Biff Rose

Vocation

Lifestyle

Traits

American pianist, singer and songwriter who has a tough time fitting into a category. When he first emerged in the late 1960s in New Orleans, he was a performer of the pre-WW II genre with a jaunty piano and bouncy sing along melodies delivered in a whiny voice. His lyrics were arch and whimsical with sarcastic commentary about love and freedom. He was simply too odd to be accepted by either Broadway or the pop culture, compared to a vaudeville entertainer reincarnated as a spacey hippie. There can be no doubt that Rose’s satire influenced David Bowie's early 1970s work, particularly Hunky Dory, which owed something to Rose's early albums in both the quasi-musical piano styles and thorny-rose lyrics. His LP, "The Thorn in Mrs. Rose’s Side," 1968, has a rolling piano arrangement and brisk orchestration. Rose achieved some notoriety in the late 1960s via network TV appearances, particularly on Johnny Carson's show, but was never more than a cult artist as far as records sales went. He recorded quite a bit throughout the 1970s, close to ten albums, before a hiatus of nearly 20 years before emerging with a new album in the late 1990s Link to Wikipedia biography