"You don't scare me. I've got chunks of guys like you in my stool."
Posted on 12/12/2006 8:17:45 AM PST by Valin
But the only thing about him that will be remembered for time to come is his music - which was pretty incredible.
What he did do during the war was set the stage for the youth movement of the 50s and 60s. He was the first mass-media teen idol.
"You don't scare me. I've got chunks of guys like you in my stool."
A great compendium is "The Very Good Years" which cover his Reprise period.
Sixty? I think the last time I saw him on TV was the 80th birthday tribute to Sinatra six years ago, and, to judge from their respective states, if Frank was 80, Bob had to be at least 130. He mumbled his way through "Restless Farewell", though neither words nor tune were discernible, and then shyly offered, "Happy Birthday, Mister Frank." Frank sat through the number with a stunned look, no doubt thinking, "Geez, that's what I could look like in another 20, 25 years if I don't ease up on the late nights." From the Mark Steyn Article - HOW DOES IT FEEEEEEEEEEL?
Apparently, Steyn likes Frank a lot more than Dylan.
Go figure.
Cheers,
knewshound
Latest article; Allahboard US Airways.
Thanks for posting
Gotta love -- Fly Me to the Moon....
But things are OK, and swing ain't dead, its just gone North (well, Suuth for me) with that "Crazy little Canadian Called Buble" He *can* sing (in key) and swing.
Now, if we can just find the next Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey....
If your talking musical, stylistic nuance fine, however I thought the discussion was Sinatra's influence as a "popular artist". In terms of "pop" star or "pop" music, Crosby was a hell of a bigger influence on all pop musicians who came after him...certainly Bing was Sinatra's biggest influence.
Crosby was truly the first "pop" singing sensation but Sinatra raised the bar.
One for my baby
lyrics by Johnny Mercer music by Harold Arlen
Its quarter to three,
Theres no one in the place cept you and me
So set em up joe
I got a little story I think you oughtta know
Were drinking my friend
To the end of a brief episode
So make it one for my baby
And one more for the road
I know the routine
Put another nickel in that there machine
Im feeling so bad
Wont you make the music easy and sad
I could tell you a lot
But you gotta to be true to your code
So make it one for my baby
And one more for the road
Youd never know it
But buddy Im a kind of poet
And Ive got a lot of things I wanna say
And if Im gloomy, please listen to me
Till its all, all talked away
Well, thats how it goes
And joe I know youre gettin anxious to close
So thanks for the cheer
I hope you didnt mind
My bending your ear
But this torch that I found
Its gotta be drowned
Or it soon might explode
So make it one for my baby
And one more for the road
__________________________________
Also
Mark Steyn: One for the road -
SteynOnLine.com ^ | October, 2006 | Mark Steyn
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1743255/posts
Posted on 11/23/2006 9:06:52 PM CST by UnklGene
ONE FOR THE ROAD - Bill Miller, 1915–2006
Frank Sinatra called himself a “saloon singer”, because that’s where he used to sing, way back when in Jersey juke joints and road houses. Not for long. He was too good, even then. But for a while, if you headed up to the Rustic Cabin on Route 9W in the Garden State, they had this pianist pushing a little half-piano from table to table and the waiter would sing with him and they had a tip jar on the lid and you couldn’t help noticing the kid sang awful good for a waiter, and pretty soon the singing was earning him, as he figured it, “about 15 clams a week”. Thirty, forty, fifty years later, week in, week out, the same singing waiter with full supporting orchestra was barreling through some grim rock stadium on the edge of a strip mall in some nondescript suburb. And, midway through the set, the lights would dim and Frank Sinatra would announce that he would now sing a “saloon song” and proceed to shrink whichever sterile aircraft hangar he’d been booked into down to the size of those poky smoky New Jersey saloons of his youth. There were the old props – the tumbler, the cigarette – and the scene-setting grew ever more ornate over the years, expanding into an almighty pile-up of retro hipsterisms as Frank prepared us for the tale of some emblematic long-lost loser whose “chick split, flew the coop, cleaned out his stash and left him cryin’ into a gallon of Muscatel”. And underneath a tinkly tipsy barroom piano intro would begin, and Sinatra would invite us to “assume the position of the bartender” and listen to the old, old story:
(snip)
...sigh.
Happy Birthday Ol' Blue Eyes.
Quite simply, one of the greatest lyrics ever.
Put Your Dreams Away...best song ever. ;)
Frank Sinatra REPRISE $18.99
Dean Martin GREATEST HITS $4.99
Volare, On an Evening in Roma, That's Amore...true greats.
But, can't compare to the big band sound of Frank Sinatra, IMO.
What CD (album) is that on? (Put Your Dreams Away)
Dooby Dooby doo...
We oughta thank Frankie and all his shitty fifties records for contributing to the birth of rock and roll, too!
Sousa was a 19th century figure. His last popular song was composed in 1909. And he was not noted as a performer.
Whiteman was neither an exceptional performer nor a notable composer, either. He was skilled at arranging other people's music and he had an unsurpassed nose for talent. Anyone who was smart enough to hire Beiderbecke, Trumbauer, Venuti, Teagarden and Berigan is a great man.
The Dorseys were important bandleaders, but they were very much of their time. Sinatra made recordings with the Dorsey Brothers in 1947 that sold millions. He made recordings under his own name in 1994 that sold millions as well. That's a career that spanned 50 years.
The Dorseys enjoyed a decade as popular hitmakers then faded into TV orchestra work and obscurity before Tommy died.
The Gershwins and Porter were songwriters who contributed dozens of the very best songs to the best singers' repertoires - but they themselves were not famous as performers.
Rodgers and Hammerstein were also not performers. Their collaborations were brilliant - the standards by which musical theater is judged.
Basically you are arguing that the most prominent composers/lyricists/arrangers of what is now known as The Great American Songbook are getting short shrift.
However, the greatest and by far the most popular interpreter of the Great American Songbook was Frank Sinatra.
Millions of Americans know Gershwin, Porter, R&H, and the Dorseys solely or mostly through Frank Sinatra's performances of their work.
I have it on The Very Best of Frank Sinatra - Disc 2. It's on a couple of other compilations - you'll have to Google for the original relaease. ;)
Clay refused to serve in the military:
1) His newly found Muslim religion turned out to be (and always was) a horribly violent religion where white people were garbage. So, he was a hypocrite.
2) He refused to fight for our country, but it was ok to pucnh other people in the head for big bucks. I'm glad we had enough guts to make him pay for it. Again, he was a hypocrite.
So, I put him right up there with Frankie, George Hamilton, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Livingston, etc.
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