The Official Frank Sinatra Appreciation Thread

[Superman79]

Last night I had me some Jack and toasted Ole Blue Eyes...hard to believe it's been 10 years...

 

[The Chairman]

Last night I had me some Jack and toasted Ole Blue Eyes...hard to believe it's been 10 years...

Agreed.

I'm too young for a glass of Jack, but I had his music playing non-stop on my Ipod. I also wrote a blog / bulletin paying tribute to him on MySpace.

It's been 10 years since the passing of Frank Sinatra, the world renowned American singer who defined popular music for seven generations. He was 82 when he ascended into the arms of our loving God, having lived a life of doing it " his way," making full use out of the wonderful gift God gave him.

Throughout his 60 year career, Frank Sinatra recorded over 4,000 songs, starred in 58 films, won three Oscars (two of which were honorary), sold billions of records around the world, performed to sold out crowds in places ranging from Atlantic City to South Africa, and most importantly influenced, helped turn popular music into an art form.

When Frank Sinatra sang, everyone listened, and still does. His voice still has the ability to stop you dead in your tracks, and to touch your heart like no other singer before or since. Why is this? It could because of the personability Frank put through in his music. We got to know Frank through his music, and we were able to relate to him. Each song he sang resonated with some of mankind's most common and purest emotions. We've all had a "Night And Day" kind of moment, a "Ghost Of A Chance" kind of moment, a "Fly Me To The Moon" kind of moment, etc. Sociologists to this day still study Frank's music and how it was able to cover the entire gamut of human emotion. Name another singer (maybe Elvis) who can boast having such a broad spectrum of devoted listeners ranging from rock stars to word leaders to the academic crowd.

I always laugh when people say they don't like Frank, and realize they just haven't experienced life. Frank's music is for people who know what life is like, who know its ups and downs, its in and outs, its heartache and triumphs. Frank knew them like few other people.

We all have at least one Frank song we absolutely adore, and don't deny it, because if you do, you're lying. We've all been part of that last Rockettes-style kick line when they play "New York, New York" at the end of a family gathering, we've all reflected on our long gone glories whilst "It Was A Very Good Year" plays hauntingly in the background, we've all air tromboned to that thrilling solo by Milt Bernhardt on "I've Got You Under My Skin" - you get my point.

However, enough about Sinatra the singer. More importantly, there's Sinatra the man.

Many people are entranced by the Sinatra mystique - why him? Why not Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin or any of the other similarly gifted performers of his age? Why is Frank called The King Of Cool? Why did Frank Vincent call him the Ultimate Man's Man?

The question may seem complex, but the answers are quite simple. Frank was the pinnacle of what a true man should be. He was hands down the classiest man who ever lived - always dressed to perfection, fedora tilted strategically, his hair (in later years, wig) always neat. He was dignified, well mannered, charming, sophisticated and possessed an air of excitement that was felt the moment he entered the room.

He was a true professional in his music as well as acting career. Not having a formal training in music, Frank studied his craft fiercely. In addition to the techniques that defined him as a singer (his phrasing and his unmatched ability to sing over 10 bars without taking a single breath), he studied his equally talented arrangers and was very instrumental in the final aspects of his recordings beyond merely his singing.

And last but not least, everyone in Frank's inner circle describes him as one of the friendliest and most generous men you could ever hope to meet. He was devoted to his family, loyal to his friends, and a sincere and active humanitarian. In fact, one of his main hobbies was to skim through the papers and look for stories on families in need and send them an anonymous check to help them with their troubles. He was also a flag waving patriot and a staunch liberal Democrat who fought endlessly for the cause of Civil Rights. Frank even refused to perform in Vegas until black performers were allowed in the same hotels as he was. Now that's the mark of a true man.

His influence, both musically and personally, ring true today. Modern rock legends like Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Billy Joel and Jim Morrison have all expressed an undying love for Sinatra and his music. Not bad compliments from the rock crowd for a guy who called rock and roll the most vulgar and disgusting thing he ever heard when it first became popular. (It's kind of a shame that the closest thing we have to FS today is Michael Buble - who, when he sings, possesses none of the class or emotion that defined FS, and sounds more like a street thug with a lisp than the elegant, refined gentleman that was Sinatra.)

This bulletin may have been a bit too long, and perhaps would be better suited for a blog, but to quote one of my favorite Sinatra recordings, I couldn't care less. He deserves it.

Make sure today, you play at least one Sinatra recording, and then be thankful that we were so blessed to have his music enrich our lives for all those years.

 

[Superman79]

Nice bit of writing.

Of course you realize if Frank read that he would slap you upside the head for being so nostalgic then buy you drinks late into the night for being a class act.

Ah, to have lived in the good old days...

 

[signalman]

New Interview with Tina Sinatra.
Check out the link at the end of the article.
Tina reveals who maybe making a Frank Sinatra movie.

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/05/13/interview-tina-sinatra-on-new-frank-sinatra-dvds/

 

[The Chairman]

New Interview with Tina Sinatra.
Check out the link at the end of the article.
Tina reveals who maybe making a Frank Sinatra movie.

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/05/13/interview-tina-sinatra-on-new-frank-sinatra-dvds/

A Scorsese directed biopic would be marvelous. But Nancy's against it.

 

[signalman]

Just a reminder for the Sinatra fans of the Hype:

The new FS compilation, Nothing But The Best, is out as of today. It features 21 Sinatra favorites from the Reprise era (1960-1988) all digitally remastered along with a brand new recording from 1984, the standard "Body And Soul."

I just got the UK Version which has the CD but also a DVD of Franks Concert at The Royal Festival Hall.
DVD is 50 minutes and Frank is in Excellenting Singing Voice.

Contents are:

1) Introduction by Princess Grace.
2) You Make me Feel so Young.
3) Pennies from Heaven.
4) I've Got You Under my Skin.
5) Something.
6) The Lady is a Tramp.
7) I Get Along Without You Very Well.
8) Didn't We.
9) One for my Baby.
10) I Will Drink the Wine.
11) I have Dreamed.
12) My Kind of Town.
13) My Way.

 

[The Chairman]

I just got the UK Version which has the CD but also a DVD of Franks Concert at The Royal Festival Hall.
DVD is 50 minutes and Frank is in Excellenting Singing Voice.

Contents are:

1) Introduction by Princess Grace.
2) You Make me Feel so Young.
3) Pennies from Heaven.
4) I've Got You Under my Skin.
5) Something.
6) The Lady is a Tramp.
7) I Get Along Without You Very Well.
8) Didn't We.
9) One for my Baby.
10) I Will Drink the Wine.
11) I have Dreamed.
12) My Kind of Town.
13) My Way.

I have that dvd as well as a recording of the previous night's show, which has some extra songs.

 

[The Chairman]

Bumping fur July 4th and this wonderful article Frank worte for the July 4th, 1991 edition of the L.A. Times

We are created equal! No one of us is better than any of us! That's the headline proclaimed in 1776 and inscribed across centuries in the truth of the ages. Those inspired words from the Declaration of Independence mock bigotry and anti-Semitism. Then why do I still hear race and color-haters spewing their poisons? Why do I still flinch at innuendoes of venom and inequality? Why do innocent children still grow up to be despised? Why do haters' jokes still get big laughs when passed in whispers from scum to scum? You know the ones I mean—the "Some of my best friends are Jewish..." crowd.

As for the others, those cross-burning bigots to whom mental slavery is alive and well, I don't envy their trials in the next world, where their thoughts and words and actions will be judged by a jury of One. Why do so many among us continue in words and deeds to ignore, insult and challenge the unforgettable words of Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence's promise to every man, woman and child—the self-evident truth that all men are created equal?

That's what the Fourth of July is all about. Not firecrackers. Not getting smashed on the patio sipping toasts to our forefathers. Not picnics and parades or freeways empty because America has the day off. Equality is what our Independence Day is about. Not the flag-wavers who wave it one day a year, but all who carry its message with them wherever they go, who believe in it, who live it enough to die for it—as so many have.

OK, I'm a saloon singer, by self-definition. Even my mirror would never accuse me of inventing wisdom. But I do claim enough street smarts to know that hatred is a disease—a disease of the body of freedom, eating its way from the inside out, infecting all who come in contact with it, killing dreams and hopes millions of innocents with words, as surely as if they were bullets.

Who in the name of God are these people anyway, the ones who elevate themselves above others? America is an immigrant country. Maybe not you or me, but those whose love made our lives possible, or their parents or grandparents. America was founded by these people, who were fed up with other countries. Those weren't tourists on the Mayflower—they were your families and mine, following dreams that turned out to be possible dreams. Leaving all they owned, they sailed to America to start over and to forge a new nation of freedom and liberty—a new nation where they would no longer be second-class citizens but first-class Americans.

Even now, with all our problems, America is still a dream of oppressed people the world over. Take a minute. Consider what we are doing to each other as we rob friends and strangers of dignity as well as equality. Give a few minutes of fairness to the house we live in, and to all who share it with us from sea to shining sea. For if we don't come to grips with this killer disease of hatred, of bigotry and racism and anti-Semitism, pretty soon we will destroy from within this blessed country.

And what better time than today to examine the conscience of America? As we celebrate our own beginnings, let us offer our thanksgiving to the God who arranged for each of us to live here among His purple mountain majesties, His amber waves of grain. Don't just lip-sync the words to the song. Think them, live them. "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty." And when the music fades, think of the guts of Rosa Parks, who by a single act in a single moment changed America as much as anyone who ever lived.

I'm no angel. I've had my moments. I've done a few things in my life of which I'm not too proud, but I have never unloved a human being because of race, creed, or color. And if you think this is a case of he who doth protest too much, you're wrong. I would not live any other way; the Man Upstairs has been much too good to me.

Happy Fourth of July. May today be a day of love for all Americans. May this year's celebration be the day that changes the world forever. May Independence Day, 1991, truly be a glorious holiday as every American lives the self-evident truth that all people are created equal. God shed His grace on thee—on each of thee—in His self-evident love for all of us.

 

[The Chairman]

Ratner To Tell Sinatra Valet Story With Tucker

15 July 2008 11:59 PM, PDT | From wenn.com | See recent WENN news
Moviemaker Brett Ratner is set to reteam with Rush Hour star Chris Tucker to take the story of Frank Sinatra's valet to the big screen.
Ratner will direct and produce the film adaptation of George Jacobs' memoir Mr. S: My Life With Frank Sinatra, according to Internet reports.
Tucker is slated to play Jacobs, who revealed details about Sinatra's romances with Marilyn Monroe and pin-up Jeanne Carmen in his expose.
According to the valet, who became a Sinatra confidante during the crooner's Rat Pack years, the late singer was so grateful for his valet's services he set him up with an apartment in the same secret Hollywood building his boss used as a safehouse for himself and his girlfriends.

Ew.

 

[Superman79]

Have you read the book? Its really really good. Of course, Jacobs is nothing like Tucker, and with two tools like Tucker and Ratner involved they will likely screw it up big time

Read the book though...its top notch.

 

[The Chairman]

Have you read the book? Its really really good. Of course, Jacobs is nothing like Tucker, and with two tools like Tucker and Ratner involved they will likely screw it up big time

Read the book though...its top notch.

I've read it twice, it is excellent.

Spoiler

Did you get that PM I sent you?

 

[Superman79]

I've read it twice, it is excellent.

Spoiler

Did you get that PM I sent you?

Spoiler

The one about the recordings or about the "other place"?? I haven't gotten any from you since then...

 

[The Chairman]

Spoiler

The one about the recordings or about the "other place"?? I haven't gotten any from you since then...

Spoiler

The one about the other place. Ignore my previous e-mail. It wasn't taken down. Did you finish the recordings?

 

[signalman]

Just watch "Robin and the 7 Hoods" with Frank, Dean, Sammy, and Bing.
I enjoyed it, 'B'. Alot of good songs.
The 4 all have solo numbers including Peter Falk who mumbles thru his number.
Bing sings "Mister Booze" with all the other boys joining in.
Frank and Dean sing "Style".
Frank sings "My Kind of Town" to close out the movie.

 

[The Chairman]

Anyone want to check out some truly great Frank stuff should check out my Youtube page:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MyKindOfBlueEyes

 

[Mizuno Ami]

Wow...this is great to have an appreciation thread for Frank. He was amazing and is still number one in my heart with his voice. I've loved him ever since I was a kid. *huge smile*

 

[The Chairman]

Wow...this is great to have an appreciation thread for Frank. He was amazing and is still number one in my heart with his voice. I've loved him ever since I was a kid. *huge smile*

Thank you for bumping this.

 

[Alpha and Omega]

I Did It My Way and New York.

Classics

He's also the reason why I loved 'Guys and Dolls'.

 

[signalman]

Anyone here listens to Siriusly Sinatra, Channal 75?
Nice hearing Frank, Dean, Judy, Doris, Bing, Sammy, Louis, Nat, Rosemary, Peggy, and Ella while driving.

I do dislike when they play the modern singers. I find most of them uninteresting.
I would say Diana Krall appeals to me the most.

 

[Zephyr Alexian]

I just watched Tony Rome the other day. Not bad.

 

[The Chairman]

I just watched Tony Rome the other day. Not bad.

Love that film. He was such a cool mother****er in that film.

 

[signalman]

Who did Frank date?
Check this out.
Although I doubt he dated all these women.
Some are probably just co-stars from his movies.

http://www.whodatedwho.com/celebrities/people/dating/frank-sinatra.htm

 

[The Chairman]

Bump.

 

[The Chairman]

Great op-ed piece from The New York Times by Bono

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/op....html?emc=eta1

January 11, 2009
OP-ED GUEST COLUMNIST
Notes From the Chairman

By BONO
Dublin

Once upon a couple of weeks ago ...

I’m in a crush in a Dublin pub around New Year’s. Glasses clinking clicking, clashing crashing in Gaelic revelry: swinging doors, sweethearts falling in and out of the season’s blessings, family feuds subsumed or resumed. Malt joy and ginger despair are all in the queue to be served on this, the quarter-of-a-millennium mark since Arthur Guinness first put velvety blackness in a pint glass.

Interesting mood. The new Irish money has been gambled and lost; the Celtic Tiger’s tail is between its legs as builders and bankers laugh uneasy and hard at the last year, and swallow uneasy and hard at the new. There’s a voice on the speakers that wakes everyone out of the moment: it’s Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” His ode to defiance is four decades old this year and everyone sings along for a lifetime of reasons. I am struck by the one quality his voice lacks: Sentimentality.

Is this knotted fist of a voice a clue to the next year? In the mist of uncertainty in your business life, your love life, your life life, why is Sinatra’s voice such a foghorn — such confidence in nervous times allowing you romance but knocking your rose-tinted glasses off your nose, if you get too carried away.

A call to believability.

A voice that says, “Don’t lie to me now.”

That says, “Baby, if there’s someone else, tell me now.”

Fabulous, not fabulist. Honesty to hang your hat on.

As the year rolls over (and with it many carousers), the emotion in the room tussles between hope and fear, expectation and trepidation. Wherever you end up, his voice takes you by the hand.

•

Now I’m back in my own house in Dublin, uncorking some nice wine, ready for the vinegar it can turn to when families and friends overindulge, as I am about to. Right by the hole-in-the-wall cellar, I look up to see a vision in yellow: a painting Frank sent to me after I sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” with him on the 1993 “Duets” album. One from his own hand. A mad yellow canvas of violent concentric circles gyrating across a desert plain. Francis Albert Sinatra, painter, modernista.

We had spent some time in his house in Palm Springs, which was a thrill — looking out onto the desert and hills, no gingham for miles. Plenty of miles, though, Miles Davis. And plenty of talk of jazz. That’s when he showed me the painting. I was thinking the circles were like the diameter of a horn, the bell of a trumpet, so I said so.

“The painting is called ‘Jazz’ and you can have it.”

I said I had heard he was one of Miles Davis’s biggest influences.

Little pithy replies:

“I don’t usually hang with men who wear earrings.”

“Miles Davis never wasted a note, kid — or a word on a fool.”

“Jazz is about the moment you’re in. Being modern’s not about the future, it’s about the present.”

I think about this now, in this new year. The Big Bang of pop music telling me it’s all about the moment, a fresh canvas and never overworking the paint. I wonder what he would have thought of the time it’s taken me and my bandmates to finish albums, he with his famous impatience for directors, producers — anyone, really — fussing about. I’m sure he’s right. Fully inhabiting the moment during that tiny dot of time after you’ve pressed “record” is what makes it eternal. If, like Frank, you sing it like you’ll never sing it again. If, like Frank, you sing it like you never have before.

If.

•

If you want to hear the least sentimental voice in the history of pop music finally crack, though — shhhh — find the version of Frank’s ode to insomnia, “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road),” hidden on “Duets.” Listen through to the end and you will hear the great man break as he truly sobs on the line, “It’s a long, long, long road.” I kid you not.

Like Bob Dylan’s, Nina Simone’s, Pavarotti’s, Sinatra’s voice is improved by age, by years spent fermenting in cracked and whiskeyed oak barrels. As a communicator, hitting the notes is only part of the story, of course.

Singers, more than other musicians, depend on what they know — as opposed to what they don’t want to know about the world. While there is a danger in this — the loss of naïveté, for instance, which holds its own certain power — interpretive skills generally gain in the course of a life well abused.

Want an example? Here’s an example. Take two of the versions of Sinatra singing “My Way.”

The first was recorded in 1969 when the Chairman of the Board said to Paul Anka, who wrote the song for him: “I’m quitting the business. I’m sick of it. I’m getting the hell out.” In this reading, the song is a boast — more kiss-off than send-off — embodying all the machismo a man can muster about the mistakes he’s made on the way from here to everywhere.

In the later recording, Frank is 78. The Nelson Riddle arrangement is the same, the words and melody are exactly the same, but this time the song has become a heart-stopping, heartbreaking song of defeat. The singer’s hubris is out the door. (This singer, i.e. me, is in a puddle.) The song has become an apology.

To what end? Duality, complexity. I was lucky to duet with a man who understood duality, who had the talent to hear two opposing ideas in a single song, and the wisdom to know which side to reveal at which moment.

This is our moment. What do we hear?

In the pub, on the occasion of this new year, as the room rises in a deafening chorus — “I did it my way” — I and this full house of Irish rabble-rousers hear in this staple of the American songbook both sides of the singer and the song, hubris and humility, blue eyes and red.

Bono, lead singer of the band U2 and co-founder of the advocacy group ONE, is a contributing columnist for The Times.


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[JLBats]

I'd say I don't have a large appreciation for his full body of music simply due to lack of exposure, but "Glad to be Unhappy" is probably in my top 20 favorite songs ever.