The Chairman of the Board (Frank Sinatra in general)

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	Frank Sinatra in general
Date:	22/11/00 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Swinging

Disadvantages: None

I saw this link in an Easy Listening section, and big Frank was to be found sandwiched between Cliff Richard and Sarah Brightman. I weep for the world.

Anyway, it's not difficult to see why Frank Sinatra is still a musical God. All of the mistakes he made, all of the bad haircuts (all the bad hairpieces), the bobby-sox heart-throb phase, some really bad movies and the self-parody of certain songs ('My Way', 'New York New York') - we can ignore all of it.

Increasingly, compilations of Sinatra seem to be concentrated on his most fruitful period, the Capitol years of the fifties. Sinatra is comfortably fixed in the collective consciousness as a tough but tender Vegas swinger, hat perpetually perched at a jaunty angle on his head, the songs given a powerful jazz boost by Nelson Riddle, the voice controlled, focused and quite staggering to listen to.

This is the period that everyone should attempt if they want to know why people as young as me (well, 27 still feels young), and people several generations ahead of me still dig The Man. This is the period of poise and cool investigated by 'Rat Pack Confidential', the period Scorsese wants to film in his much-delayed film about Dino, the kind of Mafia-tinged hipness to which the Fun Lovin Criminals aspire. Frank Sinatra really could sing; he really could hit the notes and he really had the presence to make dreadful lyrics work like a charm.

There's a compilation called 'Classic Sinatra' out at the moment which is pretty much everything you need to know about the singer: 'Young at Heart', 'I've got you under my skin', the monumental 'Come Fly With Me' (which wraps up everything about the glamour and slickness of the 50s in about three minutes). Best of all is 'One more for my baby (and one more for the road)' which is Sinatra spilling his woes to a bartender at 2.45 in the morning; it's incredibly tender, and s
ums him up entirely -a macho ladies man constantly moving from bar to bedroom to bar, but wearing his heart forever on his sleeve. How much this resembles the real Sinatra is anybody's guess, but as an image goes, it's magic.

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