Artist Biography by Bruce Eder
Michael Franks was born in La Jolla, California in 1944. His parents weren't musicians, but they were music lovers and he was soon immersed in swing music and vocal jazz and pop.
Franks' early idols included such jazz-cum-pop legends as Nat King Cole and Peggy Lee, as well as composers and lyricists such as Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Johnny Mercer. His first instrument was the guitar, and he got the only formal instruction of his life -- a total of six private lessons that came with his first instrument -- at age 14.
Franks was drawn to poetry as a high-school student, especially the work of Theodore Roethke, and began singing and playing folk-rock during this period. He majored in English and then comparative literature at UCLA and also embraced the music of Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, João Gilberto, and Antonio Carlos Jobim, among others. He never studied music in college, however, and seemed on track toward teaching American literature as the '60s drew to a close.