A Salute to the Golden Age of American Popular Music

We salute the music from Broadway, Hollywood, New Orleans, Tin Pan Alley and the "melody makers;" i.e. the bands and singers that brought the music to us via the radio, recordings and live events in the period from the 1920's to the 1960's. This is the golden period of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy Van Heusen, Harold Arlen, Harry Warren, etc.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

The story of One For My Baby

A number of great tunes were penned in bars. The most famous is "One For My Baby." It is the anthem of lonely drinkers (or drunks). Songwriter Johnny Mercer penned One for My Baby (and One More for the Road) on a napkin while sitting at the bar at New York City's famous bar- P.J. Clarke's.

The bartender at that time was named Tommy Joyce, and Johnny Mercer reportedly apologized to Joyce, saying "I couldn't get your name to rhyme". Thus, we have the classic line "set'em up Joe."

The "One For My Baby" music was written by Harold Arlen, (lyrics by Johnny Mercer) for the musical The Sky's the Limit (1943) and first performed in the film by Fred Astaire.

Frank Sinatra's recording is probably the best known...and also the best.

Frank Sinatra was an extremely generous tipper (where wasn't he?)  at P.J. Clarke's, and was considered the "owner" of Table 20. When he cruised New York bars, he would start out at Sardi's, but he would always end up at P.J. Clarke's.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Glenn Miller 's music still heard 'round the world

Glenn Miller Orchestra to perform in ZagrebThe Glenn Miller Orchestra (Europe Edition) led by the renowned Dutch pianist Will Salden returns to Zagreb, Croatia to perform in the city’s Lisinski Concert Hall next month (January 13, 2012).

The concert in Zagreb is part of the orchestra’s regional tour “In the Miller Mood” which will see them performing in Lendava, Mostar, Podgorica, Sarajevo and Belgrade. Glenn Miller Orchestra performed in Zagreb last time in 2008.
Glen Miller was an American jazz musician, composer and bandleader of one of the best known “big bands” in the swing era. He left behind many memorable compositions including "Moonlight Serenade", "In the Mood", "Tuxedo Junction" and "Little Brown Jug".
Glenn Miller Orchestra is led by the renowned Dutch pianist Will Salden from Netherlands. Salden studied piano and accordion at the conservatory in Maastricht between 1968 and 1973, and began to study Miller's music in 1978.
Since 1985, Salden has been touring with his orchestra throughout Europe to sold-out audiences. In 1990, the president of Glenn Miller Productions, Inc., Mr. David Mackay, Jr., appointed Wil Salden as leader of the Glenn Miller Orchestra for Europe.
The Glenn Miller Orchestra's repertoire includes all of Miller's most popular tunes, including "In the Mood," "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," "Pennsylvania 6-5000," "A String of Pearls," "Moonlight Serenade" and "Tuxedo Junction."
Besides Miller's classics, the orchestra also incorporates music from the swing era, including songs by Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra, Irving Berlin and Doris Day.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Frank Sinatra's 96th Birthday-Part One

Today would have been Frank Sinatra's 96th birthday.

"Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history, Frank Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940s when his first solo appearances provoked the kind of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.

His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940s to the sophisticated swinger of the '50s and '60s seemed to personify the country's loss of innocence. During World War II, Sinatra's tender romanticism served as the dreamy emotional link between millions of women and their husbands and boyfriends fighting overseas. Reinventing himself in the '50s, the starry-eyed boy next door turned into the cosmopolitan man of the world, a bruised romantic with a tough-guy streak and a song for every emotional season.


In a series of brilliant conceptual albums, he codified a musical vocabulary of adult relationships with which millions identified. The haunted voice heard on a jukebox in the wee small hours of the morning lamenting the end of a love affair was the same voice that jubilantly invited the world to "come fly with me" to exotic realms in a never-ending party.

Sinatra appeared in more than 50 films, and won an Academy Award as best supporting actor for his portrayal of the feisty misfit soldier Maggio in "From Here to Eternity" (1953). As an actor, he could communicate the same complex mixture of emotional honesty, vulnerability and cockiness that he projected as a singer, but he often chose his roles indifferently or unwisely.

It was as a singer that he exerted the strongest cultural influence. Following his idol Bing Crosby, who had pioneered the use of the microphone, Sinatra transformed popular singing by infusing lyrics with a personal, intimate point of view that conveyed a steady current of eroticism.

A Smooth Baritone Inspired Copycats

The skinny blue-eyed crooner, quickly nicknamed the Voice, made hordes of bobby-soxers swoon in the 1940s with an extraordinarily smooth and flexible baritone that he wielded with matchless skill. His mastery of long-lined phrasing inspired imitations by many other male crooners, notably Dick Haymes, Vic Damone and Tony Bennett in the 1940s and '50s and most recently the pop-jazz star Harry Connick Jr.

After the voice lost its velvety youthfulness, Sinatra's interpretations grew more personal and idiosyncratic, so that each performance became a direct expression of his personality and his mood of the moment. In expressing anger, petulance and bravado -- attitudes that had largely been excluded from the acceptable vocabulary of pop feeling -- Sinatra paved the way for the unfettered vocal aggression of rock singers.

The changes in Sinatra's vocal timbre coincided with a precipitous career descent in the late 1940s and early '50s. But in 1953, Sinatra made one of the most spectacular career comebacks in show business history, re-emerging as a coarser-voiced, jazzier interpreter of popular standards who put a more aggressive personal stamp on his songs.

Almost singlehandedly, he helped lead a revival of vocalized swing music that took American pop to a new level of musical sophistication.

Coinciding with the rise of the long-playing record album, his 1950s recordings ---- along with Ella Fitzgerald's "songbook" albums saluting individual composers -- were instrumental in establishing a canon of American pop song literature.

With Nelson Riddle, his most talented arranger, Sinatra defined the criteria for sound, style and song selection in pop recording during the pre-Beatles era. The aggressive uptempo style of Sinatra's mature years spawned a genre of punchy, rhythmic belting associated with Las Vegas, which he was instrumental in establishing and popularizing as an entertainment capital.

The Archetypal Swinger, Drinking and Hedonistic

By the late 1950s, Sinatra had become so much the personification of American show business success that his life and his art became emblematic of the temper of the times. Except perhaps for Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine, nobody did more to create a male ideal in the 1950s. For years, Sinatra seemed the embodiment of the hard-drinking, hedonistic swinger who could have his pick of women and who was the leader of a party-loving entourage.

That personality and wardrobe, borrowed in part from his friend Jimmy Van Heusen, the talented songwriter and man about town who liked to insouciantly sling his raincoat over his shoulder, was, in turn, imitated by many other show business figures. It was a style Sinatra never entirely abandoned. Even in his later years, he would often stroll onto the stage with a drink in his hand.

On a deeper level, Sinatra's career and public image touched many aspects of American cultural life.
For millions, his ascent from humble Italian-American roots in Hoboken, N.J., was a symbol of ethnic achievement. And more than most entertainers, he used his influence to support political candidates. His change of allegiance from pro-Roosevelt Democrat in the 1940s to pro-Reagan Republican in the 1980s paralleled a seismic shift in American politics.

By the end of his career, Sinatra's annual income was estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, from concerts, record albums, real estate ventures and holdings in several companies, including a missile-parts concern, a private airline, Reprise Records (which he founded), Artanis (Sinatra spelled backward) Productions and Sinatra Enterprises.

Sinatra left his imprint on scores of popular songs and was the background voice, it seemed, for the romances of most Americans, from the earliest to the second time around.

Among the standards he recorded at least three times were "All or Nothing at All," "Angel Eyes," "Autumn in New York," "I Concentrate on You," "I Get a Kick Out of You," "I'll Be Seeing You," "I'll Never Smile Again," "I've Got a Crush on You," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Nancy (With the Laughing Face)," "Night and Day," "One for My Baby," "September Song" and "Stormy
Weather."

His personal signature songs included "Put Your Dreams Away" (his 1945 theme) and later "Young at Heart" (1954), "All the Way" (1957), "It Was a Very Good Year" (1965), "Strangers in the Night" (1966), "My Way" (1969) and "New York, New York" (1980).

For decades, his private life, with its many romances, feuds, brawls and associations with gangsters, was grist for the gossip columns. But he also had a reputation for spontaneous generosity, for helping singers who were starting out and for supporting friends who were in need. And over the years he gave millions of dollars to various philanthropies.

Francis Albert Sinatra, Thanks to Bing Crosby

Sinatra was born in Hoboken on Dec. 12, 1915, the only child of Martin Sinatra, a boilermaker and sometime boxer from Catania, Sicily, and his wife, Natalie Garavante, who was nicknamed Dolly. The young Francis Albert Sinatra, who attended Dave E. Rue Junior High School and Demarest High in Hoboken, decided to become a singer either after attending a Bing Crosby concert or seeing a Crosby film sometime in 1931 or 1932.

His mother encouraged his ambition, allowing him to drop out of high school.

In 1935, after two years of local club dates, he joined three other young men from Hoboken who called themselves the Three Flashes. The quartet renamed itself the Hoboken Four and won firstprize on "Major Bowes's Original Amateur Hour."

After several months with the group, Sinatra decided to go it alone, and in the late 1930s he had his first important nightclub engagement, at the Rustic Cabin, a roadhouse in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Local radio exposure brought him to the attention of Harry James, the trumpet player who had recently left Benny Goodman to form his own band. James signed Sinatra for $75 a week, and the singer made his first concert appearance with the James band in June 1939 and his first recording the next month.

Early that year, he married his longtime sweetheart, Nancy Barbato. They would have three children: Nancy, who was born in 1940; Franklin Wayne (later shortened to Frank Jr.), born in 1944, and Christina (Tina), born in 1948.

Six months after Sinatra signed with Harry James, Tommy Dorsey invited him to join his band, which was far more popular. Released without protest from his contract by James, Sinatra remained with Dorsey from January 1940 until September 1942. His first successful record with the band was "Polka Dots and Moonbeams." Six months after joining Dorsey, he scored his first No. 1 hit, "I'll Never Smile Again," a dreamy ballad he sang with the Pied Pipers, the vocal group then led by Jo Stafford.

Determined to be the first singer since Bing Crosby to have a successful solo career, he split from Dorsey, who held him to a contract that gave the band leader 43 percent of the singer's income for the next decade. Eventually Sinatra, with his record label, Columbia, and his booking agency, MCA, bought out the contract.

In addition to "I'll Never Smile Again," Sinatra left behind several classic early recordings with Dorsey. They included "Star Dust" (1940, with the Pied Pipers), "This Love of Mine" (1941) and "There Are Such Things" (1942, with the Pied Pipers).

Sinatra's last concert with Dorsey was in September 1942. Three months later, he made history at the age of 27 with his first solo appearance at the Paramount Theater in New York City. Billed as an "extra added attraction" on a program headlined by Benny Goodman, Sinatra appeared on Dec. 30 and evoked a public hysteria that made headlines. Within weeks he had signed lucrative contracts with Columbia Records, R.K.O. Pictures and the radio program "Your Hit Parade."

Beloved by Hordes of Bobby-Soxers

The adulation reached a high point on Oct. 12, 1944, the opening day of a three-week return engagement at the Paramount, when 30,000 fans -- most of them bobby-soxers -- formed a frenzied mob in Times Square.

"It was the war years, and there was a great loneliness," Sinatra, who was kept from the draft by a punctured eardrum, recounted later. "I was the boy in every corner drugstore who'd gone off, drafted to the war. That was all."

From 1943 to 1945, he was the lead singer on "Your Hit Parade" and at the same time began recording for Columbia. Because of a musicians' strike, the accompaniment on his first several recording sessions for the label was a vocal chorus called the Bobby Tucker Singers, instead of an orchestra. In June 1943, however, Columbia rereleased a recording he had made in September 1939 with Harry James. The recording, "All or Nothing at All," which had sold 8,000 copies in its first release, sold over a million.

Once the musicians' strike was settled in November 1944, Sinatra began recording with Axel Stordahl, who had been a trombonist and lead arranger with Tommy Dorsey. Stordahl's sweet string-laced settings for Sinatra's recordings silhouetted a yearning voice that one writer compared to "worn velveteen."

Until Sinatra left Columbia for Capitol Records in 1953, Stordahl remained his principal arranger. He also brilliantly exploited the songs of Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, who tailored many of their ballads to Sinatra's voice and style.

The Movie Star, Playing an Innocent

Sinatra's first movie appearance was in 1940, singing with the Dorsey band in "Las Vegas Nights." He made his movie acting debut in 1943, in "Higher and Higher," an innocuous bit of froth that was
described by Bosley Crowther, a New York Times movie critic, as "a slapdash setting for the incredibly unctuous readings of the Voice." The film was followed by "Step Lively" (1944) and "Anchors Aweigh" (1945), the first of three movies in which Sinatra played Gene Kelly's sidekick. In these early films, Sinatra, often wearing a sailor suit and projecting a skinny soulfulness, played a wide-eyed innocent who was shy with women.

In 1945, he also made "The House I Live In," a 10-minute patriotic plea for racial and religious tolerance that won him a special Academy Award. Like his mother, Sinatra was an ardent Democrat and supporter of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. He visited the White House in 1944 and campaigned for Roosevelt in his bid for a fourth term as President.

Sinatra's popularity remained at a peak through 1946, when he had 15 hit singles.

Then it began a gradual slide that steepened after 1948 and hit bottom in 1952. As early as November 1947, an appearance at the Capitol Theater in New York drew disappointing attendance. Only 4 Sinatra singles made the Top 10 in 1947, and the number dropped to one in 1948.

Although he had shown himself to have an engaging screen presence, his film career had not made him a top box-office star. From 1946 to 1949, he appeared in five MGM musicals -- "Till the Clouds Roll By" (1946) (in which he sang "Ol' Man River" in a white suit), "It Happened in Brooklyn" (1947), "The Kissing Bandit" (1948), "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" (1949) and "On the Town" (1949) -- and one R.K.O. film, "The Miracle of the Bells" (1948), in which he was
miscast as a priest.

After two more unsuccessful pictures, "Double Dynamite" (1951) and "Meet Danny Wilson" (1952), his movie career all but evaporated.

Part of the public disenchantment came after the columnist Robert Ruark denounced him in 1947 for having socialized with the deported gangster Lucky Luciano in Cuba. The suggestion that the singer consorted with criminals made him a target of the conservative press, which resented his pro-Roosevelt political stance. For the rest of Sinatra's career, stories of his relations with the
underworld dogged him, and he reacted angrily to the charges.

Divorce and Remarriage; Career Troubles

While his career was in decline in the late 1940's, his marriage to Nancy Barbato also unraveled. In 1949, he had begun an affair with the movie star Ava Gardner. The relationship became public the next year, and on November 7, 1951, one week after his divorce was final, he married her in Philadelphia.

Passionate but stormy, the marriage lasted just less than two years. MGM announced their separation in October 1953, and they were divorced in 1957.

Those personal upheavals, including a suicide attempt, coincided with increasing tension between Sinatra and Columbia Records after Mitch Miller took the company's creative reins in 1950.

In an ever more desperate search for a hit single, Sinatra let himself be coerced into recording inferior material, the most notorious example being "Mama Will Bark," a 1951 novelty duet with the television personality Dagmar that included dog imitations by Donald Baine.

Although his voice had begun to reflect the strain he was under, he still made some powerful recordings, including "April in Paris," the anguished "I'm a Fool to Want You" and renditions of "Castle Rock" and "The Birth of the Blues" that anticipated the swinging Sinatra of the mid-50s.

A Doomed Maggio, Leading to a Rebirth

Sinatra's phenomenal resurgence began in 1953 with the release of "From Here to Eternity," Fred Zinnemann's film version of James Jones's best-selling novel about American G.I.'s in Hawaii on the eve of World War II. His portrayal of Maggio, the combative Italian-American soldier who is beaten to death in a stockade, his spirit unbroken, won him rave reviews, an Oscar and renewed public
sympathy.

In April 1953, Sinatra, then 37, had signed with Capitol Records. A cautious deal, the contract was for only one year, with no advance. Sinatra arrived at Capitol just when his voice had lost most of its youthful sheen, but the move proved fortunate. Only five years earlier, the long-playing record had been introduced, and the longer form encouraged Sinatra, who brought remarkable introspective
depth to the interpretation of lyrics, to make cohesive album-length emotional statements.

In his second recording session for Capitol, in late April 1953, Sinatra was teamed with Nelson Riddle, who became the most important of the several arrangers with whom he worked during his decade with the label. A trombonist who had also worked with Tommy Dorsey, Riddle pioneered in augmenting a big-band lineup with strings, and he was the master of an elegant pop impressionism
that enhanced Sinatra's vocal image of urbane sophistication. On a series of classic pop albums for Capitol, the singer and arranger virtually reinvented swing music for a more opulent era.

That process began with their first single release, "I've Got the World on a String," which hit the pop charts in the summer of 1953. It continued with the albums "Songs for Young Lovers," released in early 1954, and "Swing Easy," which came out six months later.

The collaboration hit its artistic peak with three albums. "In the Wee Small Hours," a 16-cut collection of classic torch songs sung in a quietly anguished baritone, was released in the spring of 1955. "Songs for Swingin' Lovers," released a year later, defined Sinatra in his adult "swinging" mode. It included what many regard as his greatest recorded performance: Cole Porter's "I've Got
You Under My Skin."

"Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely," released in the summer of 1958, expanded on the mournful, introspective tone of "Wee Small Hours" by adding shadings that were at once jazzier and more operatic. The album, which included his classic recording of "What's New," inspired Linda Ronstadt's hit 1983 album "What's New," which in turn spurred a revival of interest in elegant '50s
pop styles.

Sinatra's Capitol albums were among the first so-called concept albums in the way they explored different adult approaches to love and invoked varied aspects of the singer's personality. These were the fun-loving hedonist ("Songs for Swingin' Lovers" and its equally brilliant 1957 follow-up, "A Swingin' Affair"), the romantic confidant ("Close to You," recorded with the Hollywood String
Quartet), the jet-set playboy ("Come Fly With Me"), the romantic loner ("Where Are You?," "No One Cares") and the hardened sensation-seeker ("Come Swing With Me").

In 1959, "Come Dance With Me!," a hard-swinging album arranged by Billy May, won Sinatra his first Grammy Awards, for album of the year and best male vocal performance, and stayed on the sales chart for 140 weeks, longer than any other Sinatra album.

The Hit Maker and Prolific Actor

Sinatra's career as a maker of hit singles was also rejuvenated. "Young at Heart," which hit the pop charts in February 1954, reached No. 2 on Billboard's pop singles chart, and "Learnin' the Blues" reached No. 1 the following year. His other significant hits from the late 1950s included "Love and Marriage," (which was written for a television production of "Our Town," in which Sinatra played the
Stage Manager), "The Tender Trap" (1955), "Hey! Jealous Lover" (1956), "All the Way" (1957) and "Witchcraft" (1958).

During this period, the versatile team of Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, who had become partners in 1954, functioned almost as Sinatra's house songwriters, supplying both movie song hits and the title songs for albums.

After "From Here to Eternity," Sinatra's movie career boomed, with the roles many and varied. He played the perennial gambler Nathan Detroit in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical "Guys and Dolls" (1955), a heroin addict in "The Man With the Golden Arm" the same year and an Army investigator tracking a would-be assassin in the political thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962).
His performance in "The Man With the Golden Arm" won him an Academy Award nomination for best actor.

In his better movie roles -- playing a would-be Presidential assassin in "Suddenly" (1954), the comedian Joe E. Lewis in "The Joker Is Wild" (1957) and a vulnerable intellectual in "Some Came Running" (1958) -- Sinatra conveyed an outsider's edgy volatility that matched the film-noirish mood of his more introspective albums.

His roles in the film musicals "High Society" (1956) and "Pal Joey" (1957) as well as "Guys and Dolls" effectively played off his scrappy, streetwise image.

Assessing Sinatra's film career, the critic David Thomson said he had a "pervasive influence on American acting: he glamorized the fatalistic outsider; he made his own anger intriguing, and in the late '50s especially he was one of our darkest male icons."

"Sinatra is a noir sound," he said, "like saxophones, foghorns, gunfire and the quiet weeping of women in the background."

CONTINUED

Frank Sinatra's 96th Birthday-Part Two

Chairman of the Board, Leader of the Rat Pack

Sinatra remained a top box office draw for nearly a decade, and his success as both singer and actor led the New York radio personality William B. Williams to nickname him Chairman of the Board of show business. The name stuck for the rest of his long career.

At a time when restraints on sexual and social behavior had begun to loosen a bit, the high-living Sinatra, who enjoyed gambling and womanizing, became in the popular press the embodiment of the swinger, a concept repeatedly invoked by his album titles.

In the '60s, Sinatra appeared to be America's quintessential middle-aged playboy. "Ocean's Eleven" (1960) was the first of three Sinatra films to feature the star surrounded by the hard-drinking, high-living clique -- nicknamed the Rat Pack, which included Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop.

The group was an outgrowth of a social circle that had centered on Humphrey Bogart, who died in 1957. The Rat Packers appeared together in three more lighthearted capers: "Sergeants Three" (1962), "Four for Texas" (1963) and "Robin and the Seven Hoods" (1964). This was the other side of Sinatra. As carefully as he plumbed his music, after 1960 he seemed largely to be wasting his
acting talents by walking through his movies.

One of the Rat Pack's favorite playgrounds was Las Vegas, where Sinatra was a pioneer entertainer. In 1953, he bought a 2 percent interest in the Sands Hotel, and eventually became a corporate vice president.

He earned $100,000 a week in his frequent performances at the Sands and used the hotel for recording albums and making movies.

After supporting Adlai Stevenson's bid for the Presidency in 1956, Sinatra worked avidly for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and supervised the newly elected President's inaugural gala in Washington in January 1961. But his pro-Kennedy sentiments cooled after the President canceled a weekend visit to Sinatra's house because the singer had been host to the Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and his
associates. By the 1970's, Sinatra had turned to the right. He became a supporter of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

Sinatra's recording career entered a major new phase when he formed his own record company, Reprise, in late 1960. Since the new label overlapped his Capitol contract, for about a year he recorded for both labels. In 1963, he sold his record company to Warner Brothers, retaining a one-third interest. In association with Warner Brothers, he also set up his own independent film production company, Artanis.

Beginning with "Ring-A-Ding-Ding!" in 1961 and for the next 20 years, Sinatra recorded more than 30 albums for Reprise. By this time, his voice had hardened and coarsened. Except for "Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim," a remarkable 1967 collaboration with the Brazilian songwriter, guitarist and singer in which he sang very softly, his ballad singing tended toward the stentorian, often with a noticeable edge of macho toughness. The coarsening of his voice, however,
helped give his singing an extra rhythmic punch.

Increasingly, his albums had a self-consciously retrospective air. "I Remember Tommy ..." (1961) looked back to his days with the Dorsey band.

"Sinatra's Sinatra" (1963) consisted entirely of newly recorded Sinatra favorites.

His 50th birthday in 1965 was celebrated with the release of two deliberately monumental albums, "September of My Years" and "A Man and His Music," an anthology of his career that he narrated and sang. "September of My Years," whose title anthem of middle-aged nostalgia was custom-written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen and arranged by Gordon Jenkins, won Grammys for album of the year and best male vocal performance. Sinatra scored a double triumph in
1966 when "A Man and His Music" was voted album of the year, and "Strangers in the Night," his first No. 1 single in 11 years, won record of the year. The string of hits continued with a Top 5 hit, "That's Life" (1966), and "Something Stupid" (1967), a duet with his daughter Nancy.

In 1969 he had a substantial hit with "My Way," an adaptation of a French ballad, "Mon Habitude," by Claude Francois, Jacques Revaux and Giles Thibaut, with English lyrics by Paul Anka. Along with "New York, New York," which he recorded for a three-disk set, "Trilogy: Past, Present, Future" (1980), it became one of the signature songs of his later years.

The moment when Sinatra and his style of music seemed the least fashionable was in the late 1960s, when the youthful rock counterculture dominated popular music. Sinatra was no fan of rock-and-roll, having once dismissed it as music "sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons."

He did make tentative efforts to adapt to changing styles, trying his hand at songs by Jim Croce, Jimmy Webb, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, John Denver, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Peter Allen, Billy Joel and the Beatles, among others. But even singing soft rock, he never sounded
entirely comfortable.

His surprise marriage in 1966 to the actress Mia Farrow, then 20 (and 30 years his junior), seemed in part to be a search for a youthful connection. They were divorced in 1968.

Retirement? For Good? Doing That His Way

As a film actor, Sinatra continued to work steadily through the 1960s. Besides his Rat Pack jaunts, his films included "Come Blow Your Horn" (1963), "Von Ryan's Express" (1965), "Tony Rome" (1967), "The Detective" (1968) and "Dirty Dingus Magee" (1970).

In June 1971, Sinatra announced his retirement during a gala concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, but it lasted only two years. He returned with the album "Ol' Blue Eyes Is  Back," the title of which gave him his last show business nickname.

In 1976 he married for the fourth time, to Barbara Blakely Marx, who had been married to Zeppo Marx. She survives him, as do his daughters, his son and two grandchildren.

His recordings and films became less frequent. In 1980, after a six-year hiatus, he released "Trilogy: Past, Present, Future," a concept album in which a Gordon Jenkins oratorio imagined the singer as an intergalactic traveler. It was followed by the moody "She Shot Me Down" (1981) and the jazzy
"L.A. Is My Lady" (1984).

Sinatra returned to film in 1977 with a television movie, "Contract on Cherry Street," which was poorly received, as was his last major Hollywood role, as an aging detective in "The First Deadly Sin" (1980). In 1984, he briefly appeared as himself in "Cannonball Run 2." For his 75th birthday in 1990, Capitol and Reprise each released extensive, elaborately packaged Sinatra retrospectives.
Columbia had released a six-disk anthology four years earlier.

Sinatra worked vigorously for the 1980 Presidential campaign of his close friend Ronald Reagan, and produced and directed a three-hour inaugural gala that was shown in an edited form on television in 1981. In 1985 he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award.

Even after he stopped making records and movies, Sinatra continued to give concerts. In the early 1980's, he was paid $2 million for four concerts in Argentina and $2 million for nine concerts in Sun City, South Africa. Sun City appearances by Sinatra, who had always supported civil rights causes,
drew sharp criticism from anti-apartheid groups.

In 1982, he signed a $16 million three-year contract with the Golden Nugget Hotel in Atlantic City. In 1988 and 1989, Sinatra was still listed in Forbes magazine as among the 40 richest entertainers, with an annual income estimated at $14 million in 1989 and $12 million in 1988. But when he was required to submit a financial statement to the Nevada Gaming Commission for a renewal of his gambling license in 1981, he claimed a surprisingly modest net worth of just over $14 million.

Sinatra's life was rocked in 1986 by the publication of "His Way," Kitty Kelley's best-selling unauthorized biography, which focused on his volatile personality, his personal feuds, his streak of violence and his relationships over the years with organized-crime figures. It was a harsh portrait that nevertheless acknowledged Sinatra's role as a musical icon.

The Concert Giver and Singer of Solo Duets

He toured the world in 1989 with Sammy Davis Jr. and Liza Minnelli in a concert package billed as "the ultimate event." It was one of the grander events in a rigorous touring schedule that he maintained
into his late 70s. He toured with Shirley MacLaine in 1992. Increasingly, during his performances in later years, he resorted to using electronic prompters at the front of the stage to read lyrics.

In 1993, at the age of 77, Sinatra had an astounding recording-career comeback with "Frank Sinatra Duets," a collection of 13 Sinatra standards rerecorded with such pop stars as Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross and Bono of the Irish rock group U2. The record was widely criticized for being an engineering stunt, since none of the guest singers were actually in
the recording studio with Sinatra, who recorded his parts separately. The record nevertheless sold over two million copies in the United States. A year later, there was a weaker follow-up using a different roster of guests.

Sinatra's last concert was on Feb. 25, 1995, at the Palm Desert Marriott Ballroom in Palm Desert,Calif.

Assessing his own abilities in 1963, Sinatra sounded a note that was quintessentially characteristic:forlorn and tough. "Being an 18-karat manic-depressive, and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation," he said.'

"Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe, I'm honest."


Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Glenn Miller Story actor dead at 96


Tv and film actor Harry Morgan has died at age 96 at his home in California. Glenn Miller fans will remember Morgan from two Glenn Miller films.
   In 1942, Morgan had a small part in Orchestra Wives (1942) featuring Glenn Miller. In 1953, he co-starred in The Glenn Miller Story (1954) with Jimmy Stewart. In both films he was billed as Henry Morgan. He changed it latter to avoid confusion with the radio comedian with the same stage name, Henry Morgan.
   A character actor for almost five decades, Morgan's best known tv role was playing Colonel Sherman T. Potter on the long-running Korean war comedy that starred Alan Alda as Hawkeye.
   Morgan's first major television success was as Officer Bill Gannon, Joe Friday's partner on the revived version of "Dragnet," which aired on NBC from 1967-70. (Trivia: Ben Alexander originated the part in the series that starred Jack Webb.)

   He had a long career in the movies, also, having appeared in over 100 films, many of them classics such as "The Ox-Bow Incident," "High Noon,"  and "Inherit the Wind." He was married to Eileen Detchon for 45 years until her death in 1985.
Morgan was born in Detroit, on April 10, 1915.
   He is survived by his wife second wife Barbara and three sons from his first marriage, Christopher, Charles and Paul... and eight grandchildren.


Frank Sinatra: The Best of The Best

The new deluxe FrankSinatra: Best of The Best CD set is now available.
Read Sinatra fan B. Stockwell of San Francisco's review for Amazon shoppers;
 
   "I'm reviewing the superb DELUXE 2-CD box edition with all the trimmings.
Until now, you had to buy from either the Capitol or the Reprise catalog. Sinatra collections were one or the other. If you wanted to introduce his music to someone, you had to get one of each or skip an era. You want "New New, York," "My Way," or "That's Life"? You're going to have to lose "Come Fly with Me," "Witchcraft," and "One for My Baby." Two different labels; two different catalogs. FINALLY, they got together so here you have Sinatra from 1953 ("I've got the World on a String") to "New York, New York."

So, we finally have a definitive Sinatra 101 compilation. 23 tracks. Icing on the cake: an entire live concert from the Capitol era. I might be wrong about this but this June 9th 1957 concert might be the only one we have of Sinatra performing live with Nelson Riddle; yes, they went on tour. To Seattle.
   The first CD is as described: classic Sinatra and well chosen. "Night and Day," for instance. The obvious choice would be the Capitol swinging version. Here, the choice was the later, slower, Don Costa arrangement from the 1961 "Sinatra and Strings" album (Reprise).
   The liner notes are by Frank Sinatra Jr. They're sharp, insightful, and written by a musician who knows this music. Example: "'Fly Me to the Moon': A complete misnomer! The correct title of this popular standard is 'In Other Words." But nobody refers to it by that name." That's sort of important. Sinatra Jr. has a lot to say about this music. Lots of perspective. (Next article will include an interview with FS Jr.)
   The packaging in the Deluxe Edition is exemplary, tasteful, retrained, and appropriate. Someone is making sure Sinatra's music is presented decently. The use of blue is a no-brainer but the use of blue foil lettering and the layout of this release is a thrill. It's like they're serving up class. The box feels and looks suave. The box lid pulls up and was a minor nightmare to pry up - a little too tight. (Right - like that's why I bought this.) CDs are in separate cardboard sleeves, like mini-LPs. There's no plastic here, at all. This is the real stuff - paper and cardboard. First class design. Bravo, somebody.
   Five square photos of Sinatra that cover the years the music recorded during are a nice addition - but this is an extra; I'm not sure what to do with them.
I have to apologise for another reviewer who didn't see the point of a live concert performance by Sinatra. That reviewer actually wrote he didn't like live recordings and so opted for the 1-CD release of "The Best of the Best."
   That reviewer has my sympathy because the live 1957 concert is astonishing. Sinatra is in his Capitol years prime. The sound quality is wonderful - this doesn't sound like a crappy "historic" bootleg. Sinatra is so relaxed and relaxed. He just flows through the quieter material and digs into the livelier stuff. Nelson Riddle and Sinatra's pianist, Bill Miller, are there with him. Live. This is a good as it gets - this is as good he HE gets. These aren't studio recordings. The same arrangements and musicians but now they've settled into the music. The live performance, a full hour long, is reason alone to justify this release. I wasn't about to buy the same recordings again. Even if it's in the latest digital/laser-powered/photon-enhanced format, there's no reason for ME to grab everything that says "Frank Sinatra" on the cover.
   But this, this is wonderful. If you're just getting into Sinatra, sure, buy the single CD release. If you're already a resident of Sinatraville, then buy the Deluxe Edition - they made it just for YOU!"

B. Stockwell...well done....thank you for sharing! 
The other residents of Sinatraville.


Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Michael Feinstein: The Sinatra Legacy on PBS tonight





PBS will rebroadcast Michael Feinstein: The Sinatra Legacy as part of its special programming tonight at 10 pm, December 6, 2011. Check your local station.


The program was recorded on May 12, 2011 in the newly completed, state-of-the-art concert hall, the Palladium in Carmel, Indiana. Backed by a 32-piece orchestra, Feinstein guides viewers on a musical journey of Sinatra and his contemporaries, and how they influenced each other.

Through his performance, Feinstein conjures up the biggest musical legends of that golden era using their extraordinary music, spiced with intimate stories about their larger-than-life personalities.

Featured songs include "Once in a Lifetime," "I Thought About You," "Fly Me to the Moon," "Put on a Happy Face"/"Lotta Livin'," "So In Love," "There'll Be Some Changes Made," "Begin the Beguine," "Brazil," "For Once in My Life," and "New York, New York."

A five-time Grammy Award nominee, Feinstein maintains an extensive touring schedule and has appeared at venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl to the White House and Buckingham Palace. In addition, he serves on the Library of Congress' National Recording Preservation Board, and is artistic director of the Center for Performing Arts.

Michael Bublé Christmas tv special

Attention Michael Bublé fans: Tonight at 8 PM (EST)  A MICHAEL BUBLÉ CHRISTMAS special will air on NBC.
 
Mr. Bublé croons classics from his latest holiday recording, including “White Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “Feliz Navidad” and “Jingle Bells,” with guests like Justin Bieber, Kellie Pickler, Thalia, Oscar the Grouch, the Puppini Sisters and Naturally 7. He also performs comedy sketches with Tracy Morgan and Ed Helms.

Since the program is designed to sell his new Christmas album here is the complete list of songs on the album;
The CD includes guest performances by Shania Twain on "White Christmas" and The Puppini Sisters on "Jingle Bells." Also included in the CD is a new song "Cold December Night," a Bublé penned original written for the record.

The Special Edition which includes:
"Christmas" on CD
3 bonus tracks
Plus an exclusive 4"x4" acrylic ornament tucked inside extended album packaging

Full Track Listing Includes:
1. It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
2. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
3. Jingle Bells [featuring the Puppini Sisters]
4. White Christmas [duet with Shania Twain]
5. All I Want For Christmas Is You
6. Holly Jolly Christmas
7. Santa Baby
8. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
9. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)
10. Silent Night
11. Blue Christmas
12. Cold December Night
13. I’ll Be Home For Christmas
14. Ave Maria
15. Mis Deseos/Feliz Navidad" [duet with Thalia]

To purchase CLICK HERE



Saturday, December 3, 2011

Review: New Bunny Berigan book

Our friend in music, Glenn Miller style...of course, Dennis M. Spragg has provided this review of the book "Mr. Trumpet, The Trials, Tribulations and Triumph of Bunny Berigan"

"From time to time, the opportunity comes along to praise the dedication and hard
work of a respected acquaintance. This is an especially pleasant opportunity
when a book exceeds the already high expectations that one may have had in
advance of publication. Knowing the writer and the subject matter led me to
expect nothing but the best and most informative read. However, having read and
considered the contents of the work, I can enthusiastically say that I have just
finished an impressive work of professional scholarship that will stand as one
of the rare and essential histories of jazz and the big band era.

"Mr. Trumpet, The Trials, Tribulations and Triumph of Bunny Berigan" has been
published by Scarecrow Press, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman and
Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., Lanham, Maryland. It is Publication No. 64
in the "Studies of Jazz" Series.

This book is the comprehensive and indispensable biography of Roland Bernard
"Bunny" Berigan. The author is Michael Zirpolo.

Anyone interested in Bunny Berigan, his contemporaries, jazz and big band
history will be riveted to this book from the moment that they open it. Michael
Zirpolo has captured the essence of his subject. Not only does Michael's love
and respect for Bunny create a very enjoyable read, his attention to detail and
precision result in a most informative, thorough and balanced tour-de-force.
The biography includes numerous previously unpublished photographs and a
comprehensive broadcast discography.

Over years of dedicated study, Michael has thoughtfully assembled information
from numerous sources and has unlocked valuable documentation from the
University of Wisconsin, Madison and the Fox Lake Public Library among many
other sources.

The reader follows the life and career of Bunny Berigan from his beginnings in
Fox Lake, Wisconsin. We learn of Berigan's Irish and German ancestry and the
effect of his family and upbringing on the direction that he would pursue. For
the next 500 or so pages we are taken to the world of Bunny Berigan, Hal Kemp,
Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey
and many other giants of jazz.

Michael takes us through the history of Berigan the talent as leader, sideman,
soloist and improviser. There are many aspects to his associations that the
reader will not have known or associations that were different or of longer
duration and depth than the reader will have previously understood. Michael
pulls no punches in a balanced and thoughtful presentation of Berigan's
character, challenges and health issues. What is especially poignant is the
story of Berigan's marriage, children and devotion to family which no one,
including the late George T. Simon, has previously documented with such honesty
and tenderness.

What greatly impresses someone currently writing their own manuscript are the
detailed chapter notes that Michael has assiduously assembled. The focus and
level of detail that is presented is monumental. The chapter notes include
dozens of insightful observations about many people, events, recordings and
venues that in themselves are more than worth adding the book to anyone's jazz
and big band collection. My knowledge of details has been increased ten fold by
Michael's attention to detail.

From my specific vantage point, a very minor quibble is that it would have been
interesting to learn something more of Berigan's presence with the first Glenn
Miller
recording session. However, we do learn a great deal about vocalists
Kathleen Lane and Gail Reese and their associations with Berigan, which
paralleled their associations with the then-struggling Miller.

Michael Zirpolo
has captured the story of Bunny Berigan in an entertaining and
informative read. I will not go on and give away all the details or the plot
but suffice to say that there are revelations and surprises. My personal
experience has been that with this book my understanding of an essential
personality and talent of jazz and big band history has come to life in way that
my superficial and anecdotal knowledge of the man from other accounts and
recordings had never done justice to. I suspect that everyone else interested
in the subject matter will come away feeling the same way.

Our appreciation for Bunny Berigan, his talent, place in American music history
and stature as a giant of jazz has thus been lovingly established and confirmed
for all time by his devoted biographer Michael Zirpolo.

Michael's work is a monumental contribution to jazz history which I highly
recommend without reservation and with profound respect and appreciation."

Dennis M. Spragg
Glenn Miller Archive
American Music Research Center
University of Colorado, Boulder

TO BUY THE BOOK OR BUNNY's MUSIC JUST CLICK HERE