Showing posts with label Nancy Sinatra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nancy Sinatra. Show all posts
07 January 2009
Loyalty and Innocence
Yesterday, at the Hartford Armory, I gave a talk to a local "Red Hat" ladies club on Frank Sinatra by focusing on songs he recorded and things he did in January. (I always try to have a different selection of songs when I speak -- even if I'm going over the same territory again and again -- and, with Sinatra's long career, it's quite easy to do.)
One song was the Sammy Cahn special lyric for the first Reagan Inaugural Gala (1/19/81), "Nancy (with the Reagan Face)," based upon the Phil ("Sgt. Bilko") Silvers lyric in honor of the birth of Frank's eldest child in the early 40s, "Nancy (with the Laughing Face)."
Sammy was a life-long Democrat (unlike Sinatra who became a Republican in the early '70s during his brief retirement and stayed). Indeed, in 1972, Frank campaigned with the Vice President and actually sang "THAT'S why Spiro is a...CHAMP."
Oops.
Anyway, Democrats were quite angry at Sammy Cahn for his willingness to aid the opposition by writing this special material for Frank, but he always placed his loyalty to his dear friend Francis Albert over that to a political party. I applaud that sense of priorities...besides if anyone voted for Nixon/Agnew in 1972 because of the really awful Cahn rewrite of "The Lady is a Tramp," then the McGovern campaign must have had real problems!
I also played a brief snippet from the Kennedy Inaugural Gala that Frank produced twenty years earlier (1/19/61) and was struck by the very partisan nature of all the talk by Kennedy and Sinatra alike. Clearly meant as a true victory party in a way that would seem quite unseemly and not terribly presidential now, there was no "now's the time to come together." It was, rather, "We beat 'em!"
Ah, the glories of a time BEFORE 24/7 news coverage -- when not every event had to be played before a world-wide audience, when every emotion had to be played close to the vest.
As I was driving to the talk, I was listening to Sinatra's recording of "(You and Me) We Wanted it All" which contains a wonderful lyric as he recalls the time when he and his lost love were still together and happy. He longs for the days of innocence (and ignorant bliss):
...Back when we were dumb.
How did we become so smart
and learn to break each other's heart?
One song was the Sammy Cahn special lyric for the first Reagan Inaugural Gala (1/19/81), "Nancy (with the Reagan Face)," based upon the Phil ("Sgt. Bilko") Silvers lyric in honor of the birth of Frank's eldest child in the early 40s, "Nancy (with the Laughing Face)."
Sammy was a life-long Democrat (unlike Sinatra who became a Republican in the early '70s during his brief retirement and stayed). Indeed, in 1972, Frank campaigned with the Vice President and actually sang "THAT'S why Spiro is a...CHAMP."
Oops.
Anyway, Democrats were quite angry at Sammy Cahn for his willingness to aid the opposition by writing this special material for Frank, but he always placed his loyalty to his dear friend Francis Albert over that to a political party. I applaud that sense of priorities...besides if anyone voted for Nixon/Agnew in 1972 because of the really awful Cahn rewrite of "The Lady is a Tramp," then the McGovern campaign must have had real problems!
I also played a brief snippet from the Kennedy Inaugural Gala that Frank produced twenty years earlier (1/19/61) and was struck by the very partisan nature of all the talk by Kennedy and Sinatra alike. Clearly meant as a true victory party in a way that would seem quite unseemly and not terribly presidential now, there was no "now's the time to come together." It was, rather, "We beat 'em!"
Ah, the glories of a time BEFORE 24/7 news coverage -- when not every event had to be played before a world-wide audience, when every emotion had to be played close to the vest.
As I was driving to the talk, I was listening to Sinatra's recording of "(You and Me) We Wanted it All" which contains a wonderful lyric as he recalls the time when he and his lost love were still together and happy. He longs for the days of innocence (and ignorant bliss):
...Back when we were dumb.
How did we become so smart
and learn to break each other's heart?
23 December 2008
Sinatra: No (X-)mas! No (X-)mas!
On Tuesday, 23 December, I did my annual WFCS Christmas radio show on "Frank, Gil, and Friends," during which I played a good chunk of Sinatra's official Christmas albums from Capitol and Reprise Records.
While I'm a huge Sinatra fan (why else would I have hosted a Sinatra program for the past 15 years and published two books?), I've never warmed to his post-Columbia Christmas recordings.
To put it bluntly, they ain't Bing (or even Andy Williams, for that matter). Only yesterday's show brought out the "why" to me. Unlike almost everything else he recorded (and, most certainly, unlike his very best songs), I don't believe a word he's singing.
If, as is commonly believed (and, to my mind, as is correct), Sinatra's remarkable strength as an interpretative performer comes from telling stories through his songs, and if, in doing so, he makes his audience believe he's telling those stories to each of them alone, then way too much of A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, arranged by Gordon Jenkins (1957), Twelve Songs of Christmas (with Bing Crosby and Fred Waring) (1964), and The Sinatra Family Wishes You a Very Merry Christmas (1968), sounds as if he's reading a phonebook into a megaphone on Main Street. Almost none of the recordings, and certainly none of the traditional hymns or carols he recorded in the '50s and '60s, is subtle, sincere, or intimate...which may be a tall order for any singer, but he IS Frank Sinatra, so it should NOT be too tall an order for him.
Aside from "Mistletoe and Holly" and "The Christmas Waltz," both written specifically for him, the songs come off stiff and stagy: too somber to be enjoyed (much less joyous), not heartfelt enough to be heartwarming, or too kitschy to ring true. The frequent choral arrangements don't help the intimacy, but, even alone, he never actually convinces me that it matters whether "All ye Faithful" actually come or whether "It" indeed "Came Upon the Midnight Clear."
His recording for Columbia Records in the '40s fare far better, perhaps due to his more angelic voice and swell Axel Stordahl arrangements, but Sinatra seems equally comfortable balladeering -- e.g., "Christmas Dreaming (A Little Early This Year)" -- and swinging -- e.g., "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."
Most importantly, however, the proof that they work is plain: I believe.
While I'm a huge Sinatra fan (why else would I have hosted a Sinatra program for the past 15 years and published two books?), I've never warmed to his post-Columbia Christmas recordings.
To put it bluntly, they ain't Bing (or even Andy Williams, for that matter). Only yesterday's show brought out the "why" to me. Unlike almost everything else he recorded (and, most certainly, unlike his very best songs), I don't believe a word he's singing.
If, as is commonly believed (and, to my mind, as is correct), Sinatra's remarkable strength as an interpretative performer comes from telling stories through his songs, and if, in doing so, he makes his audience believe he's telling those stories to each of them alone, then way too much of A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, arranged by Gordon Jenkins (1957), Twelve Songs of Christmas (with Bing Crosby and Fred Waring) (1964), and The Sinatra Family Wishes You a Very Merry Christmas (1968), sounds as if he's reading a phonebook into a megaphone on Main Street. Almost none of the recordings, and certainly none of the traditional hymns or carols he recorded in the '50s and '60s, is subtle, sincere, or intimate...which may be a tall order for any singer, but he IS Frank Sinatra, so it should NOT be too tall an order for him.
Aside from "Mistletoe and Holly" and "The Christmas Waltz," both written specifically for him, the songs come off stiff and stagy: too somber to be enjoyed (much less joyous), not heartfelt enough to be heartwarming, or too kitschy to ring true. The frequent choral arrangements don't help the intimacy, but, even alone, he never actually convinces me that it matters whether "All ye Faithful" actually come or whether "It" indeed "Came Upon the Midnight Clear."
His recording for Columbia Records in the '40s fare far better, perhaps due to his more angelic voice and swell Axel Stordahl arrangements, but Sinatra seems equally comfortable balladeering -- e.g., "Christmas Dreaming (A Little Early This Year)" -- and swinging -- e.g., "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."
Most importantly, however, the proof that they work is plain: I believe.
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