Posted on 12/12/2006 8:17:45 AM PST by Valin
Uhh, maybe you would like to peruse some of the previous comments in this thread, and get back to me on that one.
i'm not sure why being a Sicilian would have anything to do with one's singing prowess.
Sinatra had no singing prowess whatsoever - his voice had all the grace of a set of fingernails being dragged down a chalkboard.
As far as I can tell, Sinatra's career was ENTIRELY an ethnic phenomenon [because, quite frankly, I can't see how such a talentless hack could possibly have experienced such extraordinary financial success without some sort of weird underlying ethnic boosterism fueling his career - cf the utterly talentless Barbara Streisand].
Like I said before, Frank Sinatra possessed, hands-down, the worst voice [not to mention the worst timing and absolutely the very worst intonation] of any major American popular music singer in the twentieth century.
One can say the wrong thing a million times, and one would still be wrong.
Why don't you tell us who you think the best pop vocalists of the 20th century are?
Define "best" for me.
If "best" means gross revenues [i.e. $$$'s] generated, then Sinatra is gonna be high on the list.
I am trying to assess your standards.
By your standards Sinatra is the "worst" as you define it.
Who are the "best" pop vocalists as far as you are concerned?
The most important aspect of any singing performance is the diction [the Fundamental Theorem of Vocal Music states: The lyrics are ALWAYS more important than the tune].
And in fairness to him, Sinatra's diction [at least when he was sober] wasn't terrible, at least by modern standards.
But as for intonation & sonorousness, well, Sinatra was [as far as I can tell] tone-deaf, and always sang out-of-key, and, as I've indicated above, his voice had all the beauty of fingernails being scratched down a chalkboard.
As for American singers who had great diction together with some underlying musical talent [intonation & timing] & vocal talent [sonorousness], then I'd say, off the top of my head: Mel Tormé, Nat King Cole, Patsy Cline, and maybe Ella Fitzgerald, when she was singing "white" [e.g. the Cole Porter songbooks - but when she sang "negro", e.g. scat, well frankly that stuff is simply unlistenable (I guess then it's kinda ironic the meaning that the word "scat" has come to have in the dark corners of the internet pornography underground)].
And to his credit, Elvis Presley was a pretty darned good singer when he wanted to be.
I don't know the crooners of the first half of the 20th century as well as I ought to, but there was a style of male vocalism back then, sort of a gentleman's high tenor/falsetto, that's long since gone completely out of vogue, but which I really adore.
Sadly, though, I don't know the names of any of the masters of that style [I imagine they sang with acts like e.g. Paul Whiteman & his orchestra], but as a for instance, I heard Fred Astaire do it, with Audrey Hepburn, in 1957's Funny Face, just the other night, on the AMC channel.
Marty Robbins, Ghost Riders, circa 1975
The Cumberland Three, Yellow Rose, circa late 1950s
Jean Sablon, Sur le Pont, circa 1938/1939
PS: Sablon, in that epic recording, epitomizes - really is the quintessence of - that "gentleman's high tenor/falsetto" that I was talking about in my previous post.
I dated a guy who was truly tonedeaf. His "singing" was monotone. As someone who has perfect pitch, it was torture for me to be around him when he was attempting to "sing".
Make a different argument. This one isn't working.
The argument may or may not be working, but the underlying assertion is true: Frank Sinatra couldn't carry a tune, and he couldn't sing in key.
Again, the source of his popularity is a complete mystery to me [which is why I posit some sort of weird ethnic boosterism] - he wasn't even particularly handsome [frankly, he was rather an ugly fellow].
Well thought out.
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