Arne Fogel
Inducted 2018
You may not know the name Arne Fogel, but you’ve probably heard him sing many times. Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Arne considers Minneapolis to be his hometown. Fogel cut his first track at Dove Recording Studios in Bloomington, Minnesota in 1968. These days Arne is a frequent singer at the best jazz venues in the Twin Cities. In 2001 he was the opening act when Rosemary Clooney appeared at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. He has appeared with Kathryn Crosby, the wife of Bing Crosby, in several appearances at The Heights Theater and The Minneapolis Women’s Club Theater. For several years he was a regular performer on famed national radio program A Prairie Home Companion as part of the trio Lieberman, Fogel, & Bey. Arne has been an on-air radio personality including 12 years producing and hosting Arne Fogel Presents, a series of special programs for Minnesota Public Radio. He also had shows on jazz radio stations in the Twin Cities, on Sirius XM, and in 2000 he created and programmed two music channels for Netradio.com. Arne Fogel has written, produced, and appeared in several onstage presentations at venues like the Bloomington Center for the Arts, Chanhassen Dinner Theater, Hopkins Center for the Arts, and at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. In 2003 he wrote, co-produced, and hosted the program Moments to Remember at the Minnesota History Center. In 2015, the concert Ellington at Night, which he co-wrote and co-produced with Nancy Harms, was presented at New York City’s Metropolitan Room. In addition to the albums he has recorded, Arne can be heard in almost 1500 recording sessions singing “jingles” and on film soundtracks. He can be heard in commercials for Twix Candy, Oldsmobile, Miller Beer, Discover Card, Dairy Queen, Northwest Airlines, General Mills, Hormel, Arctic Cat, John Deere, and Our Own Hardware just to name a few. Fogel has also composed and produced his own music for commercial work. Arne has often appeared as an actor in television commercials. He had a small speaking part in the Universal film Mallrats and had the lead role in the short film Bubblepac, which was an entry in The 1999 Sundance Film Festival. Arne worked as a copywriter and broadcast producer for several ad agencies in the Twin Cities. His billboard for MetroBank earned him an Obie Award from The Outdoor Advertising Association of America. Fogel is a trivia expert when it comes to music. He collects old records, studying artists and musical styles, and has over 2,000 Bing Crosby tunes in his personal collection. Fogel considers himself “a popular entertainment historian.” At one job he answered trivia questions on radio, and if the guests could stump him, they could win prizes. Arne Fogel was inducted into The Mid-America Music Hall of Fame in 2008. Jazz critic Bob Protzman described Fogel as “…one of the Twin Cities’ most interesting people. A singer, musician, actor, composer, writer, producer, music-film-comedy and entertainment historian, collector, and oral encyclopedia”.
