Dallas Morning News 1993/ Austin American Statesman 1998
If Frank Sinatra's career were a prizefight (and at times, the similarities have been remarkable), the referee would be stepping in about now.
Last month, the 78-year-old legend even hit the canvas, passing out in concert during “My Way.” He was back on the performance trail a week later, however, reading the lyrics from TelePrompTers and saying that the road keeps him going.
Then there was the Grammy embarrassment, when the Chairman of the Board showed up to receive a lifetime achievement award and ended up being monologue fodder for Jay Leno. Frank got the hook when he started rambling, but those who've followed Mr. Sinatra know that's when the good stuff comes out.
Frank was just warming up, and if anyone has earned the right to milk his moment, it's Francis Albert Sinatra. If he wants a drink, get him one. If he wants to look for his girl in the audience, let him. Everything's gotta be done at such a quick-cutting clip in these days of short attention spans, but as the music biz's biggest night, the Grammys could've suspended the usual watch-tapping for the greatest pop singer in history.
The whole ceremony just didn't feel right. Bono's passionate tribute was, nonetheless, out of place, lacking the right reverence. Just having Bono do the introduction instead of someone classier, like Tony Bennett, was a slap, but you wonder if maybe Frank smacked himself harder. He obviously wanted to push his Duets album and the Grammys wanted more appeal to the MTV generation, so they tapped Bono. It was great TV, but the honor was trivialized.
Frank often has joked, since his '50s saloon-song heyday, that his throat felt like he'd swallowed a shot glass, but lately he's been sounding like that could be the case. The once-pristine pipes have been ravaged by decades of decadence, whiskey and cigarettes. To see his most recent concerts is like paying your respects.
That Ol' Blue Eyes continues to tour long past his prime should not detract from what he's accomplished. Elvis Presley and John Lennon and Aretha Franklin were truly vital for less than 20 years each, but Sinatra ruled the vocal arena for more than 40 years because his sound works on so many levels. Not only was he the favorite singer of such discriminating listeners as Benny Goodman and Miles Davis, but his records are never off the turntable at your Aunt Rosa's house.
Sinatra's larger-than-life persona has long lent itself to formal "main event" situations, but his music also takes the train to the souls of common people.
A man works hard all day and comes home to his efficiency apartment and a hot plate. A naked light bulb hangs from the ceiling. This is a man who needs some Sinatra in his life. Good God, man: make your destitution swing. Listen to one of Frank's mid-'50s classics like In the Wee Small Hours or Where Are You? and turn off that light bulb.
Another man is living large. His Victorian house has hardwood floors, 15-foot ceilings and an elaborate sound system. Thumbing through his CD library looking for the appropriate soundtrack to his quality life, this guy could do no better than Sinatra. Especially recommended is Sinatra and Sextet: Live in Paris, a just-released live recording from 1962.
The Live in Paris set finds Mr. Sinatra in relaxed form. He's very Rat Pack, very Frank, as he cracks tough-guy jokes, refers to "broads" and runs through often-perfunctory versions of such signature tunes as “I've Got You Under My Skin,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Without a Song” and “I Get a Kick Out of You.” He tags “Ol' Man River” as "a song about Sammy's people" and then says, "and here's one about my people" before launching into “The Lady is a Tramp.” Upon hitting a bum note on “Nancy With the Laughing Face,” Frank clears his throat, midsong, and says, "Boy, I gotta stop sleeping in the park." Another time he says, "The onion soup is great here, but don't have any before you're supposed to sing." It's pure Sinatra, which means that he doesn't try very hard and he's still great. Back in ‘62, there was no grander place to be than in the same room as Sinatra and the songs of Cole Porter, Jimmy Van Heusen, Sammy Cahn and Johnny Mercer.
The phrase "in the pocket" was invented to illustrate where Sinatra's voice rides in an arrangement. Later, football announcers picked it up to describe the area that a quarterback drops into to avoid the swirl of mammoth bodies. With turmoil and disorder all around, the quarterback finds that protective zone and fires bullets downfield. He's gotta be cool, or it all falls apart.
Quincy Jones told me a great story in 1990 about seeing Frank Sinatra in Monte Carlo in 1955, “when he was still with Ava. The band started playing the first song, ‘I've Got the World On a String’ and Sinatra came out from the side and started walking up to the stage and the crowd's going wild and just before he got there, he noticed some people that he knew sitting at a table, so he went over and they exchanged pleasantries,” Jones said. “Then Frank sees someone else he knows and he goes over there. Anyway, it's been three or four minutes since they've introduced him and I thought, `Man, he'd better get onstage quick, before the applause dies down, or it's not going to look good,' but Frank just took his sweet time. He knew they weren't going to stop clapping until he started singing. He finally stepped up to the mike, after what seemed like an eternity, and the band was playing and he looked like he was ready to sing, but instead he lit up a cigarette. I've never seen a performer be so aware that he had an audience in the palm of his hand. It was the coolest, man."
Indeed, Sinatra has had the world on a string for over 50 years. Growing up as an only child in Hoboken, N.J., he always had "high hopes," as he would sing years later. He didn't figure on a singing career, however, until he saw a Bing Crosby movie when he was almost 20 years old. After a brief stint with the Hoboken 4, Sinatra was hired to sing in Harry James' band, but went virtually unnoticed for almost two years.
In December, 1939, Chicago musicians union czar James Petrillo summoned almost every big band in the country to play at the annual Christmas benefit party sponsored by Mayor Edward J. Kelly. Watching from the wings during James' set was the nation's top bandleader, Tommy Dorsey. After the set, he slipped Sinatra a note asking him to meet him at his suite at the Palmer House the next day. The ever-ambitious skinny kid from Hoboken was about to make another big step forward.
Sinatra's teaming with Dorsey was a pivotal period of his career. He quickly became a star, and he also developed much of his trademark timing and phrasing under the tutelage of Dorsey. He also learned his incredible breath control by watching the band leader play trombone night after night. When Sinatra asked Dorsey why it seemed like he never breathed during long solos, the trombonist demonstrated how he snuck short breaths out of the corner of his mouth during certain parts of the arrangement.
Though his career began as a sharp-dressed Bing Crosby imitator, Sinatra was creating a style all his own, one which made teenage girls scream and swoon. His No. 1 songs with Dorsey included "I'll Never Smile Again," "There Are Such Things" and "In the Blue of the Evening."
In '42, "Frankie" left Dorsey and started recording as a solo act for Columbia, as well as appearing on CBS radio five days a week. During this period, Sinatra drew hysterical crowds and sold out Brooklyn's Paramount Theatre for an unprecedented five weeks. He also made the transition to film in such movies as Step Lively (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945) and On the Town (1949).
Though he was phenomenally successful in the '40s, the classic Sinatra era didn't begin until he signed with Capitol Records in 1953. Though the album format had been around for a while, Capitol was the first to release concept LPs such as Nat King Cole's Songs for Two in Love and Sinatra's Songs for Young Lovers. Sinatra was a natural for this new style of packaging songs together to create a mood. With lush arrangements by Nelson Riddle or Gordon Jenkins, Sinatra's work during this period was often starkly beautiful and achingly sad. Riddle once said that the albums Close to You and Only the Lonely were so moving because Sinatra was heartbroken over his separation from second wife, Ava Gardner, the love of his life. If you listen hard enough, you can practically hear ice cubes clinking in a glass of scotch. No wonder these are called Sinatra's "saloon songs."
In '61, while Sinatra's career was in full swing he left Capitol to start his own label, Reprise, which was distributed by Warner Brothers. Sinatra had helped to elect President Kennedy and now was ready to provide the soundtrack to the ensuing Camelot. His early Reprise years combined all the styles that made him a singer of such remarkable range, from the frivolous joy of Sinatra Swings and It Might As Well Be Swing to the heavy-hearted sentiments of Softly As I Leave You and September of My Years. Though Sinatra rarely wrote his material, his introspection figured heavily in how the records sounded and whether he would use a particular arranger: Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, Billy May, Neal Hefti, Don Costa, Quincy Jones or Johnny Mandel.
Though Sinatra's chart popularity basically peaked with '66's "Strangers in the Night" and "That's Life," he occasionally managed to prove that he was still the best singer in the world, even if he was well past his prime. In '76, just as he had done with "My Way" eight years earlier, Sinatra took "Send in the Clowns" away from every other singer who had sung it.
Then, three years later, at age 64, he recorded the ultimate ode to the capital of the world. If “New York, New York” had been recorded only by Liza Minnelli, who did it first, it would just be the answer to a trivia question instead of the goosebump-inducing theme for the capital of the world.
The job of an artist is to take uncontrollable elements like beauty, chaos and discord and bring them to order on a square canvas, sheet of paper, block of marble or in a three-minute pop song. Regardless of what was going on in his personal life, Frank Sinatra was a perfectionist in his medium. With the control came confidence and with confidence came a Voice of diction over fiction, a mixture of soulful intuition and unmatched technique.
The voice has lost its uppercase over time, but let Frank Sinatra be Frank Sinatra as long as he wants. Which was until May 14, 1998, when he died in his sleep at age 82. We’ll never see his like again.
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