His early successes as a solo artist both hastened the emancipation of the vocalist from the role of a big band member and provoked the first outbreak of teenage hysteria and fan worship. In 1961 he became one of the first popular musicians to set up his own record label, Reprise.
Among numerous vocalists who adopted elements of the Sinatra style were Matt Monro, Vic Damone and Jack Jones. Sinatra first sang with the Hoboken Four vocal group, winning an amateur talent contest in 1935. His growing local reputation as a solo singer led to a contract with Harry James and his orchestra in 1939. He sang (uncredited) on the band’s ‘From the Bottom of My Heart’ before joining Tommy Dorsey’s band where in less than three years he sang on some ninety recordings for the Victor label. In that time, Sinatra developed a vocal style highly attuned to dance rhythms and swing. Such was Sinatra’s own popularity by 1942 that against Dorsey’s wishes he persuaded Victor to record him as a solo artist on ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’. The following year Sinatra left the band to work as a soloist, joining the network radio show ‘Your Hit Parade’ and inciting fanatical audience responses from teenage ‘bobby-soxers’.
Columbia, enjoying success with a reissue of ‘From the Bottom of My Heart’ under Sinatra’s name, signed him and, with backing by the Ken Lane Singers, had hits with ‘You’ll Never Know’ and ‘People Will Say We’re in Love’. In a decade with Columbia, Sinatra recorded more than 250 songs, mostly with arranger Axel Stordahl who created a soft, opulent sound with swirling strings, understated rhythms and woodwinds. The most popular vocalist of the mid-forties, Sinatra’s hits included ‘Dream’, ‘Nancy (With the Laughing Face)’, ‘Day by Day’, ‘The Coffee Song’, ‘The Things We Said Last Summer’, and ‘Full Moon and Empty Arms’. In 1950, Mitch Miller arrived at Columbia as head of A&R but his enthusiasm for cover versions of country and R&B hits was not shared by Sinatra, whose sales and popularity slumped in the late forties. He worked unsuccessfully with the orchestras of Hugo Winterhalter, Percy Faith and Morris Stoloff. At Miller’s behest, he even cut the novelty song ‘Mama Will Bark’.
Sinatra moved to Capitol records where Nelson Riddle’s brass based, up-tempo arrangement on the No. 1 ‘Young at Heart’ revitalized Sinatra’s singing career, and at the same time he won an Oscar for his dramatic role in ‘From Here to Eternity’. With Riddle and producer Voyle Gilmore, Sinatra also crafted a best selling series of ten inch albums that began with ‘Songs for Young Lovers’ and ‘Swing Easy’. By 1955 R&B and rock’n’roll were beginning to have an impact and Sinatra even cut the rocking ‘Two Hearts Two Kisses’, Sinatra, however, topped the charts with the swinging ‘Learnin’ the Blues’ and had further hits with the ‘Love and Marriage’ and ‘Love Is’ from ‘The Tender Trap’. During the late fifties, Sinatra recorded profusely. Among his 1956 successes were ‘Hey Jealous Lover’ and ‘Songs for Swinging Lovers’, which included ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ and ‘You Make Me Feel So Young’, and in 1957 the ballad ‘All the Way’. From this position of strength, Sinatra became one of rock’n’roll’s most outspoken critics although ‘Witchcraft’ was to be his last major single hit for eight years.
The albums ‘Only the Lonely’, which included ‘Blues in the Night’ and ‘One for My Baby’, ‘Come Dance with Me’, ‘Come Fly with Me’, ‘April in Paris’, ‘London by Night’, ‘Blue Hawaii’ and Nice ‘n’Easy’ were all hit albums. In 1961 Sinatra set up his own Reprise label, issuing his own albums as well as those by Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Bing Crosby and Trini Lopez before a majority shareholding was sold to Warner Brothers in 1963, but the label’s mainstay was Sinatra himself. With arrangers like ex-Count Basic man Johnny Mandel, Billy May and Sy Oliver, the Reprise Sinatra took on more of a jazz tinge. He made two albums with Count Basie, and later worked with Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. The contrasting Sinatra and Strings found Sinatra returning to classic ballads like ‘Star Dust’ and ‘Night and Day’ on arrangements by Don Costa, while he also collaborated on a bossa nova album with Antonio Carlos Jobim. In the mid-sixties, Sinatra had occasional pop hits like ‘Softly As I Leave You’, ‘It Was a Very Good Year’ and ‘Strangers in the Night’, which reached No. 1. Further success followed with the up-tempo ‘That’s Life’ and a lightweight duet with his daughter Nancy, ‘Somethin’ Stupid’, a No. 1 hit.
While he made numerous Reprise albums in the mid-sixties, many involved re-recordings with Nelson Riddle of earlier Sinatra songs. More original were the mellow ‘September of My Years’ which included ‘September Song’, ‘It Gets Lonely Early’ and ‘A Man Alone’, a collection of songs by Rod McKuen, one of a number of contemporary singer/songwriters whose work Sinatra now began to record. Among others were John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell , John Hartford, and Paul Simon. Sinatra’s best known record of the period, however, was the old-fashioned big ballad, ‘My Way’. Originally a French tune ‘Comme d’Habitude’ with English lyrics written by Paul Anka, the song became Sinatra’s signature tune during the seventies when his recording career took third place to acting and live appearances in Las Vegas. His only new releases of the decade were ‘Ole Blue Eyes Is Back’, ‘The Main Event’ (a live recording) and ‘Trilogy’ which was a three-album set divided into past, present and future. Sinatra later released ‘She Shot Me Down’ which included the songs ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ and ‘LA Is My Lady’.
Sinatra also appeared in more than fifty films, beginning with a 1935 short featuring the Hoboken Four. In 1945 he won a special Oscar for the anti-prejudice short ‘The House I Live In’, but Sinatra’s first major role was in ‘Higher and Higher’. He had starring roles in the musical films ‘Anchors Aweigh’, ‘On the Town’, ‘Young at Heart’, ‘Guys and Dolls’, ‘High Society’ and ‘Pal Joey’. Although he sang ‘My Kind of Town’ in the film ‘Robin and the Seven Hoods’ , the majority of Sinatra’s roles were non-singing. They included starring parts in ‘The Manchurian Candidate’, ‘Tony Rome’, ‘The Detective’ and ‘The First Deadly Sin’. |
