Search Manic Mark's Blog

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Intimately Yours - Jacques Foti

Man'selle/My Funny Valentine

Intimately Yours
Jacques Foti
Signature SM1016
1959

From Billboard - December 21, 1959: Romantic semi-talk warbling by continental charter Foti.

From the back cover: Foti retains the debonair charm which seems automatically a part of a Parisian born. Having spent his life in Budapest, the youngster absorbed his feeling for the continental atmosphere and the moving music of the gypsies. Musically inspired, Foti shone brightly as a student at the Commercial Academy. He became a piano prodigy and popular entertainer of his fellows.

The holocaust of World War II soon enveloped young Foti, who found himself in a Nazi labor camp loading coal in a steel plant, when he refused to join the Hitler Legions, with whom Hungary had allied herself. At an opportune moment, Foti escaped to join the underground only to be tricked into giving himself up with a number of others during the infamous "40 minute amnesty." Slated for a firing squad, Foti was spared when the Nazi penal forces elected to shoot only every tenth man. In the crazy game of firing squad roulette which followed, Foti stood at attention while the man next to him crumpled.

Years later, after a series of harrowing story book episodes with the Nazis and later the occupying Soviet forces, Foti found his way to his lifelong goal, America. His first employment here was anything but the elusive, starring role in front of the spotlights at the grand piano. Instead he became a dishwasher at Bickford's cafeteria in New York City. Fortunes ebbing, Foti had $1.50 left in his pocket when he was hired to appear in the Town Room, Milwaukee, not as a dishwasher, but as featured entertainer. He remained for six months.

Foti's admirers and abettors have been numerous since then. He has been befriended and helped along the hard road to success by such luminaries as Mr. and Mrs. George Liberace, Jack Webb, and the mother of George Feyer, popular Hungarian pianist who is now a top recording artist here.

Since that early Milwaukee engagement, he has had successful engagements in the best clubs in Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago, Montreal, Miami Beach, Hollywood, Palm Springs, Dallas, New Orleans and Houston where he also had his own late night TV show "Rendezvous with Jacques" on KGUL-TV for six months.


Man'selle/My Funny Valentine
I Love Your Lips
You Go To My Head
Holding Hands
I'd Like It
Autumn Leaves
Intimately Yours
September
You're My Thrill
How Old Are
When I Fall In Love
You Make Me Feel So Young
When The World Was Young
For All We Know


2 comments:

  1. Is there any way to receive the music of this album by Jacques Foti ?
    Thanks in advance

    ReplyDelete
  2. YOU STILL AROUND I'VE GOT IT DROP ME A LINE

    ReplyDelete

Howdy! Thanks for leaving your thoughts!