Open Web Player
As a Sinatra "completist," I try to collect all of his albums in their original state (no latter-day anthologies) and to arrange them on my bookshelf in chronological order. I understand that a new edition of this album is imminent, which frankly makes me grateful that I was able to secure a sealed copy of the original album. Though an inarguably inferior program, Sinatra is in strong voice, registering a confidence that enables the listener to look beyond weak material and over-written orchestrations. Here he's almost a a pop Puccini (admittedly a step down from Verdi or Mozart)--or, perhaps more accurately, enacting through music the triumph of Don Draper in the very last episode of "Mad Men'"s 7th and final season (May 17, '15).
When the first tune-- "The World We Knew, Over and Over Again"--appeared on the air waves in the late '60s, I was attracted to it by its tricky spiraling chromatics (one of the few contemporary recordings that, as a pianist accustomed to working bars and cabarets, I couldn't listen to one or two times and immediately answer a request to "Play it again, Sam"). Listening to it now, it's still an intriguing number, providing the listener can penetrate what is an overwrought, "slushy" arrangement. Like other songs in this collection, the orchestral setting threatens to "double" and smother Sinatra's voice--which nevertheless remains resolutely strong, firm, and "in charge" on all tracks.
The recording opens with the ugliest sound on any Sinatra recording. It's a loud and growling, distorted electric bass, and when Sinatra comes in with his first note (the 2nd G below middle C), it sounds alien, even non-human, setting my sufwoofer into a momentary tizzy. Soon the arrangement oozes into smarmy strings that provide not an attractive complement but a broad "melodic highway" for the vocalist to travel on, and soon Sinatra is in high gear, with a flexible range, with full tones that are equally matched in the lower and higher registers (he easily rises from the 2nd G below to the G above middle C). This is often simple and broad material with orchestration that tries to have it both ways--the occasional acoustic guitar or lightly played piano in a Floyd Cramer country idiom alternating with an "overstrung" string orchestra (no hint of Nelson Riddle's artistry anywhere on this album!)
It's easy to imagine a Jerry Vale or Englebert Humperdink working with arrangements this obvious and overblown. But when it's the Voice / Master Storyteller / Chair who is singing an expendable period piece like "Don't Sleep in the Subway," we listen with higher expectations and elevated criteria. And on this occasion, unlike the hopelessly arid "Watertown," both the songs and their settings at least give Sinatra a fighting chance. In fact, his voice is not only secure and powerful enough to take on the menace of loud and blatant pop ephemera: he heroicallly rises above it, before taking it by the claws (or beak or wings) and pinning it down for the 10 count (reminding me of the stories about his fearless one-on-one confrontations with bandmate Buddy Rich during their Dorsey days).
Partly accounting for the "sheer fun" (!) of this recording is the brevity of tracks--protecting us from the otherwise cloying quality of the arrangements. Most are taken a single time through--few if any "time stretchers" in the form of strings alone on the melody or an instrumentalist attempting to play jazz (heaven forbid), especially on these chord changes. The latter would defeat the purpose of this recording--which is to meet the audience of the late '60s on its own terms rather than the with the "artful concept" albums of the Capitol days ("Only the Lonely," "In the Wee Small Hours," "Where Are You"). As for the "hard-swinging" Sinatra, only one tune-- "Some Enchanting Evening"--makes an attempt at "swing." Judged by the standard Sinatra set with Riddle ("Songs for Swinging' Lovers," "a Swingin' Affair," etc.) and Basie ("Sinatra/Basie," "Live at the Sands"), the single attempt at swing on this occasion is an unequivocal failure
It's hard to fault the intentions of the producers of this album--and, for that matter, its egregious successor, "Watertown." It's a depressing but inescapable fact that as early as 1967 the public no longer had any understanding of "swing." Today the word has vanished from the vocabulary of most Americans--of no usefulness either as a noun ("the King of Swing"), adjective ("Songs for Swingin' Lovers"), and verb ("Basie swings more than Goodman"). In the '70s libertines used "swing" as a synonym for group sex.
These pop tunes are neither fish nor fowl, ballads nor swing. Yet Sinatra manages to find something worth while in each of the songs, even the first time around--and when he doesn't, he goes along with the joke. "Some Enchanted Evening" is admittedly an overdone, pseudo-operatic number that could use a face-lift. But the arrangement by an H. B. Barnum is a loser from the introduction--abrasive and brash, literally "shocking," then assaulting the listener before allowing Sinatra to have more fun with it. Perhaps if I hadn't heard a successful swing version by Etta Jones on an earlier album, "Love Shout," I would have found Sinatra's "non-swinging swinger" a clever way to end the party. Better Ole Blue had, like Don Draper in "Mad Men," ended with something like "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing in Perfect Harmony." Draper's ultimate restoration and answering to his true calling--as a top ad executive on Madison Avenue--comes only when he can do so without "selling out" his self-integrity. Sinatra's challenge on this program is not unlike Draper's.
The brief liner notes, which again ring true with Draper's journey, best capture the inspiration and purpose behind this uncharacteristic program by the most important contributor to the "Great American Songbook." In fact, as stated on the back of my copy they practically demand quoting:
"...the singer looks out into the plastic, humming world about him. He stands at the microphone, singing in depth, doing his best thing... sharing. Sinatra's songs, soon to scatter worldwide the belongings of one man's soul.. . Decades spent in living, in recording and in singing small but poignant truths about loving. This ambiguous man, with clear, touching insights. Sinatra at the microphone, nurturing a bouquet of emotions, then plucking them in full flower, without first checking for possible thorns."
Flowers and thorns seem better-suited to describing the complex Hamlet-like meditations of the previous decade's Sinatra-Riddle ballad albums. Whether or not this present attempt at a bigger and broader audience was a commercial success, you can hardly blame Sinatra for trying. And when it appeared not to work as well as planned, he had the good sense, unlike many of his peers, to walk away and simply "think about it" for the next three years. When he returned, it was with a plan--viz., to refrain from doing what he liked to do the best--making records. Instead, he would give concerts before sold-out, spell-bound audiences in large stadiums and amphitheaters. In places like Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago (and on outdoor stages in between) he came to sing--live and in person--the songs that had first caught his and then our attention--songs by Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart/Hammerstein, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Jimmy Van Heusen. For nearly two full decades, he was available to us just as he had been to our parents. When my wife was the first to shake his hand as he left the stage of the Chicago Amphitheater, I asked her which registered most: the feeling of Sinata's hand or the kisses planted on each cheek by Duke Ellington.
Tough choice. But who wouldn't want it?
Similar items that may ship from close to you
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
