Feeling spectacularly HUMAN (musings on Sinatra’s 100th)
You probably know today Sinatra would have been 100 today, and if you think of him at all it is probably from his Rat Pack days.
If that’s it — you are missing something magical. Today, I have been listening to the amazing recordings from his apex, in my opinion truly the pinnacle of popular music recording craft, in a time where the very best musicians gathered in a room together, listened to one and other, felt together and performed great arrangements of great songs in luxurious analog technology.
When you hear Sinatra and his collaborations with Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins and others, you feel spectacularly HUMAN, as if the intensity of human joy and loss and a million other emotions have been distilled into some kind of concentrated human essence and poured directly into your brain. It takes an investment in REAL listening to unwrap the unspeakable perfections of these recordings. With each listening you get more and more. That was the genius of the LP record, an art form Sinatra perfected. You put on the record, held the album jacket in you hand, and listened (that’s all you did), maybe with a friend. When it was over you played it again. Each listening put wear on your record and needle, so you never wasted it. I love digital media technology, don’t get me wrong - it is the world I work in, but I love records as well.
The word that strikes me over again and again about these recordings is “immaculate”. That’s what the best of these recordings are, from the musicians, arrangements, recording techniques, and Sinatra’s amazingly intricate vocal artistry that was captured forever, many of them at Capitol Records, just up Vine Street from where I am writing this today.
I’m also a big fan of Crosby, who was Haydn to Sinatra’s Mozart, but the two are very different in almost every way possible. Crosby was such a huge natural talent, and his ease with it was his appeal. He would open his mouth and this incredible sound would gush out, supported by his genius for rhythm and timing. Sinatra didn’t have those kind of gifts, and simply worked harder. You feel him drilling down deep and deeper into the lyric and melody like no one else except maybe Ella could do, and you can hear him wringing out every molecule of his talent into the craft of these recordings.
Craft. If you are a thinking person, you can’t help but feel the loss of it in our culture. Take a moment today and listen to some of the tracks listed below carefully, and dive into perfection for a moment.
Sinatra was who he became because he learned his craft in the best popular music orchestras of the era, with Harry James and to my ear the best player-leader of them all, the immortal Tommy Dorsey. Both leaders were horn players, and TD’s trombone was hugely influential on Sinatra, he played the trombone like a human voice, it is where the “immaculate” seed was planted in Sinatra’s craft. When you are part of a band like that, with that level of musicianship and you perform night after night and night, musicianship gets polished to a fine sheen. Today’s American Idol-bred vocalists get none of that, it’s about being “The Voice” and winning a contest, they never even see the face of the musicians that play with them, most of whom are computers anyway.
I remember when I was in my teens and 20′s, I thought Sinatra was a bad singer. I didn’t understand why he was “bending” notes and playing with his intonation. I thought he saw searching for the pitch. It turns out he was using his instrument in an incredibly sophisticated way, serving the emotion of the song and lyric. As a grown up, I appreciate the risk and complex craft in these recordings. He must have known that it didn’t matter to the average buyers of his records in the late 1950′s. Maybe he was doing it for Tommy Dorsey.
So we have lost the ability to HEAR music I think, in today’s culture. Learn again today.
Start with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFjiDUd7QmA
“Here’s That Rainy Day” Written by Van Heusen and Burke, Arr. Gordon Jenkins. Recorded March 25th, 1959. Capitol Records. From the Album “No One Cares” (one of my old-time favorites)
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