Old Blue Eyes at 100

The greatest singer in the history of popular music would have turned 100 later this year, on December 12th.

When I was a teenager, I didn't care about Frank Sinatra (or Dean Martin, or Tony Bennett, or Nat "King" Cole, either). Or even about Elvis. That was the music our square parents listened to. Led Zeppelin, The Who, and David Bowie were "cool," Sinatra and the Vegas crowd definitely weren't.

How staggeringly dumb I was then, about music and so many other things (Sinatra not "cool?" Sinatra? Really?).

I actually knew Sinatra more from his movies and from hearing gossip about his tabloid scandals than from his music, although I also vaguely remember "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way" playing a bit too often on the jukebox between "Spirit in the Sky" and "In the Year 2525."

But I finally gave Sinatra a try just before his death (in 1998), perhaps on the off chance that maybe I'd been missing something. And I had--all it took was a few listens to Songs for Swingin' Lovers for Sinatra to become my new litmus test for taste in music: If you don't "get" Frank, you probably don't have any (in the same way that if you don't like the Rolling Stones, you don't like rock 'n' roll, even if you think you do).

So for those willing to give Sinatra a belated hearing in honor of the coming centennial of his birth, the place to start remains the albums he recorded between 1954-1961 for Capitol Records and for his Reprise label thereafter, on up to his first retirement in 1971.

The Capitol "concept" albums are especially crucial and can be conveniently divided into two categories because they're listened to in different ways for different purposes.

The up-tempo classics (especially Swingin' Lovers, A Swingin' Affair, and Sinatra's Swingin' Session) should be cranked up while driving down the highway on a sunny day, preferably in a convertible with top down. Each would be a serious candidate for the one album to take to that deserted island.

The emotionally wrenching ballad albums (in particular In the Wee Small Hours and Only the Lonely) should, however, be saved for late at night while in your leather chair with a good cigar and a single-malt scotch. They require intense listening because no one has likely ever recorded anything as raw or wounded-sounding as "Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry," "Willow Weep for Me" or "It's a Lonesome Old Town."

There's plenty of good material from the Reprise years as well (when my clueless friends and I were dismissing him as an old fogey), including some remarkable collaborations: Sinatra-Count Basie on It Might as Well be Swing, Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Francis A and Edward K (the "Edward K" is Duke Ellington).

But Sinatra's importance goes, of course, well beyond his unrivaled body of music to include a long film career and a broader cultural impact exceeded perhaps only by that of the Beatles. As Pete Hamill put it in Why Sinatra Matters, he created a new kind of urban cool that "helped change the way all of us live."

We too easily forget that Sinatra was one of Hollywood's biggest box-office attractions for nearly three decades, and that no one made as seamless a transition from recording artist to movie star (including the man he succeeded as America's most popular singer, Bing Crosby).

Perhaps ironically, Sinatra's musicals (On the Town, Guys and Dolls, High Society, etc.) have never interested me much; and I even find the performance that launched his early-1950s comeback, as Maggio in From Here to Eternity, mostly paint by numbers.

Rather, it's movies like Suddenly, The Man with the Golden Arm, Some Came Running, and The Manchurian Candidate that give us an indication of how good an actor Sinatra could be when he tried. Alas, and as many of those he worked with on screen attested, this wasn't all that often.

In the end, however, it is impossible to disentangle Sinatra's music from his stormy personal life. Indeed, it might be difficult to identify any entertainer for whom the artistic and personal were so thoroughly intertwined, or for whom a certain attitude so suffuses both life and art.

There are few things more boring than reading about the lives of dimwitted rock stars or idiot-savant professional athletes. But "boring" is the last word that could be used to describe Sinatra's, from Harry James, Tommy Dorsey and the "bobby soxers" to Eva and Marilyn to the Rat Pack, the Kennedys, and Sammy Giancana.

But the broader point is that Sinatra was more than just an "obnoxious runt with bodyguards" (in the words of one critic) who wore his fedora cocked at a certain angle, hung out with mobsters, and drank martinis with Joey, Sammy, and Dino.

And to understand this, all you need do is turn on "The Way You Look Tonight" or "Fly Me to the Moon" and let the sound wash over you.

The hunch (and hope) is that we'll be hearing those and a lot more from the "Chairman of the Board" as December 12th approaches.

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 05/25/2015

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