Customer Reviews

Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer's Art

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What better testimonial can you give to a book than saying it makes you so fired about about its subject that you want to discover more of his/her work? Will Friedwald's Sinatra! The Song is You will delight Sinatra fans and "turn on" anyone even REMOTELY interested in finding out why Sinatra was named the 20th century's Best Singer. It is without question the best book EVER written on Sinatra's music due to its style, details and because Friedwald does not pull any punches: he praises Sinatra for good work and criticizes him for work that falls short. All this is done without pretension, cutesy-ness or padding. The usual personal and professional biographical info is there, but mostly for historical context. Friedwald's interest is in Sinatra the singer -- and in Sinatra's VOICE as an instrument that developed, matured and eventually (and sadly) deteriorated. Going through each performing and recording stage of Sinatra's long career, Friedwald analyzes particular songs, explains Sinatra's trailblazing role in creating thematic "concept" albums, and gives fascinating details on how and why certain classic arrangements and songs were cut in the studio. He praises and blasts Sinatra's various arrangers. What's unquestionable is that Sinatra took this kind of music to an entirely new level. This book successfully conveys the ARTISTRY of Sinatra's music so you WANT to hear MORE. Reading this book took me from a mild to fanatical Sinatra fan as I started listening to the albums, remembering what I had read and appreciating what Sinatra was doing with his voice. Sinatra! The Song is You heightens an appreciation of a musical genre that is either on it's way out as we move into the 21st century --or waiting for a new innovative artist to come along to revive its popularity and take it to the next level.

Will Friedwald has deservedly won great acclaim for this highly entertaining "dissertation" on Sinatra's music: his vocal technique and style changes through the years, his classic albums, and his arrangers and studio musicians. Friedwald guides us album by album, grouped by arrangers Axel Stordahl, Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, and Billy May. Other chapters discuss his big band years and his later years. Friedwald's taste in music closely parallels my own, and I am not surprised that he is also a big fan of other great vocalists such as June Christy, Mel Torme, Ella, Chris Connor, etc. He concentrates most importantly on the concept albums and the great tracks that aren't necessarily the "big hits," but are great achievements in popular song. His suggestions on what to avoid are almost always on the mark. I was amused by his descriptions of Don Costa's "elevator music" arrangements, and of poor Linda Ronstadt, who does not fare well in this book, as some incensed readers have pointed out (lighten up! ).

Friedwald has evidently interviewed hundreds of musicians associated with Sinatra in one way or another, and therein lies the greatest strength of this book. Some of his stories told by people who were there at the time are so memorable, I still chuckle when I think of them a year after I read the book. His description of the recording sessions for the Sinatra/Ellington album are a hoot. One wonders how this album is as good as it is. Also, Billy May seems like a fun character, and also a most modest fellow.

This is the only book about Sinatra's music that the serious listener should trust when collecting his albums. His descriptions of the classic 50s album Close to You are the only way I have of knowing what the album is like, since it is unbelievably out of print. Yet how many CDs have My Way on them? Also, I never would have known about the great torch song album She Shot Me Down (1981), inexplicably underrated and hard to find.

My only suggestion to Mr. Friedwald would be to think about the concept albums more as a whole, and how arrangers Jenkins and Riddle linked the songs together harmonically and (sometimes even) motivically. I think he will find this phenomenon in the Christy/Rugolo albums as well. Moreover, a careful listener can tell where deleted tracks were SUPPOSED to be, such as Everything Happens to Me in She Shot Me Down, The One I Love in No One Cares, and the Nearness of You in Nice'N'Easy. Big hint: Come Waltz With Me was NOT supposed to be the first track of All Alone (this would disrupt the two "bookends" of the album featuring the female vocalist), and the Nice'n'Easy album was most likely originally to be titled That Old Feeling.

i bot this book as a stocking stuffer for my wife, a casual sinatra fan thinking it was just another bio. then i started reading it. it sb noted that i owned 2 sinatra discs when i bot this book, i now have about 50. this book not only helped me understand the music i had already heard, but helped me seek out & discover the 100's of lost gems in sinatra's recorded works. again-no gossip, no kitty kelly junk, a well researched bio of frank's recorded output. if theres a downside to this book, it's that it will make you want to go out & find more franks discs than you may already own, and that could be an expensive undertaking. why?...because reprise or barbara s. do not listen to fans and re-realease the same greatest hits over & over. if u want a cd copy of "she shot me down"...prepare to pay up the nose on ebay-not a real good way to handle a legacy babs. that aside, nothing better than hittin the couch on a rainy or snowy day, poor a glass of booze(neat), crank a little "only the lonely" and read this book!

Anyone with even a mild interest in Frank's legacy should buy this book. It makes well researched and amusing reading,and is to me the finest book on popular music ever written.It helps to read an obviously great book when you agree with about 95% of his own editorializing. Every era of Mr.Sinatra's recording career,even past Duets II,and going into his last ,sometimes awkward,concerts is covered.If you want gossip,go elsewhere.Mr. Friedwald covers the personalities,from Stordahl,Riddle,May,Jenkins, and all the rest,and when you finish this book you'll feel the incredible energy, fun,and friendship that made these recordings. The fact is that Frank's canon is so great that some of my favorite recordings are not even mentioned in the index. Even Mr. Friedwald can't cover everything I guess.It's true that there are some snide comments that Mr Friedwald has for other performers,and his general contempt for rock and roll is obvious.I usually chuckled reading them since it was nice to read that the author and I agreed on the obvious. The fact is that anyone who actually knows Frank's best, and has made such an effort,must in general agree with Mr. Friedwald. For no one from the the rock era has anywhere near the oeuvre that Frank has.And in truth, the general quality of popular culture,especially music,has been in an abysmal decline for about 40 years, hopefully bottoming in the "Rap" era...This work is also a great reference,and will provide cultural enlightenment for many years to come.

Will Friedwald, we Sinatra fans thank you from the bottoms of our hearts for writing this book. Before this, all we had was utter garbage, such as Kitty Kelly's lurid biography that found his singing not only incidental to his life but not even worth covering in her book! Friedwald's book, however, is solely interested in Sinara the singer, the musician and the artist. The fellow musicians who knew him in that world also knew an entirely different person from the one who was tabloid fodder. Since I own 38 of his CD albums, this book answered many questions I'd had about those albums being created. If this is the Sinatra you want to know, this is the book to read. If you want to read the tabloid seamy one about his personal life by Kelly, which I'm ashamed to admit that I did, buy it instead but don't say you weren't warned. And hers even partially ruins listening to his recordings for you for awhile. But not long since great art always rises above the garbage.

I find myself consulting Friedwald's comprehensive treatment of Sinatra's entire recording career practically on a weekly basis. If this opinionated, non-musician's aesthetic judgements are not always on target, the documentation, historical contexts, and wealth of information are simply invaluable. He's also an entertaining, lively stylist, especially when expressing his distaste for some of the low points in Sinatra's recording career, most notably the "Duets" sessions. But the ultimate book about the century's ultimate vocal artist will be one that manages to account for the apparent paradoxes: the brazen and controversial lifestyle alongside the sheer beauty and fragile emotional depth of the art ; the relation between the screen actor and the introspective "saloon singer"; and above all the relation between the inimitable individualist who made every song his own and the respectful storyteller who, more often than any other interpreter of these classic musical texts, surrendered himself to the composer's intentions and "got it right." Even in the interviews he gave following Sinatra's death, Friedwald mentioned these two apparently opposite qualities without grasping the contradiction let alone explaining it.

But Friedwald's instincts about what counts as quality in musical art are unassailable, even if they lead him to unnecessarily vicious attacks on Bono (It's only a joke, Will) and Carly Simon (listen to the recording again--she does not sing in unison with Sinatra on "When I Hang My Tears Out to Dry"). Just as his zeal to dissociate Sinatra from banality leads him to demonize the opposition, his determination to vindicate the returning king leads him to ignore the embarrassment of "The Main Event," the one time when the "voice" simply wasn't there, and when it counted most--before a national television audience. Sinatra's return to form following this quasi-disaster, therefore, was all the more remarkable. Yet Friedwald gives the opposite impression, suggesting that this concert was a highlight preceding a precipitous decline in Sinatra's vocal power and aesthetic judgement. Nothing could be further from the truth--at least as far as the concerts were concerned. I know. I was there.

Friedwald does a marvelous, much too marvelous job of putting Sinatra's massive musical career into words. From Harry James to Tommy Dorsey to Columbia, Capitol and Reprise, this is a solid narrative of show business' biggest voice. Because the author is obviously a huge fan, there may be some bias, but it is also apparent that he has studied the music down to the note and that even listeners who own a lot of FS recordings can learn much.

What really sets this apart from the other 9000 Sinatra books, and makes it the essential one, is that Friedwald does not waste a lot of time on tabloid trivia that do not contribute to our understanding of Sinatra as an artist. Reading this will give you a greater appreciation of all of the tricks and techniques that FS and his musicians used to record definitive interpretations of so many standards. To his credit, Friedwald tells it like like is with some of the soft-rock 1960s efforts, which waste Sinatra's still potent voice on weak attempts to break the charts in the Beatle years. He also goes a step further and discusses why some numbers succeeded and others failed, leaving the reader more knowledgeable.

For a more in depth look at Sinatra's personality, Donald Clarke's All or Nothing At All is also fascinating (although the book has taken a beating on this website!). Forget Kitty Kelley, forget Earl Wilson, buy Friedwald. Also check out John Lahr's beautiful book.

Friedwald has been thorough: he's listened to everything, and he comments on it. At length. Sometimes this is interesting, as when he exhaustively dissects about a dozen Sinatra renditions of "Night and Day", or when he discusses Frank's various drummers.

Unfortunately, as with his earlier "Jazz Singing", Friedwald writes a self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness which is badly in need of professional editing. The book is written in a pseudo-hip musical jargon which most readers will find incomprehensible and which lacks both precision and grace. Friedwald completely ignores not only Sinatra's early singing training pre-Dorsey, but also Sinatra's own statements about wanting to bring some long-breathed bel-canto technique to popular music; he ignores Astaire's contribution to rhythmic variation in American song, and he attributes everything Italianate in Sinatra's singing to Bing Crosby, as though the clear line back via Jolson to Puccini and beyond didn't exist. Friedwald even gets Frank's top note wrong, by mis-pitching a mild F head note as being full octave too high.

A century from now, nobody will care about the controversies of Sinatra's life. But the music will live on, as sure as the sun will rise and set. With the possible exception of Louis Armstrong, the twentieth century produced no greater interpreter of song than Frank Sinatra. When I was a teenager, Sinatra was this old guy who sang about New York. I didn't pay attention; I was ignorant of the amazing career. As an adult, I happened upon a copy of "Songs for Swinging Lovers" in a used cd bin -- and that was all it took. I have been a Sinatra fanatic ever since, particularly of the music he produced from the mid-fifties to early sixties. Will Friedwald is quickly emerging as the foremost writer on jazz singing; his book "The Jazz Singers" opened up whole new vistas of music for me. But "Sinatra!" is his masterpiece. He goes through the entire musical career, from start to finish, and quite simply, puts down on paper every single relevant fact, from the composition to the recording to the reception. It's a tour-de-force of writing which I have read cover-to-cover at least four times since I bought it when it came out. My only complaint? Mr. Friedwald, when are you going to do the same for Satchmo himself, Louis Armstrong? Until then, I'll just have to read this book -- again. Buy "Sinatra!" immediately -- you won't regret it.

I loved this book, this beautiful rhapsody of love and youth and spring, which focuses on Sinatra's music. I gave it to my dad, who is also a musician, but he felt it dwelled on the subject too long. I agree that it did over indulge at points, but just as Frank was such a perfectionist and so particular about his music, it took the subject very seriously, and gave it the attention it deserved. Personally, I found it fascinating, like I find Sinatra's music fascinating. I listen to his phrasing, marvel at his breath control, and most of all, wonder just how it is that he manages to convey so much emotion with only his voice.

Frank Sinatra is larger than life, a character that embodies the paradox and contradictions of the 20th Century in the United States of America like no other person before or since. As Kitty Kelley said in the preface to her trashy biography of the man, His Way: An Unauthorized Biography Of Frank Sinatra, he is the touchstone of our times. Sometimes his legend looms so large that we forget that what made him famous--why he matters--is his music. Will Friedland's book shines the spotlight right where it belongs.

One anonymous reviewer, `A Reader,' gave it only 2 stars, and titled his review: The Chairman deserves better. He gives the book a failing grade, and complains that Friedwald is not a true critic. He is a mere fan posing as a critic, says `A Reader,' whose opinions are no more valuable than yours or mine.

I beg to differ with `A Reader' here, because I feel that the exhaustive research Friedwald has put into the book, and the work he has done in writing it, elevates him far above the level of a mere fan. Most Sinatraphiles agree that his work with Nelson Riddle was the apex of his career, which is why so-called Nelson Riddle worship is, as you unwittingly admit, so typical. That you would prefer "a work of high critical quality by a critic with a PhD in cultural history" speaks volumes--about your snobbery (Actually, I will have to check out John Rockwell's Frank Sinatra: An American Classic. Thanks for the recommendation).

Another reviewer, who gave it 3 stars titled his review: Preaching to the Choir. He gives the author some credit, but then calls him a Bobby Soxer who gushes for 500+ pages. Then he reveals that his main problem is the songs he likes the best are Will Friedland's least favorites: "Strangers in the Night," "Melody of Love," and "My Way." I rest my case. Why don't you throw in "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" and "Does Eat Oats, and Cows Eat Oats, and Little Lambs Eat Ivy" while you're at it? Much better than the mickey mouse "swing" of Nelson Riddle.

Another reviewer, also writing under the pseudonym of `A Reader' titles his opus: Friedwald needs a good editor. "Unfortunately, as with his earlier Jazz Singing, Friedwald writes a self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness which is badly in need of professional editing. The book is written in a pseudo-hip musical jargon which most readers will find incomprehensible and which lacks both precision and grace."

He then proceeds to list important things about Sinatra's music that Will Friedwald totally ignores, as if 500+ pages is just much too short, and how dare he omit Astaire's contribution to rhythmic variation, and everything Italianate that predates Bing Crosby, stretching back via Jolson to Puccini?

You could use a little professional editing yourself. Your stream-of-consciousness is getting a little self-indulgent, and I'm finding it to be most incomprehensible, and lacking not only precision, but grace. If you are such an expert, `A Reader,' then why don't you write your own book?

As for the pseudo-hep musical jargon, I found it very appropriate and Sinatraesque. Ring-a-ding-ding! It's the Rat Pack calling. They want Will Friedland's self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness back.

Ring-a-Ding Ding!
Songs for Swingin' Lovers!
In the Wee Small Hours
Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely
A Swingin' Affair!
Point of No Return
No One Cares
Where Are You