Songs from the soul
Frank Sinatra as a man as conflicted as the times he sang in
Some years ago, I shared a barber with the late Mel Torme. It was a small, low-key shop where the talk was usually sports and the music on the radio always jazz or vocals from the American Songbook.
One morning, Torme and I found ourselves pausing amid an offhanded conversation as the radio played Frank Sinatra singing Gershwin's A Foggy Day — which figures in a rather important way in James Kaplan's marvellously thoughtful, readable biography Frank: The Voice. As we listened, I recall murmuring something to the effect of, "It's the phrasing, isn't it?" only to have Torme correct me. "Diction comes before phrasing," he said. "We all owe that to Ella [Fitzgerald] and to Frank. We all work in their shadow — and Frank cast a big shadow for such a skinny guy."
It is possible that more Americans carry Sinatra songs in their mental soundtracks than they do any other American singer's. It is also possible that some people categorically dislike his work. In either case, the question of whether we really need another book about Sinatra is bound to arise.
However, Kaplan brings something valuable and new to this account of Sinatra's first four decades, culminating in his cinematic triumph in From Here to Eternity and stunning vocal comeback in the early 1950s. First and most valuable, Kaplan gives us an illuminating portrait of a serious artiste who helped revolutionise his medium.
Sinatra was among the first great popular singers to phrase their songs in the way that American sentences actually were spoken and to inflect their phrasings with the anxieties and hopes, disappointments and longings of a new urban America.
Kaplan also does a brilliant job of suggesting how the way Sinatra sang the song grew out of the life of an artiste every bit as confounding and conflicted as his era — a man by turns generous, attentive and immensely decent, then ugly, violently abusive and self-absorbed to the point of cruelty.
Some of the most compelling material involves Sinatra's doomed marriage to Ava Gardner, who became not only the dark muse of the singer's best vocal work but also the prime mover in obtaining the role in From Here to Eternity that made him once again a star.
Most people think they know the story of how Sinatra got the part because they have seen Mario Puzo's The Godfather.
But as Kaplan recounts it in his book, the real story is far more fascinating.
Sinatra's career was at its nadir when he married Gardner, the film industry's reigning beauty. They were too much alike ever to stay married.
When it became apparent to Gardner how perfect the part of Maggio would be for Sinatra, she approached their mutual friend Harry Cohn, who was making the film, and offered to do a picture for him for free if he would give Sinatra a screen test. The call for that came while the singer was in Africa with Gardner on the set of Mogambo — and she lent Sinatra the money to fly back to film the test.
Sinatra would never recover from the loss of Gardner and his sorrow and confusion over their break-up would colour his greatest period as a singer.
As his great arranger, Nelson Riddle, said: "Ava taught him how to sing a torch song."
Frank: The VoiceBy James Kaplan,Doubleday, 800 pages, $35
