Album Review: Frank Sinatra Live at the Meadowlands (2009)

Album cover of Frank Sinatra Live at the Meadowlands, a 1986 concert that was released in 2009.

Frank Sinatra in concert in the 1980's.

The 2009 CD Frank Sinatra Live at the Meadowlands is a recording of Sinatra’s concert on March 14, 1986. It’s an excellent concert recording from late in Sinatra’s career. By this point in his career, Sinatra’s voice was not what it once had been. However, on this recording he sounds very good and his phrasing was still immaculate, as always. This isn’t just a great concert for late-period Sinatra; it’s a great Sinatra concert, regardless of the time period. The set list is an interesting mix, and it only has seven songs in common with Sinatra’s 1987 Dallas concert that was just released on this year’s Standing Room Only boxed set, which I reviewed here. 

Some highlights of the show are the lovely “Where or When,” “Nice ‘n’ Easy,” which Sinatra didn’t often sing in concert, and the beautiful “My Heart Stood Still,” which features Frank holding the last note for about ten seconds. It’s a wonderful thing to hear. There’s a nice, swinging version of Irving Berlin’s “Change Partners.” Sinatra never recorded that arrangement, so it’s a nice rarity. He recorded a gorgeous bossa nova version in 1967 for the sublime Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim album.

You can hear how Sinatra would always change his phrasing on songs like “It Was a Very Good Year,” where his inflections are quite different from the 1965 studio version. On the studio version, he smoothly connects the phrase “for blue-blooded girls, of independent means,” but here he sings “of in-de-pen-dent means.” 

This concert also features a fantastic version of “You Make Me Feel So Young.” It’s never been my favorite Sinatra song, but his subtle changes in phrasing might make this my favorite version of the song. He just sounds so exuberant singing it; it’s very fun to hear. 

There are superb versions of the ballads “The Gal that Got Away” and “Come Rain or Come Shine.” “Come Rain or Come Shine” has long been one of my favorite Sinatra recordings, with a stirring arrangement by Don Costa.

The swinging side of Sinatra is also well represented by exemplary versions of “Theme from New York, New York,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and Frank’s take on “Mack the Knife.” I love Bobby Darin’s version of “Mack the Knife,” but I love Frank’s version too. In it, Sinatra credits the singers who have sung the song before him, as he sings, “Old Satchmo-Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin/they did this song nice, Lady Ella too/they all sang it with so much feeling/that Old Blue Eyes he ain’t gonna add nothing new.” Sinatra then sings: “But with this great big band right behind me/swingin’ hard, Jack, I know I can’t lose.” He then name-checks his rhythm section: “We got Don Baldini we got William Miller we got Tony Mottola Irv Cottler bringin’ up the rear/all these bad cats are in this band now/they make the greatest sounds/you ever gonna hear.” It might sound cheesy, but I really like it, maybe because it’s just fun to hear Frank singing about singing. 

Sinatra obviously enjoyed “Moonlight in Vermont,” as it shows up on other concert recordings of the period. He’s no longer able to do the marvelous phrasing device he does on the 1957 recording on Come Fly with Me, where he strings together the phrase “people who meet in this romantic setting are so hypnotized by the lovely evening summer breeze.” He elongates the e at the end of “lovely,” holds the note, and then connects it to the e at the beginning of “evening.” It’s a spine-tingling moment. I read an interview with Steve Lawrence, who was saying that he was discussing “Moonlight in Vermont” with Sinatra, and Lawrence pointed out to Sinatra that the song didn’t rhyme. For all of his close attention to lyrics, Sinatra hadn’t noticed that before. 

As in other concerts of this period, Sinatra mentions the songwriter and the arranger before almost every song, and always says what a fantastic song it is. I feel as though in those little moments we get a sense of Sinatra the musician, the artist behind the icon, the singer who is interpreting the lyrics to the best of his considerable talents. I have no doubt that Frank Sinatra was a difficult man at times, and that he had a more than healthy ego; however, what I hear in those little moments is the humble Frank Sinatra, the one who knew that it was through the hard work and great talents of many other people, including songwriters, arrangers, and musicians, that he was able to express himself through song, and to present his amazing talent to the world. In the twenty years since Sinatra left us, his artistic legacy is stronger than ever, and Live at the Meadowlands is a reminder of how great Sinatra was.

CD Review: Frank Sinatra, Standing Room Only (2018)

The most recent Frank Sinatra boxed set, Standing Room Only, 2018.

The picture we have of Frank Sinatra’s live recordings has greatly changed over the last two decades. Until the 1990’s there were only two officially released live albums by Sinatra: 1966’s excellent Sinatra at the Sands, which found him backed by Count Basie’s band, and 1974’s The Main Event, which celebrated his return to touring after a brief two-year retirement from show business. It’s surprising that a performer of Sinatra’s stature released so few live recordings during the peak of his career. 

Excellent live recordings of Sinatra with small combos finally saw the light of day in the 1990’s. Sinatra & Sextet: Live in Paris, an amazing 1962 show was released in 1994, and Frank Sinatra with the Red Norvo Quintet: Live in Australia, 1959 was released in 1997. Both of these discs featured Sinatra at the peak of his vocal powers, and highlighted what a remarkable jazz singer he was. 

Since Sinatra’s death in 1998, a number of terrific box sets highlighting his live recordings have been released, starting with Sinatra: Vegas in 2006, and continuing with Sinatra: New York, Sinatra: London, and Sinatra: World on a String. 

Released at the beginning of May, Standing Room Only is the latest addition to the live Sinatra canon. It features complete shows from 1966, 1974, and 1987. 

The first disc is from the same 1966 residency that produced Sinatra at the Sands, and it’s a portrait of Las Vegas at a time when it was still wild and glamorous. Sinatra cribbed both his opening and closing lines of patter from his buddy Dean Martin: “How did all these people get in my room?” and “I feel sorry for the people who don’t drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re gonna feel all day long.” 

Vocally, Sinatra sounds a little bit rough at the beginning of the show, but his voice quickly warms up. One of the highlights is a hard swinging version of “Luck Be a Lady,” which is a great example of how Sinatra could make a song his own. As originally written by Frank Loesser, it’s a very fast song, but Sinatra and arranger Billy May slowed it down and made it swing harder. Sinatra gives the song a swagger that it was previously lacking. 

Another song that Sinatra made his own was “Fly Me to the Moon,” also featured in the 1966 concert. The song had been around for years before Sinatra recorded it with Count Basie in 1964. While it had nearly always been sung as a ballad, Quincy Jones’ arrangement for Sinatra turned it into a swinger, and it became one of Sinatra’s most famous songs. 

There are some rarities in the 1966 show: “Street of Dreams,” which Sinatra had recorded in 1942, but wouldn’t record again until 1979, “Where or When?” had been recorded by Sinatra in 1945 and 1958, but the latter version wasn’t released until the 1980’s, and “The Shadow of Your Smile,” which Sinatra never recorded a studio version of. 

Basie’s band is cooking behind Frank, and you can hear the enjoyment in his voice throughout the show. 

The second disc is from the same 1974 tour that produced The Main Event, which was a television special as well as a live album. One of the highlights of the show is Sinatra’s beautiful version of “Ol’ Man River.” If you’re not familiar with Sinatra’s version, you might think at first that it’s an odd song for him to sing. But he gets so completely inside the song that you’re not thrown off by an Italian American singing a song written for an African American character. And Sinatra pulls off one of his neatest tricks of phrasing in the song. On the lyric, “you get a little drunk and you lands in jail” his voice drops down as low as possible, into the bass range, as he elongates “jail” and then, without taking a breath, he connects it to the next lyric, “I gets weary, and sick of tryin’”. It’s very moving, and at this concert he pulls it off very well. 

The song selection for the 1974 concert is superb, as we are treated to many of Sinatra’s signature songs, like “The Lady is a Tramp,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “My Kind of Town,” and “My Way.” There’s also a superbly swinging version of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” perhaps Sinatra’s greatest song. 

Sinatra’s choice of contemporary material for the 1974 show is also excellent. Sinatra’s instincts were usually spot on, but during the 1960’s and 1970’s they sometimes led him to record songs that simply didn’t fit his style. (See: “Downtown,” “Don’t Sleep in the Subway,” “Mrs. Robinson,” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”) However, this time around Sinatra chose very well: “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” by Stevie Wonder, is a good example of a contemporary song that translated well to Sinatra’s style. Also included in the show are “If,” a big hit for the group Bread in 1971, “Send in the Clowns,” from Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, and the excellent “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?” 

Sinatra is backed by Woody Herman and the Young Thundering Herd, and they do an excellent job of supporting the Chairman.

Disc three was recorded in Dallas, Texas on October 24, 1987. It’s the latest complete concert of Sinatra’s that has been officially released. Some of the songs were previously released on the 1995 CD Sinatra 80^th: Live in Concert, but this is the first time the entire concert has been released.

Sinatra was 71 when the Dallas concert was recorded, and his voice was not as good as it used to be. But considering all the smoking and drinking Sinatra did, he was probably lucky to still have a voice at all at that age. However, despite his vocal limitations, there are still wonderful moments throughout the concert. 

One of the highlights of the show is Sinatra’s beautiful version of “My Heart Stood Still.” At the end he holds a very high note—it’s lovely to hear. Another standout is the hard-swinging version of “Mack the Knife.” One of the best ballads is a heartbreaking version of “What’s New?” The imperfections in Sinatra’s voice just make the song emotionally stronger. There’s also a lovely version of “Lonely Town” from the musical On the Town. 

There are also some rarities in the 1987 concert, like “When Joanna Loved Me” and the terrific “Maybe This Time,” both of which Sinatra never made studio recordings of. “Where or When” also reappears on the 1987 concert. 

The more I listen to Sinatra’s live recordings, the more I realize how much admiration he had for the songwriters. In the 1987 concert, before just about every song he tells the audience who wrote the song, and after singing it he often says, “Isn’t that lovely? What a beautiful song!” Sinatra expressed his emotions through these songs, and it’s obvious that they meant a lot to him. 

There’s a funny moment at the end of the first disc. Sinatra spends the last five minutes of his act going through all of the other acts playing Vegas, and telling people to go see them! It’s like he’s a Las Vegas tour guide, not the biggest star on the planet! Sinatra obviously didn’t have to tell people about all of the other shows in Vegas, but for whatever reason he does. To me, those little moments give us a glimpse of the man behind the legend, and they show us a little bit of Sinatra’s generosity towards other performers. 

Standing Room Only has many outstanding recordings on it, and it’s worthy of any Sinatra fan’s time and money.

Frank Sinatra's 100th Birthday

Frank Sinatra, 1950's.

The greatest singer ever, in action during the 1950's.

One hundred years ago today, Frank Sinatra was born. Sinatra would go on to become one of the major entertainers of the 20^th century. His performing career spanned 60 years, from his days singing on the “Major Bowes Amateur Hour” radio show to headlining at majors concert hall in the United States and around the world. (Sinatra would sometimes use the phrase “Major Bowes Amateur Hour Loser” as a put-down.) Similar to Bing Crosby, Sinatra’s popularity stretched across several different mediums as Sinatra became a star on radio, television, and film. Also like Crosby, Sinatra won an Academy Award for his acting. Crosby once memorably said of Sinatra, “A fellow like that only comes around once in a lifetime. Why did it have to be mine?”

Sinatra’s recording career went through several different phases. His first recordings were made with the big band of Harry James. Sinatra left James’ band to join trombonist Tommy Dorsey’s band from 1940 to 1942, and they made many hit singles together. When Sinatra left Dorsey’s band, it was a risky move, trading the sure thing for the chance to have more artistic freedom over his work. Even in Sinatra’s early records you can hear something in his voice that set him apart from the other male big band vocalists of his era. While others tried to do their own version of Crosby’s crooning style, Sinatra, though obviously influenced by Crosby, didn’t try to imitate Bing. Sinatra was always his own man, and his singing style, full of sensual romantic yearning, set bobby soxer’s hearts aflame. The girls who were screaming for Frank at the Paramount Theater in the 1940’s understood that he was making love to them through his songs. Sinatra might not have been conventionally handsome, but he had very striking features, including a winning smile, piercing blue eyes, and at this time, a head full of dark, wavy hair. He also had a strong personal magnetism and loads of charisma. 

Sinatra’s solo recording career began at Columbia Records in 1943. (I reviewed Sinatra’s complete Columbia recordings here.) Singing lush, beautiful ballads, he became one of the most successful vocalists of the 1940’s. As the decade ended, however, his career seemed to be on the wane. The break-up of his first marriage, his scandalous and disastrous affair with Ava Gardner, and some vocal problems made some think that Sinatra was past his prime. Without a film or recording contract, Sinatra’s future did not look bright.

But the brightest time was still to come. In 1953, Sinatra signed with Capitol Records, recorded with the arranger Nelson Riddle for the first time, and played the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity. He won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Maggio, and his records started selling again. One of the great comebacks in show business history was now complete. In Nelson Riddle, Sinatra had found his perfect arranger. It’s my own personal contention that Riddle’s arrangements for Sinatra are one of the prime reasons why Sinatra is the greatest male vocalist. No one else had arrangements that good that fit their voices as perfectly as Riddle’s fit Sinatra’s. It also helped that Sinatra’s voice sounded better than ever in the 1950’s. In the 1940’s, Sinatra’s voice had been achingly pure and perfect. Now in the 1950’s his voice was slightly lower, with a more assured and confident air. The music was also changing too. Whereas ballads had made up 75% of Sinatra’s repertoire in the 1940’s, now swinging songs alternated with those ballads. Sinatra showed off his jazzy side with albums like “Swing Easy!,” “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers,” and “A Swingin’ Affair!” Sinatra showed that not only was he the best ballad singer, he was also the best swing singer around as well. Sinatra’s phrasing was always superb, and he was able to sustain long phrases, giving the songs more emotional depth.

Sinatra’s status as a pop icon would be cemented in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s as he palled around Las Vegas with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., and became friends with President John F. Kennedy. Sinatra started his own record label, Reprise, in 1961, and encouraged many of his famous friends, like Dean and Sammy, to record for his label. Reprise only lasted two years as a true independent record company, as it was sold to Warner Brothers in 1963, but it was a bold and audacious move. Sinatra’s records for Reprise during the 1960’s were still excellent, although they don’t seem to have the cultural cache of Sinatra’s Capitol albums. 

Turning 50 was a big event for Sinatra, and he marked it by recording the terrific album “September of My Years,” and by taping the TV special “A Man and His Music.” (Sinatra also released a double album career retrospective called “A Man and His Music.”) It was during the taping of “A Man and His Music” that journalist Gay Talese followed Sinatra around and wrote his classic profile for Esquire magazine, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” (You can read the full essay here; it’s still one of the best pieces written about Sinatra.)

For the rest of his life Sinatra continued to pack concert halls and stadiums full of people anxious to see him in person. The last two records he made “Duets” and “Duets II” were both Top Ten albums and both sold more than one million copies. 

Sinatra is still a towering figure in American pop culture, and even though he passed away in 1998, his name is synonymous with great music. I think he would be very happy at how he’s remembered by his many fans and admirers around the world.

Movie Review: Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, directed by Alex Gibney (2015)

Poster for Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, directed by Alex Gibney, 2015. I love that photo of Frank.

Frank Sinatra, circa 1961. Frank wore hats better than anyone.

An intense Frank Sinatra in the studio.

Frank Sinatra, 1970's. Note his trademark orange pocket square-orange was his favorite color.

Frank Sinatra is one of the major figures in 20^th century American entertainment. Few figures before or since have held the public’s imagination for as long as Sinatra did. Sinatra was a cultural touchstone for multiple generations, from the time he emerged as a singer with the Tommy Dorsey band in the early 1940’s until his death in 1998. 2015 is the centennial of Sinatra’s birth, and nearly twenty years after his death Sinatra remains firmly entrenched in American pop culture. 

The 2015 HBO documentary Frank Sinatra: All or Nothing at All offers a four-hour glimpse into Sinatra’s life. The documentary takes its structure from the set list of Sinatra’s 1971 retirement concert. (Sinatra came out of retirement in 1973.) The film’s premise is that the songs Sinatra chose for his retirement concert reflected an overview of his career. I agree with that premise, and the idea behind that premise makes the documentary more than just a “and then he did this” film. 

I’ve written about Frank Sinatra before, covering his years on the Columbia Records label from 1943-1952, my 10 favorite Sinatra albums, and a piece covering the best Sinatra compilation albums. I’m a huge admirer of Sinatra’s amazing talent. 

All or Nothing at All is directed by Alex Gibney, who also directed the superb documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief for HBO. All or Nothing at All is wonderfully made; it’s a great example of documentary making at its finest. The research into Sinatra’s life is deep, and Gibney and his team have unearthed superb video and audio recordings of Sinatra talking candidly about his life and career. There’s a lot of wonderful material on Sinatra’s early life in Hoboken, and his rise to fame signing with the Tommy Dorsey band. Early film clips show how revolutionary Sinatra’s singing style was. Sinatra’s voice was extremely intimate, as he seduces the listener through his ballad singing. It’s easy to see why women went nuts for him. 

The first two hours of All or Nothing at All take us through Sinatra’s rise in the 1940’s to his decline in the early 1950’s, when he was battling vocal problems, more competition from singers like Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Vic Damone, Johnnie Ray, and Eddie Fisher, and a relationship with Ava Gardner best described as tempestuous and doomed. By the end of 1952 Sinatra had been dumped by his record label and MGM had dropped his movie contract. It seemed as though he was headed for the has-been pile. 

The second part of the documentary covers Sinatra’s career from his remarkable comeback in 1953 to his retirement concert in 1971. 1953 was a pivotal year for Sinatra, as he signed a contract with Capitol Records, where he met the arranger Nelson Riddle and created the classic songs and albums that have made him a legend. 1953 was also the year that Sinatra played the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity, one of his finest acting performances, which deservedly won him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. I wish that All or Nothing at All focused a little more on Sinatra’s films. Sinatra was a truly talented actor who delivered a number of excellent performances in films like From Here to Eternity, Suddenly, The Man with the Golden Arm, Guys and Dolls, Pal Joey, Some Came Running, and The Manchurian Candidate. But that’s a small quibble.

All or Nothing at All focuses on many of Sinatra’s personal relationships, and there are excellent interviews with Frank’s first wife Nancy, the mother of his three children. The treatment of Sinatra’s other wives was a little more problematic for me. I found Gina Gershon’s voiceover narration of Ava Gardner’s writings to be terribly overdone, and there was just way too much about Mia Farrow, which got boring for me pretty quickly. There’s also just one cursory mention of Sinatra’s fourth wife, Barbara Marx, whose marriage to Frank lasted longer than his other three marriages combined. 

The documentary doesn’t shy away from controversy, covering Sinatra’s famous feud with gossip columnist Lee Mortimer, whom Sinatra knocked out in 1947, after Mortimer had called Sinatra a Communist in his column. Sinatra’s dislike of columnist Dorothy Kilgallen isn’t mentioned, but you can hear him express his feelings towards her in live recordings in the 1950’s and 1960’s. (He was fond of calling her “The Chinless Wonder.”) The film also covers Sinatra’s associations with the Mafia, and his acquaintance with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. Sinatra’s children say point blank that Giancana and the Mob tipped the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy by making sure that Illinois ended up in the Kennedy column. What no one ever mentions about the 1960 election is that Kennedy had enough electoral votes to win the election even if he had lost Illinois. Sinatra was very close to JFK, and organized his official Inaugural gala. Eventually Sinatra fell out with JFK after Bobby Kennedy warned his brother to steer clear of Sinatra due to his Mob connections. JFK then canceled a planned trip to stay with Sinatra in Palm Springs, and stayed with Bing Crosby (a Republican!) instead. 

All or Nothing at All does a superb job of focusing on Sinatra’s politics, and his personal beliefs. Sinatra was a staunch Democrat in the 1940’s, who campaigned tirelessly for FDR’s fourth term in 1944, and was an unstinting champion of civil rights for African-Americans long before it was fashionable. The FBI investigated Sinatra for decades, not only because of his Mafia connections, but also because he was regarded as a liberal who might be a Communist. Sinatra gradually grew more conservative, eventually supporting Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. The movie makes a little too much of Sinatra’s political switch, hinting that his support of Republican candidates was linked to his rejection by the Kennedys. I disagree with that. Sinatra worked very hard for Hubert Humphrey in 1968, appearing at a rally at the Houston Astrodome with Humphrey just two days before the election, and filming a TV ad in support of Humphrey. Sinatra endorsed his friend Ronald Reagan in 1970 when Reagan was running for re-election as Governor of California. In the documentary, Sinatra says that he has been friends with Reagan since 1943. Sinatra was no fan of the hippie culture, and that combined with his personal friendship with Reagan likely started his drift rightward. Sinatra endorsed Richard Nixon’s re-election bid in 1972, but due to Democratic nominee George McGovern’s unpopularity, there was a very large “Democrats for Nixon” group that year, so Sinatra’s support of Nixon wasn’t that unusual. I think Sinatra did get more conservative as he got older, but I also think his shift to the right was greatly influenced by his friendship with Ronald Reagan. 

What amazes me about the richness of Frank Sinatra’s life is that All or Nothing at All is a four hour documentary, and yet there’s still so much more of his life that could be covered. Granted, I’m a huge Sinatraphile, and I understand that four hours might be plenty for most people. But there are gaps, as All or Nothing at All offers only a cursory glance at Sinatra’s career post-1971. That isn’t the biggest loss, since Sinatra’s cultural impact was greatest during the 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s, but still, Sinatra lived for another 27 years. 

I think that the people interviewed for All or Nothing at All did an excellent job of articulating Sinatra’s importance, but there were three Sinatra experts I wish had been a part of the project. I’m a huge fan of Michael Feinstein’s singing and his tireless advocacy for the music of the Great American Songbook. There’s no one who knows more about the songs of that era that Michael Feinstein, and he was a terrific commentator on this year’s American Masters documentary on Bing Crosby. I think Feinstein would have been a great addition to All or Nothing at All. I was also annoyed that two of the best authors about Sinatra’s music weren’t interviewed. Will Friedwald, who wrote the excellent book Sinatra! The Song is You: A Singer’s Art, and Charles Granata, who wrote the superb Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording, were nowhere to be found in the documentary. Who knows, maybe Granata and Friedwald didn’t want to be part of All or Nothing at All, but I would have enjoyed a little bit more content about Sinatra’s singing style and his phrasing. 

Something that struck me while watching film clips of Sinatra sing is how much charisma the man had. You simply cannot take your eyes off of him. It’s only in film clips that you can really see how strikingly blue his eyes were, photos don’t seem to quite capture the color. Even as he aged, Sinatra remained an extremely handsome man, always dapper, with his usual orange pocket square. (Orange was Sinatra’s favorite color.)

Quibbles aside, All or Nothing at All is a fascinating look at one of the most interesting artists of the 20^th century, and a man whose contribution to singing will be deeply felt in centuries to come.