Paul Conrad 'Biff' Rose grew up in New Orleans absorbing the city's blend of jazz, ragtime, and vaudeville before carrying a banjo into the Greenwich Village folk clubs of the early 1960s as a stand-up comedian who happened to sing. Relocating to Hollywood, where he wrote comedy alongside George Carlin, he channeled that same collision of gag-writing and stride piano into a run of albums beginning with 1968's 'The Thorn in Mrs. Rose's Side' — winsome, faintly surreal songs that made him a favorite of Johnny Carson's couch and, more lastingly, of musicians drawn to his knack for sneaking real tenderness inside a joke. His best-known composition, 'Fill Your Heart,' co-written with Paul Williams, later became a highlight of David Bowie's 'Hunky Dory,' but Rose kept performing and releasing music in relative obscurity for another five decades, until his death in 2023.

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1968

Fill Your HeartBiff Rose