Today would have been Frank Sinatra’s 91st birthday. Scott at Powerline has a post on it, with a couple of amazing videos that got me to thinking about Sinatra’s influence on me. My dad was a big Sinatra fan, and had all of the Capitol albums in the fifties, so while I was listening to my older sister’s Elvis and doo-wop 45’s, I was also drinking in “Come Fly With Me,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” and all the other great songs from Sinatra’s best era. Songs for Swingin’ Lovers alone has some of his most sublime work. His interpretation of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” by itself is worth the price of the album. What a revelation it must have been for Cole Porter to hear his already classic songs transformed into artistic flights of fancy wholly owned by the master.
Scott includes a section on Sinatra’s breathing technique that’s particularly fascinating:
It was Sinatra’s nearly three-year tenure with the Dorsey band that prepared him to launch his solo career in the fall of 1942. In his first post-Capitol recording on his own label, Sinatra paid tribute to Dorsey twenty years later in his beautiful “I Remember Tommy,” with arrangements by former Dorsey arranger Sy Oliver. The liner notes to the “I Remember Tommy” compact disc quote a 1965 Life magazine interview of Sinatra:
“How in the hell did he do it? I used to sit behind him on the bandstand and watch, trying to see him sneak a breath. But I never saw the bellows move on his back. His jacket didn’t even move. Finally, after a while, I discovered that he had a ‘sneak’ pinhole in the corner of his mouth—not an actual pinhole, but a tiny place where he was breathing. In the middle of a phrase, while the tone was still being carried through the trombone, he’d go shhh and take a quick breath and play another four bars with that breath. Why couldn’t a singer do that too?”
If you watch the videos, especially the first one, see if you can catch him breathing. Of course, opera singers had been using that technique for ages, but I’m guessing Frank wasn’t a big opera fan. And check out the cigarette in the first one. He’ll take a big drag and then sing without blowing it out. I can’t even imagine attempting that. I’d have been coughing my ass off. It can’t have been too good for his lungs or his vocal cords, but it sure looked cool. At one point, he turns to the side and gets the last little bit of smoke out.
Sinatra’s unique timing, phrasing, and note-bending style was imitated by a whole cadre of singers in the fifties and sixties, guys that one of my girlfriends’ father called “the grab-bag singers.” You know them, and I won’t name them. Listening to them, though, provides a perfect illustration of the unexplainable something that the great ones have. Call it soul, call it whatever you want. The imitators have the technique down, but they can’t capture the ineffable quality that made Sinatra Sinatra.
Happy Birthday, Maestro.
Frank was a master, but actually the first guy to master breathing and vocal technique in the pop world was Bing Crosby. Even Frank would have admitted that. (And I much preferred Frank.)
My dad always hated Sinatra. Said he was all mobbed up and a mean little guy. To this day I’m not sure why that means you can’t like the music. Here’s to you, Frank. Say Hi to Dean for me
I got you . . . up to my room!
You’re naked . . . out on my balcony!
And babe, I’m 82
But I’d still like to make sweet love to you
Miss Tomei, Miss Tomei!
“I’m a Golden God!!”
Oh, wait, wrong balcony.
Fascinating info about his technique.
You’re just not cool enough to smoke.
(Inhales, sings “It was a very good year for small town girls / And soft summer nights,” calls Lawford a queer, exhales remainder.)
If you’ve got your smoking chops down, and you’re singing like Sinatra, not much comes out, and you can Caddyshack the rest at your leisure.
However, if you’ve been roped into a girlfriends-night-out at the karaoke drag bar, and you’re loose enough to get up and do Dolly’s part of “Islands in the Stream,” you might gak on your smoke and have to break for the toilets during the first chorus.
When I was twenty-one…
I once played an entire gig with a plastic bucket next to my traps.
“I’m a Golden God!!â€Â
Oh, wait, wrong balcony.
This is probably too easy, but points to whoever can name the author, time, and place of that deathless quote.
I imagine I’m wrong, but is that from the movie Almost Famous? I was a bit of pipsqueak during the early 70’s, so, iof it really happened, let me apologize in advance for not knowing it.
I’ve heard that some WWII vets resented Sinatra for being the 4-F, skinny kid their girlfriends at home were swooning over.
I imagine I’m wrong, but is that from the movie Almost Famous? I was a bit of pipsqueak during the early 70’s, so, iof it really happened, let me apologize in advance for not knowing it.
Nope, but you have the right era.
My dad called his music Wop Slop. He much preferred Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and all the rest of those hepcats. Me? I like Ozzy.
One of the funniest SNL skits ever though is Phil Hartman playing Sinatra doing a roundtable talkshow, with Steve and Edie and Billy Idol Sinaid O’Conner. If anyone knows where that one is youtubed, I’d like to have access to it.
Go beat him up, Steve!
“To be is to doâ€Â–Socrates.
“To do is to beâ€Â–Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be doâ€Â–Frank Sinatra.
–Kurt Vonnegut
It should be clear from the quote that it’s Sinatra commenting on Tommy Dorsey’s breathing technique, which from the description is somewhat different from what’s used by other wind instrument players.
I’m guessing, though, that Dorsey was actually breathing in through his nose, not his mouth, and that Sinatra just misunderstood what he thought he was seeing.
Slarti, it should also be clear from the quote that Sinatra adapted that technique for singing.
I love Frank. I knew we were in some serious cultural shit when his passing didn’t merit much attention from the media. It was like, ho-hum. I was shocked. If he had passed five years before, the coverage would have been wall-to-wall. Sad.
Not really. Certainly Frank didn’t circular breathe through a pin-sized hole in the corner of his mouth.
If he did, he’s very different from me, physiologically.
Listen to Sinatra, Torme, Crosby, Deano, Tony Bennett, any of the old masters and then go listen to some modern day counterpart like say Justin Timberlake. Now go listen to David Ruffin, Otis Redding, Lou Rawls, any of the great 60s & 70s black singers and then play a few rap and hiphop tunes. Now go find Eartha Kitt, Aretha Franklin, Mavis Staples or any other other great female singers of an earlier age and compare them to Britney Spears, Beyonce, Madonna, Mariah Carey or well…any of them doesn’t really matter. Finally, go listen to some Stevie Ray Vaughn, Duane Allman, B.B. King, or Jimmie Page and compare them to the modern Punk Rockers who are lucky if they can play 3 chords.
After that little exercise, you’ll see what we’ve lost in mainstream music, and why music sales continue to drop.
Sinatra? Ewww… What an over-rated thug.