Do you have questions for Michael about his music and the songs he sings? Get your answers here - all you have to do is e-mail us your questions, and we'll get the answers straight from the source! Following are some questions from fans around the world.

Q. I just heard (again) the marvelous interview by Terry Gross with Burton Lane, which was recorded right after he and Michael released the Burton Lane Songbook Vol 1. During the interview they played "How About You" from the album, which included Burton Lane playing an introductory solo, which he referred to as a "patter". Can you help me find out the definition of a "patter"?

MF: Patter is a section of a song that is conversational in feel that usually follows the standard 32 bar chorus. In the Vaudeville days the patter section was developed as part of a performer's routine to give the reprise of the more familiar chorus section contrast. In “How About You” the patter section is the solo part that Burton Lane plays on the piano. That section has patter lyrics but they are not sung in this recorded version. It is sung in the film for which the song was written, “Babes On Broadway”. I hope this helps.

Q. I'm also a performer and I was wondering if you could give me any advice on how to 'market' myself. Right now it's a hobby, but it's such a part of me that the moment I wake up I'm singing. I am 28, live in NJ, and I love an intimate, cabaret setting - I feel more at home with a microphone in my hand and working a room than anything else in my life. I saw you with Linda Eder and wanted to jump on stage with you for a duet! Where should I start?

MF: I'm no expert because my path to a successful career was such a peculiar one. I think the most important thing is to be as prepared as you can for when that possible break comes. The best experience I ever got was in a piano bar singing five hours a night. I did that for several years and it really helped me hone my performance skills. Finding a place to sing on a regular basis is extremely important even if it's a 'dive' because if you are there once a week, then someone who heard you can come back with friends and you can start to build a following. I hope that helps and I wish you much success.

Q. What are the next projects on the Feinery label?

MF: Well, quite frankly, I have been so involved with traveling and concertizing that I haven't created the trimanual new releases that I had originally planned for Feinery. I hope to get back to that very soon and indeed hope to complete the Bing Crosby project that I started a couple of years back. I project three albums of Bing Crosby from three different periods in his life and career and still feel that it would be a valuable and musically rich project.

Q. What recording projects are in the works?

MF: I am working on continuing the songbook series and have been meeting with the composer Charles Strouse, who has created hit shows like "Bye, Bye, Birdie" and "Annie" to do another album featuring the composer at the piano. We are just in the beginning stages of this but as always, it is a lot of fun to play through songs with the creator and figure out new ways to perform standards like Put on a Happy Face.

There are a number of other recording projects that are in the offing. I hope soon to begin my project with the great arranger and composer Johnny Mandel. I am sure many of you know that one of my favorite albums, "Isn't it Romantic," was arranged and orchestrated by Johnny Mandel. On that album I introduced one of his greatest songs, Where Do You Start? (with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman). Johnny has written quite a few other songs that deserve wider recognition and he has given me permission to do first recordings of several of his recent inspirations. This is a very exciting opportunity for me, because Johnny is my favorite living orchestrator. He is a great musical mind and I hope in the next year to have this recording completed and in everybody's hands.

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Q: I am hoping that with your knowledge and love of the music of Irving Berlin you can help me out on details of what I believe is a recorded but unpublished song of his. I have an old 11 1/2" Pathe Disc of the song "Hey Wop", comic Italian dialic song by Irving Berlin. I have checked numerous listings of his published songs and biographies and find no listing of this song. If you have any idea of the date of this song or recording, I would appreciate it.

MF: Thank you for your intriguing note. There are some songs of Berlin's that were indeed recorded but not published. The record and song you wrote about is listed in the appendix of a book by Charles Hamm (Charles Hamm is an expert on early Berlin, among many others) titled Irving Berlin. The book was published by Oxford University press in 1997. You are correct that Hey Wop was never published. It was recorded by Rhoda Bernard for Pathe, record number 30396 (matrix E65434) and was released in June 1916.

Q: I enjoyed your performance with Gloria Reuben at the Regency. How did you two meet?

MF: I met Gloria Reuben several years ago when a mutual friend contacted me saying she would like to meet me. I quite was flattered, having been a fan of hers from her wonderful television performances, most notably, E.R. I heard a demo tape that she made at that time and was very impressed with her great musical talent.

She is a classically trained pianist and I have been looking for an opportunity to work with her for some time. She is a wonderful lady. She is as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside, and we like to laugh a lot. It is a real joy to know Gloria and to have an opportunity to sing with her.

Q: How do you select acts for the Regency?

MF: One of the things that I was very careful about in connection with the Regency, was to not put myself in the position of being the sole booking entity for the room. I knew that that would create problems for me, because I didn't want to be in the terrible situation of having all of my acquaintances and friends asking me for a job. Because of that, the room is booked by Allen Sviridoff and the Tisch family, who own the Regency Hotel. Of course, my input is important to them, and certainly nobody would play the room who I did not appreciate or respect. I am very mindful of the fact that it has to be a room that reflects my feelings, my tastes, and my personality.

Q: Wasn't Jerome Kern supposed to write the music for "Annie Get Your Gun"?

MF: Jerome Kern was supposed to write the score for "Annie Get Your Gun" with lyrics by Dorothy Fields. Before he died, he had written a few of the melodies that he intended to use in the show; however, he did not write any of them down and none of them exist.

Jule Styne had been visiting Jerome Kern shortly before his death ad Kern played him several of the "Annie Get Your Gun" melodies. After Kern's death, Jule was at a party and someone asked this gathering of songwriter cronies if any of them had heard the melodies Kern had started for "Annie Get Your Gun."

Jule said, "Yes. I did." They asked, "Well, would you play one of them?" Jule agreed, even though he didn't remember any of the tunes Kern had played. Jule then sat down and improvised the melody of what later became his own "Time After Time." When he finished playing it, the gathered songwriters said, "That was beautiful. Would you play it again?" And Jule started panicking because he didn't remember what he had just improvised.

Sammy Cahn, who was standing there, did remember and said, "Jule, it was dah, dah, dah, dah." Jule was reminded and played it again. Later, of course, Jule admitted that he had written it himself and it became one of his biggest hits with Sammy Cahn.

Q: It has been rumored that Al Jolson signed his name to other songwriters' songs. Is this true?

MF: Yes, it is true Al Jolson put his name to many other songwriters' songs. This was a common practice for very famous entertainers who would explain to the songwriters that they would not sing a song unless they got a cut of it.

For example, "Sonny Boy" (which we know Jolson had nothing to do with because he was on the West Coast and DeSylva, Brown and Henderson were on the East Coast when they wrote it), still contains Jolson's name as one of the co-writers.

Jolson was the greatest entertainer of his time and I suppose it's possible that he may have written a couple of the songs that he put his name on, but I have never had any concrete evidence from anyone that he actually wrote a song. Irving Caesar, who was Jolson's roommate and close friend, "collaborated with Jolson" but said in fact that Jolson never contributed anything to the songs that contained his name as author.

Q: What do you think Howard Dietz is most remembered for?

MF: Dietz was a Renaissance man because he not only was a songwriter, but an executive at MGM who was involved in the publicity department. Among other things, he created the famous MGM log of the lion and the Latin phrase that translates: "art for art's sake."

Dietz was one of the great songwriters even though there were long periods where he did not write songs at all and tended to his duties at MGM. Therefore, his catalogue is not as large as the catalogues of his contemporaries. Dietz wrote a lot of great standards, and most of those songs were collected and used in the MGM musical, "The Band Wagon," which is an entire score featuring the catalogue songs of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz.

Dietz and Schwartz also created one new song, "That's Entertainment," for the movie which they wrote in about an hour. It became, next to "Dancing in the Dark," their biggest hit. Howard was known for his quick wit and was a real stickler for writing properly rhymed witty and intelligent lyrics.

There was a writer named Benny Davis who wrote a lot of lyrics quickly. Although he had a number of hits, his songs were not always the best constructed lyrically. For example, Benny Davis would always use a lot of sound-alike rhymes and Howard Dietz made fun of that by coining a little couplet: "Heaven save us from Benny Davis." (You see, "save us" and "Davis" does not actually rhyme, but in Davis' book, they did).

Dietz also prided himself in being able to come up with a lyric quickly - for fun, mind you. One day he said to Arthur Schwartz's son, "I can come up with a lyric on any subject instantly. Name it." Jonathan replied, "Cyd Charisse." Immediately, Dietz sang to the tune of "Jealousy, " "Cyd Charisse, get off that mantle piece. You're such a shock there, there should be a clock there." Pretty clever.

Dietz met the Gershwins in Greenwich Village in the late teens when he frequented parties at the home of Emily and Lou Paley, who were very close friends with George and Ira. Emily Paley's sister, Leonore, eventually married Ira Gershwin. So Dietz was almost like family to the Gershwins.

When Ira Gershwin got sick during the writing of the show, "Oh Kay" in 1926, Howard Dietz came in and finished a couple of songs that Ira had started and wrote one song in it's entirety until Ira recovered from appendicitis. Dietz also came up with the title of the song, "Someone to Watch Over Me."

Q. I loved your last book. Will you be doing any more?

MF: I have been working on two literary projects that I hope will come to fruition. One is a book that basically is a compendium of my 100 or so favorite American Popular songs with stories about those numbers. Its fun to be able to preserve stories and anecdotes that have been passed down to me about the different pieces of music, and that book is something that will be a profusely illustrated sort of coffee table book.

The other book I have been working on is about the healing power of music, and that is also something I have had a great desire to do for a long time. Music has taken an even greater roll of importance in our society since last September, because it truly can sustain and uplift us in times of stress and trouble. I did a recording of "The House I Live In" to benefit the September 11th fund, and that recording, which was not for sale, but only by donation, was my small way of trying to contribute something positive in the aftermath of events that have shaken our world.

The reaction that comes from people when they hear that song, written in 1932 by Earl Robinson and Louis Allen, has been one that has helped us collectively to release the emotions we have around those events. I know I have said it before, but it is a great blessing to do what I do.

Q. Do you have plans to return to Australia in the near future?

MF: I am hoping to return to Australia in the fall. We are in the process of organizing a tour, and if all goes well, I'll be back down under at that time. There is a possibility I'll be appearing at that Canberra festival, and nothing would please me more.

Q. I always wanted to ask you about your version of the teddy bears picnic. The line that you sing as "every bear that ever was there," was always sung at my primary school as "every bear that ever there was." This latter version facilitates the rhyme with "would gather there for certain because." Why did you do it the way you did?

MF: I have been waiting for somebody to ask me about that line in Teddy Bear's Picnic. It drives me crazy every time I hear it because you are indeed right about the correct reading of the line.

What happened is simple. I was working from a copy prepared by a copyist for my recording, and they miscopied the words and reversed them. By the time I discovered that I'd sung the words wrong, it was too late to go back and fix the recording.

So there it is, imperfectly rhymed, on the children's album and I cringe at the thought that all of these little kids are going to grow up singing the song incorrectly. But every time I meet a tike who knows my album, I always gently try to sing the lyric correctly for them. But I guess there are worse things in life. Thanks for bringing that up!