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Home , 1950s, Gordon Jenkins, In the Wee Small Hours, It Was a Very Good Year, Mama Will Bark, No One Cares

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

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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 , begins British actress Judi Dench writes: “I have “I’ll Never Smile Again.” Sinatra’s concept intimately with singer and trio, as if he Ialways said to students that if you really (none more brilliant than Only the were quietly telling a small group of friends want to know how to speak Shakespeare, Sir Lonely, of the Morn- about the lovely girl he has just met. The Basie John [Gielgud] and 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 , 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 , 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. “” 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. and Jimmy Van inatra also treated individual Because what songs say was so important Heusen, for example, opens the 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 , all anybody want- there is a ‘Cottage for Sale,’ that’s why—so it May, , , Don ed to hear was new songs. Sinatra changed had to be track two. That song’s the saddest Costa, , 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 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,” punctuated by a gasp, or at least a conspicu- Art of Recording, by Charles L. Granata (1999). and ’s “My Funny Valentine” and ous breath. His 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 , 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 ’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 , 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, , fit the emotion behind the song that I’ve come produced a decent cultural studies book called Sarah Vaughn, . 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, 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 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

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Claremont Review of Books w Summer 2011 Page 86 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm his art, ranging all the way from hagiography his life. When he sang a sad song, this sort of phy,” writes New Republic music critic David (daughter Nancy’s Frank Sinatra: My Father, reasoning goes, every desolate word and note Hadju, “they weren’t…. His life off-micro- 1985, and other daughter Tina’s My Father’s was drawn from the well of his own despair. phone was a sordid tale of bullying, woman- Daughter: A Memoir, 2000) to icon-smashing But surely artistry doesn’t require that the izing and bad temper, mixed up with advo- (Kitty Kelly’s hatchet-job His Way: The Un- singer (or actor or dancer or painter) feel the cacy for social justice and good deeds done authorized Biography of Frank Sinatra, 1986). emotion he is portraying. Instead, the artistry for his friends.” His music, on the other hand, Sadly, too, that’s the literary tree onto which lies in making the audience feel that emotion, was…sublime. Kaplan—his subtitle notwithstanding—has which is a matter of craft, not sentiment. As On April 22, 1965, CBS News videotaped chosen to graft the bulk of Frank: The Voice. Granata points out in Sessions with Sinatra, in Sinatra in the recording studio, singing what For the most part, Kaplan’s book consists concert after concert Sinatra turned out to be one of his greatest songs, Er- of longer, less-biased versions of all the famil- vin Drake’s elegiac “.” iar tales about Sinatra’s first 39 years: growing rarely failed to turn in a stunningly During the playback, Sinatra hears himself up as the only child of a domineering mother believable performance of his quintes- deliver the line, “When I was thirty-five, it in Hoboken, New Jersey; inspired to sing by sential torch song, “One for My Baby.” was a very good year,” smiles at arranger and hearing Crosby and determined to outdo him; Are we to believe that each such per- conductor Gordon Jenkins, and says, “Those the big band years, including fame with Dors- formance (and there were thousands were the swingin’ years!” ey; the bobby-soxer riots outside New York’s over several ) is tinged with the Truth is, as Kaplan shows, it was a terrible Paramount theater; his early involvement singer’s real sadness? No, it’s his abil- year for Sinatra. In 1951, when he was 35, his in liberal, sometimes left-wing politics; the ity as an actor that allows him to slip in career was on the skids and his personal life MGM musicals with ; the postwar and out of roles that enhance his vocal was in disarray—he even made a serious at- descent into musical irrelevance; the sexual performance. tempt at suicide. Desperate for a hit song, he obsessions (—both et al. and, in reluctantly took Miller’s advice and recorded Kaplan’s bloated treatment, ad nauseam); the , who drove Sinatra crazy at a stinker called “Mama Will Bark”—and it associations with Lucky Luciano and other Columbia by pushing him to record lowest- charted. CBS buried his show in organized crime figures—all culminating in common-denominator novelty numbers like a slot opposite , then canceled the Phoenix-like rise from the ashes that won “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” and “The it. He was hounded by the press for divorc- Sinatra the golden statue for his portrayal of Huckabuck,” nevertheless got it right when ing his wife, Nancy, and marrying Gardner, Private Angelo Maggio. Fade to black, bring he said, “Emotion is not something you feel— whose star was rising even as his was falling. up the slide: “To be continued.” it’s something you make the listener feel…. It’s “Mr. Gardner,” people started calling him be- bulls--t to say that [Sinatra] draws on emo- hind his back. ’m a sucker for books like kaplan’s. i tion from his personal life, because what he’s The tender, sensitive, musically brilliant Si- could tell you that Kaplan’s promised sec- drawing on is the emotion from your personal natra of the recording studio and concert stage Iond volume is already on my Christmas life, and he’s saying it for you.” wasn’t the boozing, brawling, skirt-chasing list but the truth is I won’t be able to wait Sinatra of Kaplan’s book. Nothing in Frank for Christmas—I’ll start reading it the day it verything about ’s artistry Sinatra’s life mattered when he sang “It Was a comes out. involved craft. A dese-dem-dose guy Very Good Year,” or any other song. His art- But here’s what I hope I’ll remember when Ein conversation, he enunciated song istry made those years very good—for exactly I read Kaplan’s sequel (and, probably, Barbara lyrics with a clarity that sounded natural. as long as he sang about them. Sinatra’s new book, Lady Blue Eyes: My Life He was a monumental egotist in life, but in with Frank): Sinatra is worth our lasting atten- the recording studio he treated musicians, Michael Nelson, a former editor of the Wash- tion not because of the life he led but because arrangers, writers, and others as colleagues. ington Monthly, is the Fulmer Professor of Po- of the music he made. Kaplan, like many oth- “We” was Sinatra’s pronoun of choice when litical Science at Rhodes College and a senior fel- ers, tries to square the circle connecting biog- talking about his music, not “I.” And even low at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center raphy with music by grounding Sinatra’s art in though “his records sound like autobiogra- of Public Affairs.

Claremont Review of Books w Summer 2011 Page 87 VOLUME 2, NUMBER 3, SPRING 2002

A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship

Angelo M. Edward C. Codevilla: Banfield: What Advice to W a r ? Graduates

Charles R. James F. Kesler: P o n t u s o : Big, Solzhenitsyn’s Bad Virtues Government W a r d Thomas Connerly: Krannawitter: Should Hating Blacks Love Lincoln America?

Christopher Michael Flannery: Anton: Enjoying Dignifying Steinbeck the Whodunit Larry P. Arnn: Benjamin Churchill Hadley Arkes: Franklin: on On Empire The World of Morals Wine and Its Delinquent Observer, Alan Wolfe

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