Thread 128403607

He squeaks, he squawks, he clicks, he creaks, he groans, he moans. That's not the point. Old guys with worse voices have sung better--Champion Jack Dupree prevailed in his 80s because he didn't stake his manhood on the technical impeccability of his instrument. For decades, Sinatra's sound was magnificent, spellbinding, beyond reproach. Now, although he still sings better than the likes of Bono and Carly Simon, Luther Vandross runs rings around him in the vocal department while Liza Minnelli out-acts him. Lesson learned: He who lives by the larynx dies by the larynx. C

>>128403607 (OP)
ha ha yeah this album was sad and shouldn't have been made. poor guy sounded like a corpse that had been reanimated after 300 years.

>>128403607 (OP)
He didn't even sing with any of the guests in the same room.

>>128403638
Capitol deciding to milk the last bit of shekels from him before he expired.

>>128403638
Sinatra's final tour was also quite sad to watch, he was forgetting a lot of the words to songs and his voice was mostly kill.

>>128403771
While Frank seldom disappoints in much of his 55 year recording career with a few exceptions like the tail end of his Columbia run and of course the OP album when he was at death's door, not all of his catalog has held up, not due to anything he does but because many of the arrangers he worked with were questionable. For every Nelson Riddle there was a schlock god like Sy Oliver or Ray Conniff.

>>128403905
>with a few exceptions like the tail end of his Columbia run
By 1950, Sinatra had seen his popularity significantly diminish due to vocal issues, personal problems, and aging out of being a teen idol. He also quarreled with Mitch Miller who had newly taken over the label's pop records division and wanted him to record housewife pop cheese. Miller also wanted to bring in new young singers who would be more amenable to his direction.

After he signed with Capitol, he wanted to just bring back Axel Stordahl and the first session he had at the new label on April 14, 1953 had him and Stordahl cut four songs. One of these was "I've Got The World On a String", which didn't chart. The others were left in the can and didn't see the light of day until the '60s. Capitol then offered to pair him up with Nelson Riddle, an upcoming arranger in his early 30s who had had some hits with Nat King Cole, at least for singles but Sinatra chose to work with George Siravo for his first Capitol album, until realizing the chemistry he had with Riddle.

But yes, his last three or so years at Columbia were pretty bad and not up to what he was doing in 1939-48 or his Capitol run.

>>128404035
the late CBS period gets a little bit of a bad rap. there are housewife pop songs like "Tennessee Newsboy", "One Finger Melody", and the worst one, "Mama Will Bark" that you can clearly tell he did not enjoy doing. and there are points where Frank seems to know it's a new decade and he needs to evolve past the sound he was doing on the Stordahl records. it's not all bad though and he still maintains his sense of professionalism throughout this low period.

>>128404135
Not to mention "I'm A Fool To Want You", a deserved classic and one of the last songs he did for CBS.

>>128404035
From what I heard of the 49-52 era, it's not up to his Capitol run but everything is recorded well, sounds great, plenty of good arrangements although some giving him a backup chorus are not to my taste (tbqh some of his 60s songs did that too)

CBS lost a lot of their talent with their own faggotry by making them record garbage, not paying them enough, or failing to promote them. That included Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Bob Dylan, although eventually they did renegotiate Dylan's contract to give him total creative freedom and ownership of his masters.

>>128404413
pretty sure it was normal back then for a singer to not have control over his own music

>>128404445
Capitol operated on the principle of artistic freedom. Usually. There were occasional exceptions like Peggy Lee skipping town when they wouldn't let her record "Lover" but Columbia and RCA's business model was just "Get in the booth and sing, and don't ask any questions."

>>128404135
Sinatra's voice was maturing by the early '50s, his singing had gotten more expressive and dynamic than it was 1939-48. Some of his 1949 recordings show that he was getting there. His vocal tone was still younger and more boyish than it became later at Capitol, but he could definitely emote better and was less of a "singing string" that acted like an extra violin in Stordahl's backing band.

In the 60s as he was pushing 50 his voice sounded darker and rougher. Some of the early Reprise stuff was also badly mastered and remasters of them show in fact that his voice in 61-63 was mostly the same as it had been in the late '50s.

Frank at La Guardia Airport September 28, 1951 with Manie Sacks. This was probably after he'd just gotten back to New York from his debut Vegas performance at the Desert Inn. IDK what he's waving his arm at short of "point at something in the distance" being a photography pose cliche in the 50s.

>>128404035
>Miller also wanted to bring in new young singers who would be more amenable to his direction.

Dinah Shore also left CBS when he arrived. Yeah he did want to start over with Mitchell/Bennett/Clooney/Carson that he envisioned as the label's new young stars for the new decade, while also retaining a few veterans like Day and Stafford.

>>128404631
His radio performances from the 40s were not as stiff as the records. I don't think he quite gets there on the records until about 1956.

>>128403761
It has been said by Frank many times that he did not like to record in a isolation booth away from the band. Too bad about what happened here.

Jonathan Schwartz used to tell a story over the air, regarding the Big Blue Box. When Frank Military first approached Sinatra as a emissary for Columbia Records and told him Columbia's plans Sinatra got very angry and started ranting about Mitch Miller and what songs he wanted to leave out of the collection, Frank Military just looked at Sinatra and said no it has to be everything. Sinatra didn't understand or accept, at the time, the concept of a complete box set, very softly he said to Sinatra " No Frank, it has to be everything " I can remember seeing a photo of someone, some executive, presenting Sinatra with a copy of the BBB in Atlantic City, I believe.

Some legends listened in there and a lot of literallywhos

>Dorothy Shay
>Victor Borge
>Alvy West
>The Three Flames
>The Dell Trio
What?

>>128405474
I think the list was in order of sales/perceived importance of the artist to CBS. Kind of odd to see Duke Ellington down near the middle and Doris Day is down rather low suggesting she wasn't seen as a major deal yet.

I kind of chortle at Sony's resistance to reissuing Sinatra box sets when they put out that Johnny Mathis box set in 2011 and Mathis is a guy whose albums can be found at Goodwill for $2 and you can't pay people to take them.

>>128405652
I'm not saying that the box isn't a Mathis fan's dream come true nor do I denigrate the music it contains, but maybe this set was a vanity project. Perhaps after seeing the Bennett set or others of the kind Mathis told Sony he wanted one as well. Who knows?

Nancy Sinatra thinks her father's 40s records are his best ones, so meh.

>>128405849
There is disagreement over 40s Sinatra. When Jonathan Schwartz interviewed James Kaplan in 2016 Schwartz agreed with Kaplan that Sinatra's voice in the 40s was "Beautiful but that's all." Schwartz then repeated that Nelson Riddle thought Sinatra's voice was "uninteresting" back then.

There were singers like Vic Damone and Steve Lawrence who never got past emulating his mannered 40s style.

>>128405906
Steve Lawrence is easy to ridicule and many of his solo records are painful, although the Eydie duet stuff seems to bring out more in him than he could pull off by his lonely. To be fair she was a more than well-endowed singer on her own but they were both more dynamic and expressive as a pair than by themselves.

>>128405906
Not a fair assertion. FS absolutely blew everyone else out of the water in the 40s in terms of tone and technique. Every other male vocalist at that time sounded like a stuffed prop in a museum display. Granted the arrangements, recording quality, and sometimes the material are of their time and haven't always held up but the guy was like a lightning bolt back then.

A valid criticism of Sinatra is that he rerecorded a lot of his 40s stuff to the detriment of new material at times whereas Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby really didn't revisit a lot of their old hits and Perry Como wouldn't redo anything outside Christmas and religious material despite RCA's protests.

>>128406118
pretty sure Crosby couldn't remake many of his old hits after leaving Decca

>>128406133
Granted. Perhaps he might have redone many of his early 30s records in his more mature late 40s voice, as long as it didn't take him away too much from new songs. Getting back to the original point, Sinatra did waste needless amounts of vinyl in especially the Reprise era remaking his Columbia-era hits that might have been better served on new songs.

>>128406159
But how about Dick Haymes? If only Capitol had him re-record all of his Decca ballads, the world would be a better place.

>>128404631

He chain smoked winstons , it was only a matter of time. His voice was done by the 1970s.

https://youtu.be/1uyUjO-Vyyw

What are his best three albums? I never listened to him.

>>128406133
>pretty sure Crosby couldn't remake many of his old hits after leaving Decca
btw Bing's voice peaked in 1946-51, he sounded best during those years and just maybe the rise of Sinatra compelled him to step up his game

>>128406253
Any of the Capitol era stuff, there are no bad recordings from that period especially pre-58.

>>128406195
"Rain Or Shine" was basically Haymes re-recording his Decca hits on Capitol.

Bing re-recorded his early hits on his 1954 "Musical Autobiography" but in truncated, one chorus and out, Buddy Cole Trio, Tony Bennett like fashion.

>>128406291
Haymes had way more than 12 hits and anyone would rather not hear Buddy Cole on anything but a real piano.

>Bing re-recorded his early hits on his 1954 "Musical Autobiography" but in truncated, one chorus and out, Buddy Cole Trio, Tony Bennett like fashion.

Too bad that his voice had kind of lost a step or two by that point.

Billy Eckstine could have been everyone's favorite white approved black singer instead of Nat King Cole if things had gone differently. He was really hot in 1949-51 but couldn't sustain a long-term career. For one thing he wouldn't play black stereotypes in movies, he refused every time they tried to cast him as a bellhop, janitor etc. Also he wasn't much of an actor but then Nat wasn't either for that matter. My dad had the chance to meet him in the 80s and he was pretty bitter that his career never quite took off. He worked with Nelson Riddle before Sinatra, but was mainly a covers artist. The stuff he was recording near the end of his MGM run was kinda bad. His LIFE Magazine article definitely harmed his image as well.

>>128406401
Eckstine was a product of his time in a lot of ways, and he probably wouldn't have lasted into the rock era anyway. That whole crop of "belter" singers like Eckstine, Eddie Fisher, Teresa Brewer, Kay Starr, Guy Mitchell etc who ruled the early 50s kind of fell out of favor quickly. I mean, Sinatra also had to completely reinvent himself for a new era.

>>128404160
and that was the B-side of Mama Will Bark on top of it

>>128406515
"Fool" charted higher because DJs flipped the record over. That does not negate the fact that "Mama Will Bark" was the "A" side since of course Mitch Miller always put his housewife pop schlock numbers on the A-side of records. Sinatra sang "Mama Will Bark" with Dagmar on his TV show. If "Fool" was the "A" side why didn't he sing that? "Fool" became the "A" side when it was re-issued later with "If I Forget You" as the "B" side.

>>128406635
>>128406401
Billy Eckstine's "Fool" outsold Sinatra's and the disc bombed which convinced Miller that Sinatra's career was toast. He only recorded MWB because he rejected "My Heart Cries For You" and "The Roving Sparrow" so Miller gave those to the then-unknown Guy Mitchell to record instead, both sides were hits, and a despondent Sinatra then avoided rejecting songs at CBS again.

it was a good thing FS did then go to Capitol after parting with CBS. he was initially considering RCA but that might also have ended badly because they were also pretty big peddlers of housewife pop. i mean, Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Tony Martin were all capable singers who wasted their talent recording prodigies of that stuff on RCA.

>>128406681
Sinatra sold about 35,000 copies of "Fool." Eckstine sold over 100,000 copies. The flip of Eckstine's record was "Love Me" another Sinatra cover. Mr. B's record may have been on the "Race" or "Sepia" chart. Another of his moniker's was "The Sepia Sinatra". Later Eckstine would cover "I Can Read Between The Lines" and "You'll Get Yours".

>>128406869
he was pretty much washed up by 51 yet still surprising to sell that few copies

>>128406894
Perhaps way too autobiographical during those very different times when a singer was just supposed to be an entertainer and not make the song about themselves. Viewing it now from a distance we can appreciate the depth and (though painful) beauty of the whole story. But back then Ava was no fan of Sinatra lovers and he was singing this to her.

not at all, Eckstine was a chart-topping singer in 1951 and way bigger than FS at that point. Now if he sold more copies of "Fool" than Sinatra and his record did not chart in Billboard while Sinatra's did were the Billboard charts "rigged" and could "race" have been a factor? After all we are talking about 1951...Eckstine was the first black crooner to specialize in romantic ballads, for contrast Nat King Cole was still leading a trio and mostly doing novelty songs.

>>128406973
He was huge in 1949-52. Then he did the single dumbest thing a black singer in 1951 could have done. 'Nuff said.

Frank at his Toluca Lake, California home in 1945 examining a record. Five year old Nancy off the right.

>>128407128
this is a CRC (Columbia Records Corp) disc that appears to be a radio performance of his. it could be a pressing but is most likely a lacquer.

>>128405217
He started doing that more frequently in his later years, and it not only reflects in his vocal effort but in the whole sound of the mix on some of those late period records. There's so much separation between himself and the band.

>>128406635
Miller himself had a different version of what happened with MWB.

>"So, this song comes in," Miller recalled in "Sessions With Sinatra", "And I figured 'Let's try a novelty number since none of the great songs were selling.' He was at the Paramount Theater working with Dagmar so I thought 'Why not?' I even backed it with a great song, 'I'm a Fool To Want You', to ensure it sold. People don't understand this, but there was nothing inferior about the material he was recording then, yet he keeps coming back to 'Mama Will Bark.'"

>>128406270
Sinatra's three busiest years in the studio were 1947, '56, and '61.

these pre-rock n roll threads are consistently the best ones on /mu/ these days. great reading
>>128405259
dylan's complete 65-66 columbia sessions were also issued in a big blue box. it came out when he was doing all those sinatra covers albums. hmm...

>>128407326
He was still popular in 47. One reason he recorded so much that year could be anticipation of the recording ban the next year. The recordings kinda picked up at the end of 48 where they left off to a degree, without resorting to material Frank might not have otherwise recorded, but it was the beginning of the end. Around 48-49 seems to be the transitional period, both in career trajectory and even in the music he chose to do, both in the studio and on the radio. The uptempo swinging stuff beginning around 48 performed over the air now became more pronounced and showed where he was heading.

>>128405474
Hot Lips Page was an R&B singer whose career was basically before it even started due to a manager who hated him and undermined him.

>>128407374
>47 was the last year of the decade where Downbeat's polls had him as the top male vocalist
>he might have heeded Bing Crosby's suggestion that "Nature Boy" was un-coverable since his attempt at covering it sure didn't improve on the NCK original
>almost nobody could record in 48 due to the Musicians Union strike, even though other singers during the year still did better than him
>The Miracle of the Bells and The Kissing Bandit were both lousy movies
>Frank was no longer front page news, but relegated to like Page 30 of Downbeat and other music publications

also in 1948 was before he got with Ava Gardner so he was kind of at a quiet moment in his personal life. Frankie Laine was emerging but still at Mercury. so was Mitch Miller, neither had gone to CBS yet. many of the big names of the next decade like Bennett, Brewer, Clooney, Mitchell, and Page had either not begun recording yet or were in the early stages of their recording careers.

>>128407258
Mitch Miller comes off as such a tool and scumbag.

>giving Guy Mitchell a stage name named after yourself
>bullying a singer to put his face on an album cover because "derf I call the shots around here"
>David Stone Martin mentioned it in a interview, after reading it I lost what little respect I had for him
>oh and of course a lot of the garbage that he had Sinatra record

>>128407545
>also in 1948 was before he got with Ava Gardner so he was kind of at a quiet moment in his personal life
not exactly how Richard Havers biography of FS tells it

>Frank meets up with Ava Gardner
>after a night of drinking and carousing he takes her back to his pad for benis in bagina
>however Ava apparently decided she wasn't ready for it yet and turned him down
>supposedly the next phase of their relationship was in the fall of '49
but getting back to the main point that Havers tells...
>he was at that time living mainly in an apartment in Hollywood where this happened
>Frank was not too happy about his life at this point and was starting to fray at the seams a bit
>as proven when he attended the premier of Miracle of the Bells in San Francisco
>he only went out of contractual obligations and racked up a massive hotel bill as a huge fuck you to RKO
>this included ordering 88 Manhattans which he left untouched when he left the hotel four days later
>for most of '48 he was living his usual bachelor lifestyle, interrupted only when his third child arrived that summer

>>128408039
Sinatra and Gardner def. had met by '48. They were both contracted to MGM. Most biographers believe they didn't actually knock boots until late '49 when they met in NYC at the premiere of the stage production of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes."

>>128404035
The dawn of the 50s was generally considered a low point for the record industry.

>TV emerges as a new competing form of entertainment
>transitional period as vinyl discs are replacing 78s
>the baby boom meant a lot of people were buying child products rather than music
>plus a lot of embarrassing novelty hits like If I Knew You Were Coming Id've Baked a Cake
it seemed like by 1952 the industry was starting to recover and had fully transitioned from 40s to 50s styles plus vinyl discs were taking over

>>128408161
emphasis on transitioned. Decca ditched Dick Haymes and the Andrews Sisters but kept Bing. Haymes suffered a worse career reversal than FS, who at least wasn't threatened with deportation. but no question that Gardner and Mitch Miller both torpedoed Frank's career hard.

Also later on Frank claimed Columbia and RCA were dishonest monopolies as their parent companies owned media outlets and said that Capitol was a fully independent label without those connections. It was pointed out that he didn't apparently mind this when he was still on Columbia, but their TV/radio parent company couldn't halt his career slide.

>>128403607 (OP)
My grandma is a serious, bona fide, first generation Sinatra superfan and trad pop/swing connoisseur with a truly autistic depth and breadth of knowledge of the music, and the duets albums are the only ones I don't think she has ever listened to more than once. I think she purged them from her memories.

those early Columbia LP covers were terrible

>>128408272
no doubt more Mitch Miller faggotry

>>128408365
Actually no, he was still at Mercury at that point. Dinah Shore was one of the first casualties of his arrival at Columbia because she didn't want to go along with his faggotry and left.

World War II was really bad from a music preservation standpoint because master discs were being made from glass rather than aluminum, which was being hoarded for the war effort, and these discs were more easily damaged. It was why the master of "White Christmas" broke and Crosby had to rerecord it, it was a wartime recording made with a glass master disc.

On top of that a lot of older master discs were literally being discarded and melted down for their aluminum. A tremendous loss for music history, and of course in Europe it was even worse.

>>128408231
>and the duets albums are the only ones I don't think she has ever listened to more than once. I think she purged them from her memories.
Everyone purged Duets from their memory. (^:

>>128408272
It was more about advertising the new format than advertising the artist

>>128407077
>he did the single dumbest thing a black singer in 1951 could have done. '
Elaborate?

>>128408662
The picture speaks for itself.

?

bump

>>128408272
The first 30 or so Columbia albums released used this super-minimalist cover art.

>>128403607 (OP)
i miss this lil nigga like you wouldn't believe.