Frank Sinatra

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Ella, First Lady of Song

I have 1,000 songs on my workout playlist, and the singer that I have the most of is Ella Fitzgerald with 60 tunes.  Ella is my favorite female singer, right behind my favorite male singer, Frank Sinatra.

Author Judith Tick’s new biography, Becoming Fitzgerald, may be the most researched book about the First Lady of Song.  Considering how famous she was, there are few books written about Fitzgerald.  Having read this newest one, I have a better understanding why that’s so.

Fitzgerald was a very private person.  The rare times when she sat down for an interview, the generic responses were often repeated.  She was married only once to the great bassist Ray Brown (an earlier union was annulled), but that lasted only six years.  Her only child, Ray Brown, Jr., was actually her half-sister’s child whom she adopted.

The greatest joy of her life was singing in front of live audiences.  Most years she would be on the road except for a few weeks at home around the holidays.

Born in Newport News, Virginia in 1917, Fitzgerald grew up in Yonkers, New York where after her father left, her mother lived with a new man.  After her mother died from a car accident in 1932 when she was 15, Fitzgerald had problems living with her stepfather resulting in her being placed in an orphanage in Harlem.

At age 17, she went to the Apollo Theatre for an amateur night intending to do a dance routine.  However, she ended up singing instead and won first place.

In 1935, drummer Chick Webb hired Fitzgerald for his jazz orchestra.  She began getting attention recording records, and in 1938, her first big single that she co-wrote, “A-Tisket-a-Tasket” became hugely popular.

One year later, Webb died from spinal tuberculosis at age 34.  Fitzgerald took over the orchestra at age 22, becoming one of the first females to front a band.

What made Fitzgerald unique was the sweet tone in her voice, her range of several octaves and her scatting.   No one can scat like Ella; she truly sounded like an instrument.  And though she was a heavy-set person, her body moved frequently as she sang, exhibiting her enjoyment.

Over the course of the next decade, Fitzgerald had modest success mostly from touring around the country and overseas.  Like Fitzgerald’s contemporaries—Billie Holliday and Sarah Vaughn—no matter how talented a black performer was in the 1930’s, 1940’s or 1950’s, that person had to surpass the best white performer in order to get attention, work and money. 

A game-changer for her was meeting record producer Norman Granz.  Once he became her manager, Granz began his record company Verve with Fitzgerald as his star.  He elevated her from a blues singer to a singer of American standards when in 1956, at age 39, Ella recorded the double-album “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book.”  This led to several other song book albums that allowed her to sing the classic American popular songs of the 20th century backed with lush arrangements. 

She finally achieved acclaim normally reserved for white entertainers. Imagine how big Fitzgerald would have become if she were born in 1957 instead of 1917. 

Even so, she had to face racism which meant she could only stay at black-only hotels even in the cities where she was headlining. One time in Dallas the police arrested Ella and her fellow musicians.  When they arrived at the police station and recognized who she was, they released her . . . after they asked for an autograph.

Fitzgerald sang with all the great male and female singers of her day.  Sadly, she and Sinatra never recorded an album together.  In fact, the only time both of these titans were in a recording studio was for an animated version of “Finian’s Rainbow” which never got produced.  The song “Necessity” can be heard on YouTube.

They did, however, make two television appearances together on Sinatra’s shows.  In 1959 singing “Can’t We Be Friends” and in 1967 singing “The Lady is a Tramp.”

When Frank Sinatra was convinced to return to Capital Records in 1993 to record the “Duets” album, Ella was the first singer he mentioned that he wanted.  Unfortunately, she was too ill to record the song.

Fitzgerald struggled with Type-2 diabetes and its related health issues in middle age.  First, her eyesight failed requiring thick eyeglasses that she began wearing in her 60’s.  Then, she lost an incredible amount of weight and in her final years had to have help walking on stage. 

In one of her final performances in 1992 for Muhammad Ali’s 50th Birthday Celebration TV special, she appeared frail at age 75; she could barely sing but gave it her all.  Soon thereafter, both of her legs were amputated below the knee.  She died in 1996 at the age of 79.

Luckily, there is a wealth of recordings, both studio and live productions, as well as YouTube videos, available allowing younger people to discover the First Lady of Song.

Two titans of Popular Song: Ella and Frank (1967).

Ella with Oscar Peterson (1961), “Air Mail Special.”

Leave a comment Posted on Atomic Records

And the Music Goes Round and Round

Do you have storage areas in your house where you keep old things that you never use again?

One of my storage areas is the cabinet above my wife’s closet.  That is where I’ve kepy my entire album collection since I was a child.

I’ve boxed and moved these LPs several times over the years as I moved.  The last time I played any vinyl was about 15 years ago.  That’s when we purchased a new component for the entertainment center which needed its own shelf.  The turntable had to go—above my wife’s closet.

Since then, I have a mini-museum hidden from the public.  Until we had the house painted this year.

Having to box items before the painters came in provided us an opportunity to really clean house.

In recent years, I’ve learned to part with lots of material items.  Just this weekend, I discarded boxes of financial documents such as utility bills and pay stubs going back to 1990.  I mean, why was I saving this stuff?

Just as my wife and I donated hundreds of books to used bookstores earlier this month, I decided the time had come to look at my record collection one last time, and only keep the most special albums.

I have an extensive collection of Bernard Herrmann soundtracks.  He’s my favorite film composer; most people know his music if not his name.  You can hear his scores in “Psycho” and “Citizen Kane.”  So I didn’t let any of those go.

Then I have a small collection of Frank Sinatra albums.  Unlike the Herrmann albums which I bought brand new, the Sinatra stuff was bought used in the 1990’s when I first got hooked into the crooner.  Those I kept as well.

I found a local record store who accepted donations and transported four banker’s boxes full of albums over there.  My wife and I were expecting to drop off the boxes and drive off.

At Atomic Records in Burbank, however, we didn’t leave so quickly.  It turns out that Nick and his brother who have run the store for 30 years actually pay money for records that they can sell in their store.

More unexpected than that was Nick himself.  As we stood outside his loading dock in the alley, like a jeweler using a loop, he meticulously looked at every album, sometimes removing the album from its sleeve to check its condition, often commenting on the artist.

In the 45 minutes this process took, it was as if Ralph Edwards had come back from the dead to surprise me, “Brian, this is your life!”  Nick was a music archaeologist examining my stash, and I was reviewing the evolution of my musical tastes, from boy to man.

There were two albums from The Royal Guardians, a rock group whose 1966 hit song “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” was the impetus for me to buy their music.  Comedy albums from Don Rickles, and one from Mickey Katz whose son, Joel Grey, is more well known.  

Nick regaled us with stories of studio musicians who worked on some of these albums, including a drummer who continued practicing his craft until his death at 90,whose house was across from the alley from the record store.

What made this experience even more memorable was that the house where I grew up as a baby was behind that old musician’s house.  Incredible.

Nick told us about his house in Japan (his wife is Japanese) and how the vinyl produced there is superior in quality than those manufactured in the states.  I asked him how large of a collection has he ever seen.  The biggest ones have been around 10,000 records which requires renting a truck to haul the stuff back to his store.

I felt pride when Nick finished perusing my lifetime of rccords and had compiled a much larger pile of those he could sell versus those who he couldn’t.

“What happens to those you can’t sell, Nick?  Do you throw them away?” I asked.

“Oh no,” he replied.  “I place them outside my store at night, and when I return the next morning, they’re gone.”

It made me feel good that the music that brought me enjoyment since I was a little boy, could bring enjoyment to others.  What treasures do you have hidden in your home which could brighten other people’s lives?

1 Comment Posted on Tony Bennett

Arrivederci, Tony Bennett

Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra are considered the greatest male singers in popular music before the rock and roll era, with Tony Bennett, who just passed away at age 96, a close second.

When it comes to maintaining vocal quality at an advanced age, however, Bennett is all alone of the top.

Sinatra is my favorite singer of all time, but his last good performances came in his early 70’s.  As much I liked the “Duets” album which were recorded 30 years ago, his voice was an echo of what it used to be.  

Up until his late 80’s, Bennett could still belt out “Fly Me to the Moon” to the rafters without the aid of amplification.  He could still hold notes and move them around several octaves in “How Do You Keep the Music Playing” at age 89 just as he did at 59.

Father time finally caught up to him in his final years of singing, yet it overlapped with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Sinatra often declared Bennett the best singer of his generation.  That is saying something considering the Chairman of the Board had Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. as best buddies.

Besides both men being Italian, both Sinatra and Bennett had careers that spanned seven decades, had times when the record labels dumped them, had second acts that revitalized their careers, and both kept recording and performing later in life, dying not as has-beens but as still vital superstars.

And both are mostly associated with songs about cities; “New York, New York” with Sinatra, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” with Bennett.

Watch the two men sing “My Kind of Town” together in a 1977 TV special; it’s a magical moment.

Right around this time and continuing for the next decade, Bennett struggled with drugs and a music world where his kind of songs were no longer in vogue.

His son, Danny Bennett, became his manager and helped his father resurrect his career in the early 1990’s starting with the release of 1992’s “Perfectly Frank,” a tribute to Sinatra. 

His son scheduled his dad to appear on MTV and encouraged him to record with younger artists.  Suddenly, people under 40 “discovered” Bennett, resulting in his popularity skyrocketing for the final 30 years of his 70-year career as an artist.  Most of his albums in the 21st century were collaborations with other artists.

Amazing that this 30-year final act of his career was his most successful.  This last body of work superior to his first 40 years.

And even when it was formally announced the he was retiring, he still sang in a few videotaped sessions in his New York apartment with a pianist. 

See how moving it is when he sings “Smile”:

It is a remarkable testament to Bennett’s perseverance that he could briefly break the shackles of Alzheimer’s and show flashes of brilliance.

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Sinatra’s Centennial Matters

New Year’s Day. 1994. Las Vegas. Frank Sinatra.

A moment when my life changed for the better.

That was the only time I saw Sinatra perform live.   And because of it, I have learned why Frank Sinatra is considered by so many as the greatest popular singer of all time.

What amazed me about the show was that at age 78, a time when he could have just sat on a stool and read off the teleprompter, he moved gracefully about the stage singing the songs as if it were the first time he sang them.

I went from buying the first “Duets” album that came out in 1993 (which was the number two album in the country on Billboard’s 200 right behind Pearl Jam’s “Vs.”) to now owning 70 CDs, 14 LPs, 7 box sets, 24 books, and 18 DVDs and videotapes.

As a teacher, you want to share your passions with your students, so I have infused lessons on connotation and tone with Frank Sinatra’s work.

When I teach Shakespeare, I use Sinatra’s rendering of the Gershwin classic “Someone to Watch Over Me” to show the importance of the proper reading of a line.   Just as some actors struggle making sense of the Bard’s iambic pentameter, others can make even the most novice viewer understand what the character is saying, retaining the musicality of the words.

In “Someone to Watch Over Me” the lyric goes “even though I may not be the man some girls think of as handsome.” Sinatra purposely links the words “man” and “some” to create the non-existent word “mansome” so that it rhymes with “handsome” the way George and Ira intended when writing the song. When other singers pause after “man,” the rhyme is lost.

To demonstrate how the same words can have different meanings depending on how they are said, I play two versions of Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When,” one recorded in 1958, the other performed live in Las Vegas in 1966.

In the earlier Capitol Records session arranged by Nelson Riddle, Sinatra narrates a wistful tale of love emitting a melancholy tone accompanied only by longtime pianist Bill Miller until an orchestra comes in during the final forty seconds.   And when it does, Sinatra, who was practically whispering the words with the solo piano, expands to full voice louder than the instruments. The effect emphasizes how the speaker cannot remember when this chance encounter will happen again.

While only eight years apart, the two versions vary so much in approach that they almost sound like different songs. With the tempo tripled, the 1966 translation arranged by Billy Byers is swinging, upbeat, sung by a narrator without a care in the world.

Horns not strings are prominently heard along with a driving percussion with the signature Count Basie sound beneath Sinatra’s carefree tone.

Playing one of the lovers, Sinatra interprets the lyric that if they were to meet again, okay; if not, that’s okay, too. No hard feelings. Move on.

He halts before uttering each “before” in “it seems that we have met . . . before and laughed . . . before, and loved . . . before” emphasizing the deju vu element of the couple’s feelings. Sinatra’s interest is more in the playing with the words rather than exuding the emotions in them. He then holds the final “where or when” as long as he can, emphasizing more of an end than an open-ended question as in the 1958 take.

This interpretation was the one that Sinatra continued singing in live performances the rest of his life.

And while that life ended in 1998, next week marks the centennial of his birth, an apt moment to reflect on why Sinatra matters in the history of American popular music.