I found a bunch of crooner lists, and for some reason almost all the lists are exclusively males. I didn’t know that was a requirement. However, a couple of lists have included two women who I agree would qualify – Diana Krall and Norah Jones.
There are a lot of wanna be Frankies: Spencer Day, Michael Buble, Harry Connick, John Pizzarelli. They end up being very depressing. Like as they are singing they are bowing in obeisance simultaneously. There is very little musical freshness going on with it. I don’t know if that’s inherent to the style, but’s regressive to say the least.
Frank was a civil rights guy, but back then Italians weren’t considered white.
Watch Pizzarelli play guitar or Connick mix up songs and add piano and they are not depressing at all 
Speaking as a guitarist, John is a genius just like his dad, Bucky. His vocals are a cherry on top as far as I am concerned, and with his wife Jenna Morasky, they do just fine with the Songbook.
I’ve always been a Dean-over-Frank guy, but I can appreciate Sinatra. What actually love though is one of the live recordings (album is “Live and Swinging”) of a Vegas style show with Dean, Frank, and Sammy all performing together. The songs are great, but the banter between songs was priceless. I’d give a big stack of $100 bills to be able to go back in time and be at one of the front tables for that show.
True enough. Didn’t mean to tar everyone. Buble, though, seems to me like an impressionist who doesn’t do anything new.
Here here! And now you have me digging through my old vinyls looking for a couple by Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon, singing Sinatra-type ballads. Thank you!
You should check out the album Trio – Linda, Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton. Just gorgeous music, and about as far away from Pop as it’s possible to get.
You can’t fight what’s in vogue but I don’t consider rap, sex, and violence bold emotion. Bold oration is more like it.
Seconded. I like him very much.
I always wondered why Frank never sang a James Bond theme. It seems like a good fit for his style and persona. Nancy did “You Only Live Twice”.
The whole suave, tuxedo wearing man about town style was something shared between Bond and the Rat Pack.
As iconic as Clint Eastwood became in role, I would still like to have seen “Dirty Harry” done as originally planned with Frank Sinatra in the title role. I think he would have done a better job of showing Harry as burned out, bitter and disaffected than Eastwood did. We mostly knoew that about Eastwood’s Harry because we were told, not because we were shown.
Very interesting thread, and one where my views haven’t already been stated by someone else, and more literately than I could ever hope to state them myself. No doubt by the time I type this, some doper will beat me to the punch. . .
[EDIT: As predicted above, most of what I have to say has been stated by someone else by now]
First, I want to quote a now deceased great uncle who got fed up at a family gathering once and said: “Everyone talks about how great Bing (Crosby) is, and that Frank (Albert Sinatra- genuflect) is just an Italian thug – but everyone who knew Crosby thought he was a shit, and everyone who actually knew Sinatra (genuflect) loved him- LOVED HIM!” At the time I was a kid and also thought he was monotone and boring. At least Dean Martin was funny and seemed to have a prettier and richer voice. Besides, my dad and all his friends emulated Martin (hair, clothes, attitude, etc), who didn’t take himself so damn seriously. He may sing a slow one every now and then, but soon he was back to being a clown on his variety show.
Sinatra would drone on and on between songs – then sing about love and loss or other things nine year olds didn’t understand or deal with. As I have aged and gained experience, and especially as I have learned a bit about music (beyond listening to what I like), the more I have been able appreciate him. As mentioned above, Sinatra didn’t write music but eventually songs were written specifically for him. There are so many songs he knocked out of the park, and an equal or greater number he could line drive deep for a stand up double that it is easy to forget he recorded songs that never became “classics”. He made some recordings as ridiculous as Shatner’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, but since he was an expert at his art, and owned the label, he simply didn’t release them. Or they died of obscurity as they should. Now I would rather hear Sinatra’s version of almost any song than Martin’s, mostly because I can now hear Martin pause to take a puff of his cigarette, or bend a note because he can’t hit or hold the actual pitch. Sinatra not only hits every note, and holds every note; he either makes me feel like the subject in the song – or entirely empathetic toward the subject. As much as I want to go on and on about Sinatra the singer, I better address the man now.
It is my understanding that the arrogant swinger people resent is actually who Sinatra became when he befriended Jimmy Van Heusen who wrote some of his best loved music, and according to some documentary I watched in the last two years, taught Sinatra to be a lady’s man. Before that ‘ole Blue Eyes was very popular with the bobby soxers, but was not a man of the world. He sincerely admired Van Heusen, the rough and tumble man’s man who sailed, and volunteered to be a test pilot during the war, but then went home and wrote tender love songs. The man Sinatra became was based on the man Van Heusen was years before. From various other sources, I gather he also had a genuine worship for Humphrey Bogart, and there is no doubt he admired Martin’s cool detachment. On that score, Sinatra was not the only big name fan of Martin’s who-gives-a-shit attitude. Apparently Elvis Presley remarked more than once that: “I may be the king of rock and roll, but Dean Martin is the king of cool”.
Others have mentioned that Sinatra did some good in his time, and he certainly did spread the wealth. He was known for over tipping, and trying to make everyone’s night out special. He would dance with a housewife from Topeka, sing to somebody’s grandma, and signed autographs for everyone. There is no doubt he demanded- absolutely demanded loyalty, but that didn’t make him any different from any other guy I personally knew in the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, and none of them were as accomplished as Sinatra.
The “This American Life” broadcast that triggered this thread made quite a point of remarks made to and about Sammy Davis Jr. by Sinatra (and Martin) during a 1963 concert. They were certainly far short of what we would call politically correct these days, and I have heard him say worse in other recordings. Once in a concert someone asked him to sing a (I believe it was) Sammy Cahn song and he replied: “That little Jew hasn’t written a hit for me in ten years! Why should I sing one of his now?” I was startled by how crass the remark was, but there was no doubt he admired the composer, and might have actually been jealous the guy was writing hits for Bing instead of him. I think the same was true about his remarks about Sammy Davis. They gave each other a bunch of shit, but he was every bit as loyal to his friends as he asked them to be to him. You wouldn’t want to talk smack to Davis in front of Sinatra, they may treat him like a little brother (pun unintended), but like a big Catholic family, if YOU mess with the little brother . . . man, they will tear your arms off.
Those comments can be seen as small potatoes. They would rip Don Rickles’ or Bob Newhart’s towel off in the sauna, and throw them out in the corridor naked. They would flick their cigarette ashes in George Gobel’s drink when his head was turned. They would go to performers shows and heckle them, then get up and “give” them the gift of a song and some patter. Some of the performers were pissed, I assume most were delighted to have them appear in their act. I just recently heard a recording of Sammy Davis Jr. setting up a song with an African American drummer telling him to adjust the tempo . . . “and remember, no messages . . .” it took me a moment to realize he was suggesting the man was a primitive tribal drummer – a slur for sure. So far from taking offense to those kinds of remarks, Davis partook in them.
The thing about Sinatra is he reinvented himself at least as many times as Dylan. The Dorsey big band, a serious actor, and made a pure musical and several song and dance pictures, stage shows, solo concerts, he was a very significant contributor to the Nelson Riddle style American Song Book recordings, he was the first I remember doing an album of duets , he made TV shows and light weight movies, he hired Nat King Cole to play piano for an album (thought it would bring out his best performance), he started his own recording label, he recorded with the Wrecking Crew to update his sound, and toward the end he was doing MTV specials. All while performing benefits, and being involved in political causes. He raised more money for causes than my whole family has made over several generations.
Brad Dexter (of Magnificent Seven fame) claimed Sinatra dropped him as a friend when they were out swimming in the ocean and Sinatra got caught in a rip tide and panicked. No one else noticed, but Dexter had to sort of rescue him, he was exhausted and spooked, but he never forgave Dexter for seeing him in a state of weakness. The article “Frank Sinatra has a Cold” that was used in the NPR story mentioned that Sinatra was always in control, always on guard, that he was never completely relaxed in public. Dexter’s story explains why. I think it also explains why he admired Dean Martin so much; he couldn’t understand how a public figure could just not give a shit. He wanted to be that easy going, but couldn’t manage to pull it off. For all his power, wealth, and fame – he just couldn’t achieve what came so naturally to others. And that is his greatest strength; during his whole life he could convey longing, wistfulness, acceptance of less than ideal . . . but still wanting the whole enchilada. He never forgot he was just a guy from Hoboken whose dreams came true. He felt grateful and humble on stage and his long winded introductions revealed a beautiful pathos, a complex mix of emotions that allowed him to appreciate even small beauties and endure even sincere sorrow. The digs he made and the smart ass comments were how tough guys showed emotion back in the day, it was how he revealed his humanity in my opinion. It was a way for him to signal that he loved these guys – and that he was close enough to them to get away with busting their balls, that he was inside -and you outsiders need to keep your distance and always show respect to me and my friends. His bi-polar condition I suspect, allowed him to feel everything very deeply even though he had achieved enough to never have to give a damn what anybody else thought.
Maybe that is what makes his singing so powerful to me, in almost every word I can hear him saying: “I really don’t have to care what is important to you or what you think of me – but, I do anyway.”
Yep, a lot of talent there, for a certain mood. But I like Sinatra-type ballads when I want some romantic slow-dancin’…