I’ve been slipping on my Sinatra surveillance. Turns out a remixed version of Nice ‘n’ Easy came out this spring. If you are mercifully unafflicted by audiophile disease this won’t matter, but for me this is a great improvement. (The original had too much reverb, among other problems.) Hear “You go To My Head”—surely one …
As I slowly work my way through the magnificent Sinatra biography The Chairman, Ava Gardner is already gone by this second book. But there she is on practically every page. She haunts him. He spends fortunes to phone her across oceans. She drives him to great heights by laying his heart so low on The …
It’s great to have the Chairman of the Board at Christmas, but where’s Dean? He was the one who always wore the Santa suit. It would be good to have Sammy there too. And JFK. Just the four of them. No Peter Lawford, no Joey Bishop, no sexy young starlets to distract them. Christmas Eve …
If The Original Jazz Cabbage works out, that group is going to sharpen my mind and transform me as drastically as you watched my appearance change in the last year or so. I sat there smiling today at two 21 year olds and a 19 year old talking circles around me about theory and chord voicings as …
One of the highlights of my Seattle work day: during a ten minute break I innocently stretched to 15, I walked into Lenny’s Grocery and shopped for fresh vegetables as I strummed and sang through Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ and Dean Martin’s ‘That’s Amore’. The folks there love it when I bring my guitar and …
Check out this song idea! Should I call it ‘Old Bold Pilots’ or ‘Young Man’s Game’? This hit me when this story about Sinatra arguably inventing the album said “Sinatra was on the wrong side of 30 in a young man’s game.” Then before I could pull over to write this song a train stopped …
Wow. I didn’t think anything like this existed. Understood only a few pre-1970 Tonight Shows survived. This must be one of em. It conveys the improvy (im-Pervy?) flavor of the rat pack just about better than anything I’ve seen. Dean still makes me laugh out loud, even when it’s Schtick I should’ve seen coming for …
Frank Sinatra in 1968 singing Laura Nyro’s “Sweet Blindness” (from Eli and the Thirteenth Confession) dressed as the 6th member of the 5th Dimension – let’s go down by the grapevine, drink my daddy’s wine, get happy! – Pat Thomas is the author of Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975.
“Ava taught him how to sing a torch song. She taught him the hard way.” —Nelson Riddle The idea is that Frank Sinatra’s impossible, unresolvable romantic relationship with Ava Gardner—for whom he left his wife at a time (1950) when it simply wasn’t done; to whom he was married for a brief, tumultuous period (1951–53*); …
This is a recent conversation between two unquestioned experts on Sinatra, Pete Hamill, author of Why Sinatra Matters, and Jonathan Schwartz, the writer and radio host who coined the phrase “Chairman of the Board” in regard to Frank. A pleasant remembrance. http://92yondemand.org/pete-hamill-with-jonathan-schwartz – Chuck Strom
A couple of Spotify samplers for Sinatra anniversary week. The first recreates (almost) the singer’s last recording project, now out of print: Everything Happens to Me, a self-selected anthology of the songs that meant the most to him. No ring-a-ding-dings here; just the deepest ballads and most penetrating readings from his later years. In the …
In September 1998, shortly after Frank Sinatra’s passing, the jazz critic Francis Davis described Sinatra’s career in The Atlantic as a two-decade procession of taking songs off the market, meaning that once Frank had recorded them, his interpretations were immediately accepted as definitive and thereby discouraged other singers from recording them afterward. I thought of …
https://youtu.be/L6JwFqbhCbI I’ve seen this show (above) a few times – it was a Father’s Day special from 1965 (I think) broadcast from St. Louis. The comedy routines with Sammy were typical of their shows. I think they are mostly indicative of the time, when racial and ethnic stereotypes were still a fixture of public discourse, …
A few weeks ago I happened to be in Palm Springs, CA with a couple of spare hours, so I paid Frank Sinatra a visit. For those unfamiliar with his life, he made Palm Springs his permanent home in the 1950s, so far as it was possible for someone whose career required a nomadic life. …
Sinatra’s confident voice acknowledged death yet evinced no fear thereto. When that dark voice was caressed by the sunny sweetness of Jobim’s deathless guitar, well… como é doce… Jobim is best known for this tune, said to be one the most recorded songs of all time. Brazilians are quite aware, but Americans may not know …
So, the WebMaster sent me this clip, and since I owe him money (don’t bet on the Canucks), I’ll indulge: Two of the greatest singers of the last century—the Dionysus and Apollo of American popular song. Friends, collaborators (Sinatra conducted and, in modern parlance, essentially produced the 1957 album that produced this deathless gem and …
This may be the moment Frank jumped the shark. Most true Sinatra scholars point to his marriage to Mia Farrow and brief flirtation with facial hair (a sketchy goatee) in 1965 as the end of Sinatra’s career. A much smaller group – one that includes myself – looks at his 1967 collaboration with Jobim as …