Great piece about Frank Sinatra. In-depth analysis, really thought-provoking. And I think spot on:
The other, less obvious surprise that awaits the Sinatra hunter in a music store is where his records are kept. They are in the rack called “Easy Listening,” just east of Henry Mancini and just west of the Fred Waring Singers. The assumption seems to be that anything your parents or grandparents listened to when they were young, before the advent of rock, was easy on the ears. But could anything be less easy, more unsettling than hearing Sinatra sing “One for My Baby” or “When Your Lover Has Gone,” music that he called “saloon songs” and that critics described as “suicide music”? In these songs and in many others like them, Sinatra sang about life at the bottom of the abyss. He always sounded like he lived there.
No one could sing of loneliness better than Frank Sinatra? unrequited love, love gone wrong, love lost. Observers without number, noting the contrast between Sinatra’s life?always tempestuous and sometimes violent?and his tender, evocative, and sensitive singing, have wondered with the novelist Barbara Grizzuti Harrison “whether his life springs from one set of impulses and needs and his work from another, whether… Francis Albert Sinatra?a man bruised and bruising?is so divided as to be crazy.” In truth, not madness but loneliness is the key to understanding Sinatra, both the man, who dreaded solitude yet so often felt alone in the entourages with which he surrounded himself and the audiences before whom he performed, and the musician. Even his songs of joy?and no one could express unbounded happiness more thrillingly in his singing than Sinatra?were manifestations of his fundamental loneliness. Just as the athlete who crouches the lowest can jump the highest, so could the singer who sank most deeply into despair express the exhilaration of temporary release from the demons that plagued him more convincingly than anyone else.
Go read the whole thing. It’s long – but if you’re a Sinatra fan, you won’t want to miss it.
Holy Petunia, what a brilliant essay that was. I really only listen to A Jolly Christmas with Frank Sinatra, but I’ll go along with Stan Getz, who called it “the greatest Christmas album anyone ever made.”
I’ve been wondering when somebody in the blogosphere was going to write something about Frank. Cool. And thanks for the kind words on the Williams list.
Thanks for flagging this up. It was a joy to read.
Francis Albert Sinatra Sings Antonio Carlos Jobim…so sweet and mellow and heartbreaking..anyone else know this cd?
I think you’ve played me some of that before, Mitchell. It’s remarkable.
(Sorry I missed your call last night! Let’s talk soon. I’m getting together with jackie on Saturday!)
Mitchell – here’s the quote from the article about that album you mention:
Thanks for highlighting this piece, Sheila. It is astoundingly comprehensive. I’m fortunate in the Philly area there is an AM talk radio station (weird, isn’t it?) that has a Sinatra program on Sunday mornings–the host has been running it for decades. Even as all the radio stations change, this program has always found a home. I listen in the car on the way to Mass (quiet/sad themes) and afterwards at brunch at my parents’ (the lighter ones)!
The ending of the article really chokes me up – those last 2 paragraphs. Continuity, passing the torch, remembrance, honoring those artist who have blazed the trail … it’s just so moving to me. “All the rockers love Frank.” sniff.
Thanks for the link, Sheila. I’m the VQR web guy, and one of my tasks is to pick out a new piece from our archives to highlight every week. The odds that anybody would be excited about a Sinatra piece seemed slim, but I liked the article so much that it seemed worth the gamble. I’m glad to know it worked out. :)
Oh Waldo – it was such a great piece – I am so glad I tripped over it. Thanks!!
To my mind, “In The Wee Small Hours” is the greatest pop album ever made, an examination of the anatomy of melancholy without ever lapsing into the lachrymose. Moreover, much of his Columbia forties ballad stuff, finally issued on CD in the early nineties, holds up beautifully. Sinatra captured romantic intimacy like no pop vocalist before or since.