Sleepwalking Frank Sinatra
I don’t like Frank Sinatra. There are several newspapers and music rags that make it sound I should like him because he was from Hoboken. I don’t. He had some good points like he detested segregation. He had a mind for business. I’m thinking, but I can’t come up with more good things.
There are reasons for not liking him like the tale that he used his fame to get out of WW2, then played a soldier in movies. His adultery, but that’s his and Ava Gardner’s issue whatever. I read “Elvis in Vegas” by Richard Zoglin. He writes that casino workers and patrons couldn’t put up with the pushy- bossy Sinatra.
The songs credited to him are fine, “Summer Wind” isn’t terrible. He started his career by singing in this flat crooning way through a series of 1940s song’s. As he got older, he just talked-sang through songs. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a style and it works for some artists. In Sinatra’s case, every song was basically the same, delivered the same way, all bland the same way.
I’ve always liked the song, “I Only Have Eyes for You.” The most famous version was done by the Flamingos. This version had eerie echo and sparse instrumentation. It feels intimate and personal. I’ve heard other versions and they are all right. You can’t do a bad version of the song. I was wrong. Sinatra could ruin the song by not caring about words and talk-singing his way through just to finish the song.
Don Costa who to his credit gave Teddy Randazzo a chance and formed a publishing company with him, also produced songs for Sinatra. For some reason, Sinatra did a version of Jim Croce’s “Bad Bad Leroy Brown.” The song is fun, violent and has a moral about excessive ego. It is even a sing along.
Not only did Sinatra do the song the same flat bored way he did every song, but he included it on a live album too.
There is a 1974 album where he did contemporary (for the time) songs and slept walked his way through all of them. Why did he even bother?
Why do a song as pretty as “I Only Have Eyes for You” when you don’t want to do it justice? Why do modern songs when you don’t care? Was he just out to take his fan’s money? Why not retire?
On the other hand, his daughter Nancy is mega-cool. I follow her on Twitter and Instagram. She did songs that appealed to her and stopped when the songs didn’t appeal to her. Don’t get me wrong, she continued to record after the hits stopped but she continued while the muse was with her. She didn’t make music because of contracts. Her work with Lee Hazelwood inspired later singer-songwriters. When that partnership stopped, she paused. Her image became a feminist icon. The reason I find her more interesting is that she never phones it in.