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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Beyond the magnificent late-night gloom (and the bombast of "My Way") you'll find Frank Sinatra's finger-poppin' classic, a joyous exploration of rhythmic invention.
Jul 8, 2002 | You could forget that the guy ever had a good day. After Billie Holiday, nobody in American music has ever done more to slake our taste for romantic masochism than Frank Sinatra. The album covers told part of the story. "In the Wee Small Hours," with its painting of Sinatra under a street light in the blue-green gloom of a deserted 3 a.m. city street. Or "Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely," where a garish painting depicts him as a tear-stained Pierrot. Or "No One Cares," where he sits staring into his drink at a bar while all around him folks are having a good time.
The music told the rest of the tale. Taking off from the soft, dreamy voice that the young Sinatra used on his '40s Columbia recordings, where he was surrounded by Axel Stordahl's sensitive arrangements, Sinatra's Capitol work, from 1953 to 1962 (when he left for his own label, Reprise), presented that lovelorn youth transformed into a wounded, love-struck man, deeper-voiced, older and thus with more to lose.
At their best -- the songs "In the Wee Small Hours," his mournful and deeply strange version of Bunny Berigan's "I Can't Get Started" (in which Berigan's light, easy-come-easy-go loser's panache was traded for a devastated gravity), and most of all in "Cottage for Sale," a recording so painful that there are times I can scarcely bring myself to listen to it -- Sinatra's performances went beyond luxuriant self-pity and approached luxuriant tragedy.
But leave us not forget the swing, the albums where Sinatra sloughed off romantic gloom and, with the arrangements of Nelson Riddle or Billy May, projected an upbeat winner's persona. Records like "Come Fly With Me" (or "Come Swing With Me" and "Come Dance With Me!"), "A Swingin' Affair!" "Nice 'n' Easy" and, most of all, "Songs for Swingin' Lovers!" stand in contrast to Sinatra's sustained suites of magnificent mopery.
While Sinatra's '40s Columbia sides and the downbeat Capitol albums were all about a dreamy vocal flow, these records were all about rhythm. They are supremely playful and supremely confident. Sinatra pushes to see how far he can go in breaking the songs down into rhythmic punctuation while sustaining a melodic flow. Despite everything -- the anguish of losing Ava Gardner, the attempts of then Columbia A&R chief Mitch Miller to destroy his career by saddling him with execrable novelty tunes, a career that was almost finished before the Oscar he won for "From Here to Eternity" revived it -- Sinatra sang like a guy who had never been anywhere but on top of the world. Later, that top-of-the-world confidence would be present even in the sad songs he sang, like "The Summer Wind." (Which is why it was a shock when he returned to his early dreamy delivery in the underrated and nearly unknown 1967 album "Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim," perhaps the softest singing he ever did.)
The horror that is "My Way" (which Sarah Vowell explicated in a brilliant essay on Sinatra, written before he died) was yet to come, but in trading melody for rhythm Sinatra was trading passivity for aggression. You could say that these records hinted at the seeds of Sinatra's future arrogance, in the sense that the pleasures he sang of were taken almost for granted.
But they were taken lightly and gracefully as well. Sinatra's restlessness was the emblem of a man who disliked laziness and was therefore forever looking for new ways to amuse himself. He was renowned for not liking to do more than two takes of a song, and his phrasing is endlessly inventive. Listen to the way he played with lyrics. Could anyone else have gotten away with what he does to "Stars Fell on Alabama" (from "A Swingin' Affair!") where he changes the chorus to "And stars fractured Bam-ma! last night"?
Or the invention that's all over "Sinatra and Sextet: Live in Paris," a 1962 date. Opening with "Goody, Goody," he races ahead of the band, smearing the words together: "Soyoumetsomeonewhosetyoubackonyourheels," as if he's drawling out of the side of his mouth, until he brings the hammer down on the title -- "GOODY! GOODY!" -- turning a novelty number into a (there is no other word) swinging celebration of romantic revenge. That Paris performance highlights the main tension in Sinatra's vocals, the tension between sustained notes and long melodic lines, and seemingly tossed-off, almost spoken, phrasing. (Pete Welding, who has supplied the notes for the Capitol CD reissues, writes of the almost schizophrenic nature of Sinatra's changing style and approach.)
It's unquestionable that Sinatra set a style and an attitude for the singers who followed him. But it's nearly impossible to talk about his influence in terms of vocal technique because his style is without parallel. As it did for Miles Davis or John Coltrane when they covered standards, melody exists for Sinatra as a guide against which to work his endless variations. He plays hide-and-seek with the band, speeding ahead and daring them to keep up, or lingering without warning over words and inviting them to stretch out. On his definitive "Moonlight in Vermont" (from "Live in Paris"), Sinatra stretches out the word "evening," first taking it on a slide down the scale and then, when it comes round again, holding the first syllable until his voice breaks and he lowers himself into the rest of the word. You can hear the sextet suddenly catching itself to sustain the note behind him.
