Liberal History Lesson PRICE: $6.95 in Canada: $6.95 by Scott Yenor Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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VOLUME XI, NUM BER 3, SUMMER 2011 A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship Angelo M. William Codevilla Voegeli: e Rise Democracy and Rise at the of Obama Point of a Gun Conrad R. Shep Black: Melnick: Inside the e Politics New York Times of Inequality James L. Buckley: James Q. Restoring Wilson: Redeeming Federalism Economics Pia Catton: Eva Ballet’s Brann: Swan Song? Too Liberal Arts Algis Valiunas: Peter C. Mencken’s Myers: Prejudices Black America Reborn Liberal History Lesson PRICE: $6.95 in canada: $6.95 by Scott Yenor mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Book Review by Michael Nelson King of the Hill, Top of the Heap Frank: The Voice, by James Kaplan. Doubleday, 800 pages, $35 n her new memoir, and furthermore, new depths of meaning from its new context: Basie on the 1963 Sinatra-Basie album, begins British actress Judi Dench writes: “I have “I’ll Never Smile Again.” Sinatra’s concept intimately with singer and jazz trio, as if he Ialways said to students that if you really albums (none more brilliant than Only the were quietly telling a small group of friends want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir Lonely, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morn- about the lovely girl he has just met. The Basie John [Gielgud] and Frank Sinatra will teach ing, and Songs for Swingin’ Lovers) are usually band then enters in full force, and Sinatra re- you. Because one used to present the whole associated with his vocal career’s apex in the sponds by adding swagger and volume to his arc of a speech, and the other presented the mid-1950s. But as James Kaplan points out vocal—he’s addressing a bigger crowd now, whole arc of a song, without any intrusive ex- in Frank: The Voice, an 800-page gorilla of a and he wants to impress them with how hot treme emphases.” In an interview with USA book that takes his life from birth in Decem- she is. Then the flutist has his say—for two Today, Dench elaborated on why she included ber 1915 to Oscar night in March 1954, Si- minutes!—before the singer returns to wrap the singer: “He never lingers too long on one natra recorded his first concept albums when things up. In truth, most of Sinatra’s songs thing. You’re led through a song with Sinatra. he was with Columbia Records, including a follow a narrative arc all the way past climax There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end.” 1950 vinyl LP (the new new thing back then) to denouement. The typical record builds to Frank Sinatra famously pioneered the con- called Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra—a a peak about two thirds of the way through, cept album, a sequence of songs that unfolds a collection of up-tempo numbers that showed and then ends quietly. “Summer Wind” and story or explores an emotion—despair, exhil- he could do more than sing ballads. He could “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” represent the aration, coming to terms (or failing to) with swing. rule, “Theme from New York, New York,” the loss. A title song commissioned from Sinatra exception. songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van inatra also treated individual Because what songs say was so important Heusen, for example, opens the No One Cares songs as narratives, working closely to Sinatra, song selection, which most singers album. “Why did no one care?” asked Sinatra, Swith his stable of great arrangers (Nel- left to record producers, was crucial. When explaining the songs that followed. “Because son Riddle first and foremost, but also Billy he came along in the 1940s, all anybody want- there is a ‘Cottage for Sale,’ that’s why—so it May, Axel Stordahl, Gordon Jenkins, Don ed to hear was new songs. Sinatra changed had to be track two. That song’s the saddest Costa, Quincy Jones, George Siravo, and oth- that—the whole notion of the “standards” or song ever written—it describes the complete ers) to make sure that the music would sustain the “Great American song book” is his in- break-up of a home.” And so on through nine the words. “I’ve always believed,” he said, “the vention. Philip Furia, a professor of creative more tracks, each one expressing a new stage written word is first, always first. Not belit- writing at the University of North Carolina at of heartbreak: “Stormy Weather” (track 3), “I tling the music behind me, [but] it’s only really Wilmington, has pointed out that the young Can’t Get Started” (7), “Just Friends” (9), and, a curtain.” singer built his reputation by reviving forgot- finally, a song he had sung years before with “My Kind of Girl,” for instance, a song that ten songs from old Broadway musicals: George the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra that gained Neal Hefti orchestrated for Sinatra and Count and Ira Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Claremont Review of Books w Summer 2011 Page 85 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Me” and “But Not for Me,” Richard Rodgers punctuated by a gasp, or at least a conspicu- Art of Recording, by Charles L. Granata (1999). and Lorenz Hart’s “My Funny Valentine” and ous breath. His film career, which produced a best sup- “Bewitched,” to name just a few. What’s more, From the start, Sinatra figured out that porting actor Oscar for From Here to Eternity, these songs had been sung by women in the singing should be as much as possible like nat- a best actor nomination for The Man with original shows, because as Furia writes, such ural speech. When he got a new song he mas- the Golden Arm, two cult classics (the su- “ballads of longing or lament were assigned to tered the lyrics as if they were lines in a play perb Manchurian Candidate and the just-okay female characters on the conventional assump- or poem, and only then looked at the melody Ocean’s 11), some good musicals (the best of tion that women were more given to wistful so that he could tell his arranger what instru- which was Cole Porter’s High Society), and or melancholy effusions.” Is it any surprise mentation, mood, pauses, silences, and other more than a few stinkers, has been justly ap- that, besides Bing Crosby, all the singers Si- musical features would best support the words praised in Tom Santopietro’s Sinatra in Hol- natra said he learned the most from listening as he wanted to present them. “I’m looking to lywood (2008). Sociologist Chris Rojek even to were women: Mabel Mercer, Billie Holiday, fit the emotion behind the song that I’ve come produced a decent cultural studies book called Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald. up with to the music,” Kaplan quotes Sinatra Frank Sinatra (2004) that focuses on the na- telling casino magnate Steve Wynn. The result, ture of his celebrity, and historian Stanislao udi densch’s other big point about when he sang a song, was that it seemed as if Pugeliese gathered an interesting collection of Sinatra—hinted at in her comments he were thinking it up as he went along—and essays on Frank Sinatra: History, Identity, and J“without any intrusive extreme emphases” feeling what he was thinking. Not just swoon- Italian American Culture (2004) from a large and “never lingers too long on one thing”—is ing teenagers, but also professional musicians academic conference devoted to Sinatra at about the way he phrased a song. Technically, dug his extended, conversational phrasing (the Hofstra University in 1998. These are all re- phrasing is how the vocalist places the words product of extraordinary breath control har- cent works. The first good book about Sinatra in relation to the music, which requires that nessed to deep lyrical intelligence) and his in- was written in 1947 by E. J. Kahn, a leading he make a complex set of decisions about the-pocket sense of rhythm. In 1941, at age 25, New Yorker writer from the Harold Ross era. dynamics, duration, rhythm, articulation, Sinatra bumped Crosby out of first place as the Kahn’s The Voice: The Story of an American relationship to the beat, and a host of other jazz magazine Down Beat’s best male singer. Phenomenon came out when the singer was matters. Prior to Sinatra, Will Friedwald ob- barely in his thirties, the first teen idol and, as serves in his monumental new A Biographi- inatra’s musicianship has already Friedwald has pointed out, “the last one not to cal Guide to Jazz and Pop Singers, most “sing- been the subject of an excellent book— pander to his audience” (think Elvis Presley to ers were prone to chop up a line into several SFriedwald’s Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Justin Bieber). breaks, thus hindering the listener from fol- Singer’s Art (1995)—and a very good one— Sadly, however, the best-selling books about lowing the thread of a story.” Each break was Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Sinatra have focused on his life rather than NAVIGATING THE “ An essential guide NEW WORLD “ A must-read for to the twenty-first entrepreneurs, investors, century.” industry experts, and —Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic corporations interested in capitalizing on the greatest wealth-creation opportunity “Aerotropolis presents a of our lifetime: solving radical, futuristic vision. climate change.” This book ties together — Jigar Shah, founder, SunEdison, urbanism, global economics, and CEO, Carbon War Room international relations, sociology, and insights from adventures in places that “ In Climate Capitalism, aren’t even on the map yet L.