Frank Sinatra: S/D

Only the Lonely is another great wrist-slitter too. In some way he sort of pioneered the "concept album".

Of course as far as great Italian-American voices go, ol' blue eyes PALES in comparison to guys like Jimmy Rosseli or Al Martino.

But it helps to have friends in high places, if you know what I mean.

If you have some cash The Capitol Singles Collection is a perfect place to start too. Be careful about the Reprise stuff; some of it is pretty good but much is garbage. One good LP is the one with Antonio Carlos Jobim.

The Columbia stuff is almost uniformly good but much is in a more big band vein than what was to come on Capitol.

'A Man Alone' is the Rod McKuen one Dave Q mentions. the other late-60s stuff with Don Coasta is nice too, like 'Cycles'.

I think can fairly safely say: destroy the Duets albums.

What does that mean?

Destroy: Nancy (with the laughing face)

Destroy: The Sunday Show on WNYC. Jonathan Schwartz is perhaps the single most annoying man on radio (is his response to all the music he plays really breathless admiration? does he talk so slowly because he's an egotist?), including Rush Limbaugh, and that WNYC keeps playing his easy listening/cabaret music while virtually eliminating its classical music programming is unjust. I'm still waiting for a Sunday show as good as Eddie Stubbs' (country/honky-tonk, formerly broadcast from Nashville to WAMU in Washington, DC).

Funny this thread should pop up when I've just spent the evening listening to In The Wee Small Hours, trying to put Everton's defeat at Spurs in some perspective. Also recommended: his earlier work with Tommy Dorsey.

Also, 'Live at The Sands' with Count Basie, and 'September of my years' are damn fine.

Destroy: 'Love and marriage'

Note that I have no affiliation with Dusty Groove and am only posting this for the potential benefit of other Sinatra-philes.

I wouldn't trade either for From Here to Eternity, though I'd think about it.

Re. Sinatra, I have made one observation today. I've heard a few times of Sinatra's supposed influence on Scott Walker, but wasn't convinced. I thought perhaps Sinatra was the only reference point that certain rock critics had as regards pre-rock popular song. But listening to Sinatra's 1962 record Point of No Return (from the box set), I am struck by a great similarity not just between Sinatra's vocals here and Scott, but also between the arrangements here (by Axel Stordahl) and those on Scott's early solo records.

'In the Wee Small Hours' sounds positively jaunty compared to 'Where are you?'. Another great ballads album, but darker still.

As for darkness, all these are the 1910 Fruitgum Co. next to 'Only the Lonely.'

I used to be a real skeptic about Frank. The Great American Songbook, fuck that. But what really converted me are all the great bootlegs my Sinatra-obsessed pal here in Nashvegas turned me onto--if you can track 'em down, "FS After Hours," with Bill Miller on piano, is very fine. "Inside Basie: In the Studio October 2-3 1962" is great as well, and listening to it gives you a sense of how smart he was about what he was doing, how in control.

Destroy:
Most of what he did after 1970.

I've been listening to In the Wee Still Hours of the Morning a lot lately, and guess at what hours. Man, you ain't never been blue 'till you've heard his "Mood Indigo." It's an odd album, really, in its tenacious consistency. It's one goddamn sad-ass breakup song after another, sixteen of them in all, but you can't turn it off. Amazing.

i haven't heard it, i really should. i've heard precious few proper albums. i really want the '75 comeback special in vegas that pbs is always pushing... last year i listened to, or rather studied a little 20 song capitol compilation in my car for a good 3 months last year.

oh i forgot SANG. i nailed 'i've got you under my skin' and 'witchcraft' doing karaoke with strgn last week.

Kenan, I love that album, too, bit it's still small beer, or a Saturday afternoon at the carnival, compared to Only the Lonely.

but

I bought six Sinatra albums - Wee Small Hours, Only The Lonely, No One Cares, Songs For Swingin' Lovers, A Swingin' Affair and Come Fly With Me - a couple of weeks back. Haven't worked my way through all of them yet, but so far No One Cares kicks ass.

That cover!

http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/no-one%20cares_.jpg

A certain "demonic" torrent tracker had HQ rips of the original mono vinyl releases of Only The Lonely, Swing Along With Me, etc. and holy crap they're astounding.

I imagine they're still floating around out there.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Sheshotmedown.jpg

^^^^^^^^^^ underrated

(that's She Shot Me Down btw)

She Shot My Toupee.

Somebody I used to teach with let me pick out some albums from an old box belonging to her dad and step-mom.

http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-150-1094776-1272634544.jpeg

1989 on Wifon, seems to be a Polish pressing. Really, have you ever seen a better likeness?

of whom?

Some random guy in a fedora who the artist happened to be thinking about when he was supposed to be sketching Frank Sinatra.

I really should check out She Shot Me Down

Many of the live albums recorded in later years are surprisingly good. The voice is more gravelly and less certain, but it undercuts the saccharine sweetness of some of the string arrangements he was using and works very well. The Meadowlands set that came out a couple of years ago is very good, as is the last disc of the Vegas box set.

I think I understand a grand total of three of the jokes Sinatra tells on this Sinatra at the Sands album and two of them are alarmingly racist (the other is about how drunk Dean Martin is)

I've been thinking of nominating Ol' Blue Eyes is Back (from 1973) on the 'New Jersey' thread for the last few days actually. Big 'event' album - re-emerging from a 3-year "retirement" - that went gold, but is largely forgettable, and with the notable exception of only one song there's not much memorable from then onward.

you can usually spot the French pop that was Anglicized in the '60s, but I had no idea "The Summer Wind" was of German origin.

http://sinatrafamily.com/forum/showthread.php/26318-SINGS-THE-SELECT-JOHNNY-MERCER-(1963-1995)-(plus-Sinatra-Mercer-Songindex)/page2

Did not know that either

or that Wayne Newton did the first English version, ye gods.

have we ever had a proper poll? seems odd that we haven't. i'd like the experts to rank the Capitol albums.

this was shown Xmas eve in the UK, as good a doc about him as i've ever seen, it's available to watch for another month

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rs3w6

Eventually I would like to own all of his sad-bastard ballad LPs - for now the only ones I have are Watertown and Only the Lonely, which are both fantastic.

Bought my mother that London Sessions box that came out this year, but I haven't heard it yet myself.

I bought the whole Capitol set not long ago. Fucking fantastic.

Songs for swingin lovers is the apex imo

FInally got around to hearing Only the Lonely... damn it's even heavier and bleaker than I imagined. And incredibly slow. This is my favorite Sinatra, his gloomy rope's-end persona. Where Are You? was my previous favorite LP. September of My Years is great also, if a little too positive.

Anyone heard Close to You, the one he did with a string quartet back in '57? Turned out to be a one-off experiment.

The Hollywood String Quartet, great players. I've always wanted to hear that.

Only the Lonely era is great but it can be a bit of a slog if I'm not in the mood. Prefer the lighter late 50s stuff myself

If you like Only the Lonely you must hear In the Wee Small Hours and the especially bleak No One Cares

yeah I lost my copies of those

any love for the Sands live album mentioned upthread? song performances are great, the stage banter is inscrutable

i love the Sands live album ..
but then again, i have a lot of love for most of franks groove whether it's late night whiskey excess (only the lonely being the ultimate), or uptown party (either of the albums with count basie).

song performances are great, the stage banter is inscrutable

Yeah, that about sums it up. Haven't heard it in a long while though.

I've been listening to some of the more offbeat ones lately - the two Jobim albums (both excellent), and Watertown, an entire album of Bob Gaudio/Jake Holmes songs that baffled his clientele upon its release. Will put Close to You on my upcoming listening list.

If you like Only the Lonely you must hear In the Wee Small Hours and the especially bleak No One Cares

Wee Small Hours was one of my gateway Sinatra albums. Have never heard No One Cares, although that must be one of the best album titles ever (and of course an equally classic cover).

Also love the Sands live album, the first Jobim one, and from the uptempo ones A Swingin' Affair stands out for sheer non-stop energy.

I wrote a ranking of Sinatra's peak period:
https://medium.com/@shujaxhaider/ranking-frank-sinatra-on-capitol-records-d5f1e5e95057

I'm also a No One Cares (and Gordon Jenkins in general) fan.

Surprised I haven't seen this type of ranking before! Would be interested to see how mine corresponds to a consensus.

this piece is great, well done

def agree about the top 5, tho maybe not in that precise order

Same here. Only the Lonely casts a pall as thick as Joy Division.

man that She Shot Me Down cover is lol, never seen that one before

It does toe the line of caricature, but I think you'll be surprised how solid the album is! Especially if you're a fan of the Capitol classics.

I really grew tired of the Billy May records after a couple of listens. So little subtlety in the music.

Have all these LP's been re-released somewhere?

As far as I know they're widely available, at least the more famous Riddles and Mays.

I love "Come Fly with Me", but other than that I only have a Greatest Hits collection. Not sure where I would go next. I'm not a huge fan of downer Frank.

I really grew tired of the Billy May records after a couple of listens. So little subtlety in the music

But then Billy May also did the album Pretty Eyes with Peggy Lee that is one of her subtlest, so I don't know..

Just what I needed tonight -- thanks!

recently added September of My Years and Where Are You? to my collection - now I just gotta track down Wee Small Hours and No One Cares.

I haven't gotten around to listening to it, but I just noticed that literally half the songs on the new Dylan standards album are on Where Are You and No One Cares—apparently Robert shares this board's Sinatra LP preferences. Of the other half at least two only appeared as singles on Columbia.

Have all these LP's been re-released somewhere?

Everything ranked in the article except for the Christmas album and This is Sinatra! is included in this box, which I think is pretty much the best $40 I've ever spent.

Whoa... that's going on my wish list.

I've only watched half of part one, but so far I approve of this HBO doc

no one else saw this...? pretty great. made me feel like Sinatra and Shatner share some similar characteristics, this weird mixture of macho bravado and hystrionic melodrama and ego

I watched second half so far, partially due to your post, thanks. Thought it was pretty great. Loved it when he told Dino "you got a beat like a cop." Had forgotten he had Mia served her walking papers during the filming of filming of Rosemary's Baby.

Loved it when he told Dino "you got a beat like a cop."

haha yeah this was one of his better zingers. Often I find Sinatra's jokes really inscrutable and/or dated

Heard that expression before, but that was a perfect usage of it.

Liked the doc a lot, though musically speaking a lot went unmentioned or was glossed over. Nothing about September of My Years, only a few seconds relating to the Jobim collaborations, etc. Was the name Gordon Jenkins even mentioned?

But the story is so big they have to focus it in some way, and it was a nice move to focus it on Sinatra's own words and the words of his family and closest colleagues.

The story of Sinatra's political shift circa 1970 is still so strange and baffling to me.

only a few seconds relating to the Jobim collaborations

yeah was cool to see the (brief) concert footage but those albums didn't even get a mention!

re: his politics - Sinatra drifting rightward as he aged doesn't strike me as all that uncommon. and in general his politics strike me as being consistent in their clannishness, in that they were guided more by his affinities for (and proximity to) various groups rather than by principle.

his racial politics also reveal a common limitation of white liberalism in the US - ie, overt legal/institutional racism and discrimination is wrong but we still get to make racist jokes

^ Yeah, but I see that as just part of the overall evolution of society, the way things progress in stages. But to switch to the party that is more or less overtly racist, forsaking all previous political connections - that's surprising. To marry a hippie in 1966 and end up endorsing Ronald Reagan in 1970 requires some explanation. It's hard to believe it's all about the Kennedys.

oh all the old leches of his generation wanted a hippie chick of their own, that's not so surprising. and as noted in the documentary the pairing was doomed from the start, rife with misunderstanding. Doc suggested he did not actually switch parties fwiw.

learning that he liked to pal around with Agnew was p lol

I know, the Agnew thing, what..?!

obviously no one enjoyed hangin out w Nixon, maybe Sinatra liked Agnew more cuz he was closer to an actual gangster. Although you'd think Nixon would've introduced Frank to Bebe Rebozo, I bet they would've hit it off

Complicated guy. (Will definitely watch the documentary once it's out for rental/sale.) I can't stand watching him and Martin and Davis making fun of racism via tasteless shtick, but at the same time, I know that's very easy for someone to say from the safe vantage point of 2015. I'm sure he did, in his own fashion, fight the good fight.

Sonny Rollins said when he was on high school, or maybe shortly thereafter, he was really inspired by Sinatra's "The House I Live In," which may have been a "soundie," a pre-video short subject for movie theater (saw an amazing collection of those once, think it was titled Jazz Ball, with a pre-disco ball on the poster)(there was even an attempt or proposal to put them on visual jukeboxes vs television, the new challenger to flicks). This was a gutsy thing to do, early in Sinatra's solo career especially, when racial integrationist sentiments themselves were (at least) highly suspect to some, let alone such sentiments capable of being spread via our National airwaves! And the Silver Screen!

Really like Live In Australia, from 1959, I think, with Red Norvo's combo: the audience and performers are so excited, but the source material is so sad! How will they balance it all, on this great and rare night (Sinatra down under, wtf!). But it works and it's Frank at his jazziest, minus the Chairman of the Board camp, that is (he left in Vegas storage, for this occasion anyway).

He left *it*, the camp, in Vegas storage, that is.

Oh yeah!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sinatra_with_the_Red_Norvo_Quintet:_Live_in_Australia,_1959

his racial politics also reveal a common limitation of white liberalism in the US - ie, overt legal/institutional racism and discrimination is wrong but we still get to make racist jokes

― Οὖτις, Friday, April 10, 2015 3:19 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ Yeah, but I see that as just part of the overall evolution of society, the way things progress in stages. But to switch to the party that is more or less overtly racist, forsaking all previous political connections - that's surprising. To marry a hippie in 1966 and end up endorsing Ronald Reagan in 1970 requires some explanation. It's hard to believe it's all about the Kennedys.

― Josefa, Friday, April 10, 2015 5:41 PM

Charleton Heston, guys.

He was at the March on Washington and 18 year later was one of Ron and Nancy's more honored White House guests.

messy, undisciplined doc that struggles mostly because dude's life was so damned huge and all over the map. That "Ol' Man River" footage with MLK in attendance was really something. Nice to see a Watertown shoutout - would have gladly watched a doc of the same length that stuck to just the music.

If you want to see concert docs (which might have some commentary added as bonus material by now, I dunno), def try the TV specials that show him at his 60s peak, as elder statesman (well, Dadpop, flaunting his age amidst the rising tide of Boomer hormones) who also found his own way through some current trends, to creative and commercial success. These also loop back through initial hits, his 50s post-Ava Gardner/throat hemorrhage renaissance as the king of Adult Pop (cool and vs. that greasy kid stuff from Memphis), with Gordon Jenkins and Nelson Riddle aboard sometimes. Check A Man And His Music, from 1965, AMAHM Part II, '66 (think that's the one where he duets with Nancy), and 1967's AMAHM + Ella + Jobim(There's also a 1980 or '81 concert set titled The Man And His Music, but I don't think I've seen it, unless it's the one where he's growling at Wolf Trap, almost like the Muddy Waters of lounge, at times).
The range of the TV trilogy can be disconcerting, especially when he kicks ass on "That's Life," then practically busts a vein on the singing waiter special, "Come Back To Sorrento," like he's immediately gotta reassure Jilly and da boys that he ain't turnin'...reminds me of Greg Tate writing that he couldn't listen to a whole FS album at one sitting, because of getting creeped out by certain old school associations (like race talk in The Godfather). But ain't that America. Think there are audio-only editions, at least there is or was a double-album version of the first special.

Sonny Rollins said when he was on high school, or maybe shortly thereafter, he was really inspired by Sinatra's "The House I Live In," which may have been a "soundie," a pre-video short subject for movie theater (saw an amazing collection of those once, think it was titled Jazz Ball, with a pre-disco ball on the poster)(there was even an attempt or proposal to put them on visual jukeboxes vs television, the new challenger to flicks). This was a gutsy thing to do, early in Sinatra's solo career especially, when racial integrationist sentiments themselves were (at least) highly suspect to some, let alone such sentiments capable of being spread via our National airwaves! And the Silver Screen!

This helped put him on HUAC's shit list; his name was brought up a number of times during the hearings, though he himself was never brought before the committee.

My parents liked the HBO doc alot. I need to watch it. Alas, my Mom, who was once president of the Hoboken, NJ based Sinatra fanclub did not get interviewed.

Liked what I saw of the doc and figured they wouldn't be able to get too deep into the music. Which meant at least they didn't have commentary by Bono, unless that was in the first half.

I've watched the first part... I really dug the stuff about how hard he worked coming up, his dad kicking him out & then welcoming with open arms when he got his radio gig

having nancy & nancy do some voiceover was a great touch too

Mitch - out.

my bff is a huge sinatra nerd, and she came over a few sundays ago & we watched the whole thing together. by the second half of part 2 when he's basically just a walking asshole even she was was like FUCK THIS CLOWN UGH lol

but goddamn it really does feel like he lived like four lifetimes. the whole doc is such a sprawling rollercoaster.

puka shell denim suit Frank with the orange shag carpet & potted palms behind was so lol

happy 100th, clown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ04Lwt2PlU

That's life.

Happy Birthday, Francis Albert.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEp9ViXWRWY

gets no better. if there are 10 better sounding records, i haven't heard em.

Last two posts otm. If you read the Ruy Castro book, you will find that he was one of the key inspirations for Bossa Nova to come about, iirc

i have most of the capitol era stuff on cd, but never got the jobim stuff.
more fool me.

1959 World Series:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01807/sinatra-martin-rac_1807744i.jpg

I was really interested in his music for a time, kind of drifted away from it.

Started digging the song "Angel Eyes" when I heard the Mark Murphy version on WBGO after he passed away the other days.

s

Damn I didn't know Mark Murphy had died. Great talent.

His last words were "excuse me while I disappear."

Was Bob Dorough's birthday too. Enjoying his tribute shows as well this weekend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPQcsDqv0mI

DAMMIT I WANT THESE (a little shorter[?] than print ed. I saw, but also check Friedwald interview on Fresh Air)
‘A Voice on Air: 1935-1955’ and ‘Lost & Found: The Radio Years’ Reviews
Two new releases amount to the most important new Sinatra music issued since the legend's death in 1998
By Will Friedwald
Updated Dec. 10, 2015 6:47 p.m. ET
WSJ
In terms of the critical perception of his long career, Frank Sinatra reverses the general equation of such fellow giants of American music as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Too many evaluations of the latter two concentrate only on their breakthrough early work, while ignoring virtually everything they did after age 40. With Sinatra (whose centennial is being celebrated this year), by contrast, the remarkable—even revolutionary—albums he made in his 40s and 50s completely overshadow the equally outstanding singing that he did in his younger “skinny” years.

A Voice on Air: 1935-1955

Sony Music Legacy

Lost & Found: The Radio Years

Smithsonian

Two new releases, “A Voice on Air: 1935-1955” (four CDs from Sony Music Legacy) and “Lost & Found: The Radio Years” (a single disc from Smithsonian), at last start to shine the spotlight on the singer’s often amazing work in the years during and immediately after World War II. Taken together, these five discs amount to the most important new Sinatra music issued since his death in 1998.

Any serious look at the early Sinatra necessitates a change in focus: The singer later known as the Chairman of the Board was a singularly driven recording artist who all but single-handedly created the modern pop album as early as 1946. Yet in the 1940s, commercial recordings were strictly a secondary medium—the real money was in network radio. That’s where Sinatra concentrated most of his energies, developing songs for as many as two or three live appearances on various shows (his own and guest spots on others) a week and bringing only a select few of these arrangements into the recording studio.
Opinion Journal Video
Author Will Friedwald on the recent release of two Frank Sinatra albums focusing on his seminal work during the World War II era. Photo credit: Getty Images.

Later, on television, Sinatra was a brilliant singer but an indifferent host; he never seemed entirely committed to that medium—at least not until the “Man and His Music” concert-style specials of 1965 onwards (in which all he had to do, essentially, was sing). Yet he was completely invested in his radio shows, which becomes apparent not only when he’s singing but whenever he talks to the audience or banters with his guests.

There’s a remarkable energy to these shows: Sinatra is spreading his young wings and testing the extent of his powers with the first generation that loved him. At the time of Pearl Harbor, Sinatra was a semi-anonymous boy singer with Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra, but by V-J Day, in 1945, he was the biggest star in the country, thanks largely to his success on the radio and that of his first MGM film, “Anchors Aweigh.” These performances of the late war years represent the absolute best of Sinatra in his “sailor suit” era.

“The Voice,” as he was known at the time, sounds more innocent than he would 10 years later. But he never sounds naïve; the emotional content of his interpretations always cuts deeper than any other singer of the period. He even makes “The Trolley Song” sound wise and knowing, not to mention swinging. There’s a great preponderance of songs and arrangements that he never released on records (like a ballad interpretation of “I Get a Kick Out of You” on the Smithsonian disc in which he can’t help but chuckle at one moment, 10 years before he canonized that Cole Porter song as a swinger). In an era when Hollywood leading men were stoic, unemotional types like Gary Cooper and John Wayne, Sinatra was precisely the opposite—he lets every emotion show. You feel his joy and pain more than any other singer save Armstrong or Billie Holiday.

The spontaneity of these live performances is enhanced by the guest stars, especially when he crosses cadenzas with Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee and Benny Goodman; two particularly interesting moments are an especially zany encounter with hipster supreme Slim Gaillard, and a unique one-shot song done in honor of comic strip icon Li’l Abner. The 4-CD box, which includes all these, climaxes with 10 remarkably intimate tracks of the mature Sinatra swinging with a small band on his final radio series in 1953-55.

The audio quality on all of these CDs, taken from what sound like pristine acetate and glass masters, is significantly better than what listeners heard on home AM radios at the time. The overall effect is that these tracks give us a better idea (than the commercial 78s) of what all the screaming was about. And, in some cases, they give us the screaming itself; the bobby-soxers, those young girls who constituted Sinatra’s first fan base, are audible on many tracks. Far from being distracting, those sounds are a welcome part of the background noise of a remarkable era.

Mr. Friedwald writes about music and popular culture for the Journal and is the author of “Sinatra! The Song Is You” (Da Capo).

Didn't Johnny Mercer write the songs for that L'il Abner musical?

That's what Wiki says.

Happy belated 100th Frank.

that equire profile that's been going around is amazing

hadn't really registered with me how much his output diminished after Watertown. Can only speculate what would have happened if he'd stuck around long enough for Rick Rubin to get his hands on him lol.

I'm listening to some of his mid- to late-60s albums and man this stuff gets pretty dire, even with the occasional big hit/"signature song" popping up. It's crazy how rapidly he became totally irrelevant, and you can't really blame him for not giving as much of a fuck. What was he supposed to do, make a rock opera? Retreat to small jazz combo recordings? He had nowhere to go.

Been a while, but I liked the ones w Jobim and Ellington. Main thing: he came back strong on the radio, King of Dad Pop, while upstart Elvis was in eclipse. Adult Pop was the way Sinatra, Bennett etc. had been marketed in the 50s, talkin' back to that greasy kid stuff. Even prestigious albums, as albums first became a big deal (not in kid music, o course). Then he became a compulsive self-parody with that Rat Pack shit ('bout ruined his movie career/cred), but for a while there in the 60s, pretty good, and even when not good, still pretty big (on the radio). Uniquely so, for a guy of his generation, in that time segment (might've sucked again by late 60s though, don't remember).

yeah everyone loves the Jobim one afaict, I was just listening to That's Life! (ugh what is with the organ and the female backup chorus?!) and Strangers in the Night. Both generated big hits that must've felt like combative throwbacks at the time.

The movie version of Pal Joey is fine anytime Frank is singing, or Rita Hayworth is moving or singing. Kim Novak ventilating "My Funny Valentine," not so much.

Also there's a cute dog doing shtick throughout, to keep your mind off all the transactions in human flesh going on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Uw5dDEa7U

(was surprised at the amount of San Francisco location shooting, very early for that kinda stuff unless something Serious like a Kazan film)

(also i should note that neither of the female stars did her character's singing)

this one got a lot of publicity and actually went gold:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51KwTJmY-nL._SX300_.jpg

i felt the Gibney doc kinda skimps over his gangster affiliations

this John Lahr essay (year unknown) is a wowser

The result Riddle achieved in “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” was, he said, “a sort of a cornerstone recording for both him and me.” The arrangement starts with a comfortable, loping rhythm that Riddle called “the heartbeat rhythm” (“Sinatra’s tempo is the tempo of the heartbeat,” he said) and then sets up a marvellous instrumental tension around Sinatra’s voice. Riddle always found little licks—certain spicy, nearly out-of-key notes—that would tease the key, and added the glue of “sustaining strings” almost subliminally to the rhythm and woodwind sections. At the instrumental breaks in the songs, Riddle gave solo voices to oboes, muted trumpets, piccolos, bassoons; in “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” it was to Milt Bernhart’s trombone, which whipped up the excitement until Sinatra joined the song again and brought it back to the heartbeat rhythm where it had begun. Sinatra had wanted an extended crescendo; Riddle provided one that was longer than had ever been heard in an organized arrangement....

After the humiliations of his decline, nothing so moved Sinatra as the spectacle of himself as a powerhouse: big talent, big guys around him, big bucks behind him, big connections to the mainstream and to underworld power. “He used his success in film, in singing, and in business to pump up the persona of untouchable,” Tony Curtis says. “Notice I don’t bring up the Mafia. He in himself was his own godfather. He ran his own family and his friends like that. Untouchable.”...

Sinatra stood before an audience as a person who had caroused with killers and kings. He’d been married to the most beautiful woman in the world. He had won and lost and now won again. All this made him more interesting as a performer than anything he sang. Sinatra’s best songs of the period—“All the Way,” “Call Me Irresponsible,” and especially “Come Fly with Me”—were written by Sammy Cahn, who had roomed with Sinatra, travelled with Sinatra, and lived a lot of Sinatra’s story with him. The material was Sinatra. “Sammy’s words fit my mouth the best,” he told the producer George Slaughter.
But lyrics, like everything else, could suffer from Sinatra’s egotism. “Ira Gershwin hated that Sinatra took ‘A Foggy Day’ and sang ‘I viewed the morning with much alarm,’” the singer Michael Feinstein, who was for a long time Gershwin’s assistant, says. “The lyric is ‘I viewed the morning with alarm.’ It drove Gershwin crazy, because he felt the word ‘much’ weakened what he originally wrote.” Leonora Hornblow tells of an evening at actor Clifton Webb’s when Cole Porter was present: “Frank fiddled with the lyrics. I think it was ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’—you know, ‘You give me a boot.’ Cole got up and walked out. Cole had perfect manners. For him to do that while somebody was singing was like stripping his clothes off.” Sinatra revered Porter (he leased Porter’s apartment at the WaldorfTowers), but he also thought Porter “a snob,” whereas Cahn wrote lyrics that had Sinatra’s common touch....

At Caesar’s Palace, sometime in the early eighties, Shirley MacLaine caught Sinatra’s show. “I don’t know what was bugging him,” she told me, describing the evening’s first set. “The magic wasn’t there. He marked it. He couldn’t wait to get out.” Afterward, at dinner, Sinatra asked what she thought, and she gave him her version of a pep talk. “Frank, you really ought to remember how you got so many of us through a Second World War, and a New Deal, and gave us an education in music,” she said. “Please don’t just mark it, because it disrespects everything you meant to the whole country. You might seem to some like a ruin but to most of us that ruin is a monument.” MacLaine adds, “His eyes just…It was like nobody had said that to him in a long time.”

http://johnlahr.com/frank-sinatra/

ooh!

woah.. good stuff.

formatting putting me off making it through the whole thing but pretty much every paragraph has a great bit in it

I highly recommend the biography "The Chairman" by James Kaplan. It's 900 pages, and begins at From Here To Eternity but boy is it entertaining. Basically, Frank was a mean drunk who drank a lot. And the older he got, the meaner he got.

He also kicked out a car radio when he heard Light My Fire on 3 consecutive stations.

That Lahr piece is fantastic. Is the Kaplan book the two-part one?

I've always viewed the Rat Pack's rage/bitterness at the ascendancy of rock with a mixture of pity and "Now you guys know how Rudy Vallee felt, huh?"

Nancy Sinatra made it clear two weeks ago that she believed her father Frank Sinatra would not have supported Donald Trump, or performed at his inauguration.

Now a fan has asked her how she feels about the prospect of 'My Way' being sung at the event, after reports that the famous song would be performed for Trump's first dance with his wife Melania as US President.

"Just remember the first line of the song," she responded....

Sinatra himself came to hate the song despite popularising it in 1969, according to his daughter Tina, who said he "always thought that song was self-serving and self-indulgent".

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/nancy-sinatra-responds-donald-trump-my-way-sang-us-presidential-inauguration-having-frank-sinatra-my-a7534701.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuIcRiHlHoY

Absolutely insane story. Sinatra was a mean drunk to put it mildly (according to the huge James Kaplan biography from last year) and this story certainly backs that up.

Destroy Somethin Stupid without mercy.

I like Something' Stupid a bit more than you while also forever being frustrated and perplexed by Nancy being so low in the mix. I think of tunes like this as "Italian Restaurant Music."

And here's my top 25.

unusually shot on location

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSawinsjVKs

and later in the same film... the bonhomie between Durante and Frank really makes this number fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLF8rkiV0Ts

I couldn't put down the first volume of Kaplan's bio over the holidays, highly recommended

ends with Frank wandering the streets of Beverly Hills, alone, at night, clutching his newly-won Oscar for "From Here to Eternity"

is the degree of mob connex more or less than u expected?

well I knew about the two most famous incidents (getting out of his contract with Dorsey and his conspicuous trip to Havana) and he sticks to what can be corroborated/documented on those points. The transcript of Frank's closed-door Senate testimony on the latter incident is quoted extensively. With the former he takes some pains to point out how the parallels in the Godfather are mostly fictional - someone may have threatened Dorsey with a gun, for ex, but nobody put a dead horse in his bed.

Otherwise he makes it clear that the mob was just part of the milieu he both grew up in as a kid and worked in as an adult, and that he wasn't particularly unusual in this regard. Guys like Bugsy Siegel and Willie Moore were just *around*, so some degree of involvement (and fascination with them) was inevitable.

his mob-financed stake in the Sands is also covered

I'd never really listened to his pre-Nelson Riddle, Alex Stordahl-arranged stuff. Sheesh those strings really are soporific.

volume 2 (the Chairman) goes deep into the mafia stuff - kinda unavoidable given the Sinatra/Kennedy/Giancana nexus

I wonder who will make the biopic now Marty has given it the elbow

https://news.avclub.com/martin-scorsese-says-he-s-giving-up-on-his-frank-sinatr-1798255980/amp

Ken Roberts:

"The hat check girl, Fran, came in, and said 'Someone just shot Bobby Kennedy', and Sinatra made the comment, 'I hope they shot him in the fuckin' head.'

A couple minutes later, she came back and said 'Yes, he was shot in the head.' Sinatra turned white and became so frightened and panicked... he thought that, while he was singing, someone might shoot him"

this book is fucking insane

important new developments:

There's a QAnon follower who angrily speculates that Pope Francis is secretly Frank Sinatra, who in reality died in 1998.

Sinatra going from a world-famous boozing philanderer to the celibate head of the Catholic Church would be quite a dramatic lifestyle change. pic.twitter.com/0udwW7o2H9

— Travis View (@travis_view) January 30, 2020

the end of this reminded me very much of the last chapters of the James Brown bio "The One". Not in the particulars (Frank didn't go on any PCP-fueled cross-country car chases), more in the dynamic of being emotionally isolated (and stunted) triumphal figures with nowhere to go but down. After being on top of the world he basically just regretfully slides into creative stagnation and a sort of blank, resentful resignation: no real friends or family, nothing to do, embalmed in his own legend. Did he think it was all worth it, at the end? who knows

also yes obviously Frank is the world's first 105-year old American pope

Frank didn't go on any PCP-fueled cross-country car chases

Cannonball Run II, yo.

https://pics.imcdb.org/12851/snap480.5.jpg

"Gas, grass, or ass, baby..."

https://pics.imcdb.org/12851/snap480.5.jpg

lol fair point

Brian Wilson talking about writing "Still I Dream of It" for Frank, how awesome "Only the Lonely" is etc

https://youtu.be/YZAwYF2tLbU?t=462

(thx to Tyler for the link!)

this is so great!

Apparently Capitol Recording Studios (where Frank recorded many of his greatest records, including Only the Lonely) has closed for good - the entire staff was laid off. Would be a shame if they gut it (which I guess will probably happen) - the famous echo chamber alone is irreplaceable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hDFSbsqn5U

Really? That is ... not good. Where did you hear that?

Here's what a freelance cutting engineer in L.A. posted last night:

"Stephen Marsh just told me that Capitol Tower Studios is closed and staff has been let go, Ron McMaster confirmed all mastering engineers, Perry and Dave in Restoration and even Paula Salvatore (!!!)"

McMaster is their longtime mastering engineer - he was supposed to retire like a decade ago, but he wound up staying due to the vinyl boom. (Very few people left have his experience in cutting vinyl.) He finally called it a day in 2018.

Salvatore may be familiar to anyone who's seen Dave Grohl's Sound City documentary - she used to run that studio before Capitol.

Ugh.

I checked back with their website to see if an official announcement had been made. It now says "SERVICES TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE." (https://www.capitolstudios.com/)

Actually, what am I talking about? There's a pandemic going on, so maybe it was already up for that.

Now it sounds like the studio won't be closing altogether. The entire staff has been let go, and the mastering department is probably gone for good, but if the pandemic improves and they can start booking regular sessions again, they're hoping to re-open. I hope that's the case. I thought they were doing fine relatively speaking so I'd be stunned if this was truly the end.