Daugherty & Field

Special Material

FIELD: “Special material” is a showbiz term for songs written especially for a nightclub or concert act—sprinkled between the familiar tunes. Well, this recording is a collection of some of the original opening numbers, comedy songs, and ballads we have performed over the past five years. It’s quite a strange collection. We thought you’d like to know what goes on in our minds when we hear these songs.

DAUGHERTY: Yeah. It still amazes me when I think back on how Robin and I met and about the unlikely circumstances that led to our becoming “Daugherty & Field.”

FIELD: I’d been an actor-singer-songwriter for over 20 years when I first saw Bill step up to the “open mike” at the Five Oaks Restaurant in Greenwich Village. His voice was so pure and professional and his manner with the audience so casual and charming, I was very impressed. A week or so later I offered him a tape of some of my original songs, thinking he might use them in an act sometime. Turns out he had just arrived in New York from St. Louis and had never put an act together before. He called me to say he loved the songs and wanted to learn them.

DAUGHERTY: When Robin and I first began working together at his piano (which, by the way, was once owned by Cole Porter!), I discovered that I had found not only a brilliant accompanist but my first real friend since moving to New York.

FIELD: Bill was working as a waiter at the Park Ten on 34th Street, and the owner had offered him a chance to sing for a Sunday Brunch, so Bill decided to call his first cabaret act “Sunday in the Park Ten with Bill” (May 1986). I was his accompanist. Bill was such a smash, they booked him for an evening performance. Soon we were doing benefits and parties, and people began to think of us as a team. So we said, “Why fight it? Let’s call ourselves ‘Daugherty & Field’ and see what happens.”