred in a series of superficial but often quite witty musical comedies, such as Roberta, Top Hat, and Shall We Dance? Astaire's career as an actor continued fairly steadily until the early '80s. Astaire had (and continues to have) a great many admirers as a singer. Irving Berlin purportedly preferred Astaire's renditions of his tunes to those of any other vocalist. The most important songwriters of the '30s and '40s wrote songs especially for him -- Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin among them. He was often the first to sing songs that would become jazz standards, hence his tangential importance to jazz. Throughout his career, Astaire made recordings of pop material, often in the company of top-notch jazz instrumentalists. His 1950s recordings for Verve featured as sidemen pianist Oscar Peterson, trumpeter Charlie Shavers, and bassist Ray Brown. Astaire, however -- to the extent that he was a musician -- was a pop singer. The art of improvisation played a negligible role in his work, reason enough not to consider him a jazz musician.

- Chris Kelsey, All Music Guide