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The Sinatra that nobody hears—not even SinatraJohn BradyPublished online: 24 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: John Brady (1973) The Sinatra that nobody hears—not even Sinatra, Popular Music and Society, 2:3,189-201, DOI: 10.1080/03007767308591012

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THE SINATRA THAT NOBODY HEARS --

NOT EVEN SINATRA

John Brady

When Oakland radio station KNEW played 91 consecutive hoursof Sinatra a few months before he announced his retirement inMarch 1971, even devoted Frankophiles were surprised. Why?Because much of the material used during the radio marathon wasunderground stuff-a side of Sinatra very few had ever heard before.There were nightclub performances, concert dates, charity benefits,radio and TV tracks, and even some unreleased songs bootlegged outof recording studios by engineers. More than 14,000 listeners wrotethe station, many wondering how they could obtain copies of thisrare material. Now that The Man has retired, the search for suchmaterial is likely to go on with even greater fervor. And rightly so,for it reveals a good amount about Sinatra as a performer-in someways even more than we already know about him from his 1200commercially recorded songs.

At least a thousand hours of non-commercial material is currentlyon tape among underground cognoscenti. Not even Sinatra & Co.know the extent of these holdings. Sinatra's first wife Nancy, forinstance, called station KGIL in Los Angeles during a two-day mara-thon of FS in 1970 and asked the program director for copies ofold live shows they were airing. Many had been taped when she andFrank were together, and listening to them had made her nostalgic.The station ran off the entire 48 hours for her.1

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Among more experienced collectors, of course, the hobby canapproach feverish proportions. Fred May, a 41-year-old Londonengineer, has more than 500 hours on tape. He even attends Sinatramovies with a cassette recorder and tapes the soundtrack (popcornsounds and all), until the day he can dub the same film off the telly.Another collector, Albert Lonstein of Ellenville, N.Y., once hireda private detective at a cost of $100 daily to track down someonewho had taped a rare Sinatra show, then moved to an unknown ad-dress. On another occasion Lonstein, who in addition to being alawyer is the co-author of The Compleat Sinatra (Ellenville, N.Y.:Cameron Publications, 1970), paid $120 for about two hours ofscarce material. Collector Dick Partee, from Jackson, Mich., wasonce unemployed for six months, so his four recorders labored sevendays a week. "It's not just a weekend thing," he says. "My familycomes second at times, really. When I get six or seven letters fromother collectors, they know I'm going to be down here in the base-ment room taping all day." Partee's file is so exact that he can locateany song from any Sinatra performance on the proper track of theproper tape within minutes. Even Sinatra's "tea break" monologuejokes are cross-indexed.

Meanwhile, Sinatra's retirement has inflated the prices a fewprofiteers command for old or scarce items. A Sinatra V-disc fromthe vintage forties brings $25 in New York; the dub of one unre-leased song, $10; an acetate disc with an hour's worth of routine non-comm material, $25. In New Jersey two longtime collectors producedan album in 1970 called Sinatra Rarities containing sixteen unreleasedsongs and alternate takes smuggled out of the Columbia Record files.By calling themselves M&M Productions and using a P.O. Box ad-dress, they sold a few hundred copies of the disc at $8 apiece. "Weran off 500, and they only cost us a buck a record," says one of theM's (insisting on anonymity), "so we stand to make a few thou. Infact, we've put Volume II together-selections from old Hit Paradeshows that Frank didn't record commercially later. Of course, wedon't know how much of this loot will be taken by legal fees for

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later repercussions." So far there have been none.Most serious collectors will neither buy nor sell non-commercial

Sinatra items. "If you sell a tape, you've got a few pounds or dol-lars," says Fred May. "But if you trade for another tape, thenyou've got two to swap; then four, and so on. That's how a col-lection grows." The biggest expense for collectors, therefore, isthe initial investment in at least two recorders, plus weekly postageand a few miles of recording tape each year. Needless to say, mostrecordings are pretty much flattened out dynamically; in fact, mosttapes acquire sounds of their own as they pass from machine tomachine and become generations removed from the original. A fewlowlife collectors purposely distort material to keep their own copyrare. But in general, even the concerts taped in open stadiums onhand-held mikes without windguards, or the shows taped over drinksat the Fountainbleau, or the benefits taped on $29 cassette recordersin a crowded high school gym-all of these tapes, despite their battle-ground conditions, convey an unmistakeable sense of How It Was,with those old familiar Sinatra arrangements seeping through thecrowd noise, the echolalia, the confusion. For any Sinatra buff theyare valuable, surely. For the true believer, they are invaluable.

The largest recognized collection of Sinatra material in the worldprobably belongs to Ric Ross, a 35-year-old Beverly Hills accountantwho has been collecting for half his life. Ross is very tight with theSinatra office in California. In 1965 he worked freely on the dis-cography that accompanied a limited-edition version of the A Manand His Music album'(Reprise FSD 1016) that marked Sinatra'ssilver anniversary in showbusiness. Ross has also attended TVspecials and closed recording sessions. "The best things in my col-lection have cost me nothing," he says. "I've obtained them becauseof the relationships I've established with certain individuals, and Ihave some interesting stories I could tell, but they deal directly withReprise, or Sinatra Enterprises, or with Frank himself, and it wouldbe abusing the privilege if I started speaking about them for therecord. My rarest things are from individuals who haveD

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given their confidence to me. I can't say anymore."One east coast collector told me, kiddingly (I think): "I have

occasionally thought of hiring a burglar for a few hundred dollarsand stealing all of Ross's stuff." Ross, swallowing hard, says: "He'dhave a tough time. Along with other valuables, my collection is ina safe place away from my home."

Most United States collectors belong to the Sinatra Music Society,a 250-member group coordinated by Bob Chiappari, a San Francis-co postal worker. The Society publishes a newsletter, supplies tapesfor radio marathons, and is privy to much studio shoptalk. Membersknow, for instance, that Sinatra was displeased enough with hisGreat Songs from Great Britain album (Reprise 1006-issued inEngland only) to forbid its release in the States. They are familiar,too, with the troubled history of another album that began origin-ally as The Italian Songbook, with songs like "Al Di La," and ar-rangements by Don Costa. "I saw a work-up of the cover and every-thing," says one source, "but Frank just didn't want to learn the lyricsin Italian. Basically it boils down to that." The project then becamean album of waltz tunes entitled Come Waltz with Me, but shortlybefore its release, word came through: drop the title song (by Cahnand Van Heusen) and change the cover. Result: All Alone (Reprise1007). Few listeners, and fewer critics, noticed that all the songswere done in waltz tempo, sung allegretto. The title tune, mean-while, slipped into underground trading circles.

The most troubled project of all, though, was probably Sinatra/Tobim (Reprise 1028), the album that never was. Because theirfirst collaboration-Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim(Reprise 1021)--was well-received, a follow-up album, consisting often bossa nova tunes, was recorded in March 1969. But Sinatrawas reportedly unhappy with a duet version of "Desafinado" thatis said to have had homosexual overtones. Still, the cover wasprinted and a batch of 8-track cartridges were run off by the time adecision was made: stop the album. Too late. Bob Chiappari alreadyhad one of the cartridges and taped copies were spreading throughout

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collecting circles all over the world. "I found it in a local recordshop," insists Chiappari (though he won't say which shop). "Evenbefore, though, I heard that some acetate test pressings for the albumgot out."

"I think Chiappari made up that tale so as not to get anyone atReprise in trouble," says Steve Young, a 25-year-old collector whomanages New York's Apollo movie theatre. "I heard that 3500cartridges were pressed and warehoused, but two got out to Bob.When Sinatra's men found out, they went nuts."

"They did ask for it back," admits Chiappari. "So I returnedit." Eventually seven cuts from the album (not including "Desa-finado") ended up in a hodgepodge Lp called Sinatra & Company(Reprise 1033) released immediately after his retirement, some twoyears after the songs were recorded.

A highly selective Top Eight listing of current undergroundholdings among Sinatra collectors might resemble something like thefollowing:

1. PRIVATE RECORDINGS. If such things exist, they are theultimate for collectors-tapes privately made by Sinatra at partiesor in rehearsal with his pianist Bill Miller. Rumors abound in thiscategory. One popular story is that a tape exists of Sinatra andMario Lanza singing duets at a California party. "The ideal situationin any true collector's mind is to have the only copy available," saysRic Ross. "It's like a rare stamp, or a Picasso original. You don'tlike to see too many duplicates around."

2. UNRELEASED MASTERS. A handful of interesting Lp'scould be made with the unreleased master takes that reside in com-pany vaults at RCA, Columbia, Capitol and Reprise records. Unof-ficially the list includes 6 to 12 sides at RCA; 20 takes apiece atColumbia and Capitol; and numerous amounts at Reprise. Othermasters-like "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," "Shadow of theMoon," and "Moment to Moment"~were released only in foreignmarkets, or released here briefly, then withdrawn. Some of the un-released songs to be found on a collector's shelf include: "The SeaD

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Song," recorded in 1954; a 1960 version of "The Last Dance" withFelix Slatkin charts; "As You Desire Me" and "Don't Take YourLove from Me," recorded with Don Costa in 1961, but deleted fromthe beautiful Sinatra and Strings Lp (Reprise 1004) they were in-tended for; "America, the Beautiful," and "California" (by Cahnand Van Heusen), both recorded in 1963 for America, I Hear YouSinging (Reprise 2020), but dropped along the way. CollectorJonathan Schwartz (the son of songwriter Arthur) went to consider-able pains in London a few years ago to obtain "Roses of Picardy,"a song Sinatra had deleted from the Great Songs from Great Britainalbum. Schwartz phoned conductor/arranger Robert Farnon at hishome on the isle of Guernsey in the English Channel. "Can I have'Roses of Picardy'?" he asked. Farnon replied: "It you do notpublicize it." At 5 a.m. Schwartz was on a plane to Guernsey. "Ithink it's the best song from the album," he says today. Anotherrecent find is "The Man with the Golden Arm," a song so rare thateven the Capitol session date is uncertain. Supposedly it was neverreleased because the lyrics were too depressing. Sample: "Theending is clear and not very nice/ A nameless grave beside someprison farm/ For no one's really sadder than/ The man with thegolden arm."

3. RECORDING SESSION OUTTAKES. There are some under-standably tense feelings within Sinatra ranks over this material, con-sisting of false starts, fumbled lyrics, and alternate takes in therecording booth. "Some of the Reprise people either collect-id est,steal-these items and swap them; or they sell them for extra cash,"says Albert Lonstein, whose clients include a few showbusiness per-sonalities. "It's easy for an engineer to smuggle out the trimmingsthat don't go into the final disc." When disc jockey William B.Williams (who takes credit for originally dubbing Sinatra "Chairmanof the Board") asked Jonathan Schwartz how he secured sessionmaterial during a 1971 tribute to Sinatra by New York's WNEW, thecollector replied: "By lying, cheating and paying a good deal ofmoney to very small people."

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4. UNUSUAL RECORDS. Collectors pursue the 52 V-discsthat Sinatra made during World War II, as well as the 16-inch acetatesmade for radio stations by the Treasury Department and the Veteran'sAdministration after the war to promote savings bonds and the like.Also valued is the special version of "High Hopes" Sinatra made withcampaign lyrics for JFK in 1960. Another offbeat record, con-sisting of a 4 a.m. show from the 500 Club in Atlantic City withSinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., was given away (withSinatra's approval) by the late Bill Rodstein to bar patrons in hisPhiladelphia Sinatrama Room in the early sixties. Though tapedcopies are available, the actual disc is ultra rare.

5. PRIVATE SHOWS. The premium item here is the January1961 Inaugural Gala that Sinatra, with a platoon of entertainers,organized for JFK to raise more than a million dollars for the Demo-crats. In addition to the all-star cast, this program features PresidentKennedy thanking Sinatra at the end. Extremely rare. More recently,Sinatra appeared at the University of Southern California for a saluteto Cole Porter sponsored by the Friends of the Library there. Alongwith Ethel Merman, Fred Astaire and others, Sinatra sang to the ac-companiment of a single piano and chatted about the great song-writer. The program was taped, but is very rarely found in privatecollections.

6. UNFINISHED PROJECTS. In 1953 Warner Brothers madeplans for a cartoon version of Finian's Rainbow. Although the mu-sical track was recorded by Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrongand Ella Logan, the project fell through. Today the soundtrack ispart of the underground. In 1960 a "Clan" show at the Sands Hotelwas privately taped, apparently with an album in mind, while Frank,Sam, Dean, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford were shooting Ocean's11. A few years later Reprise again recorded Frank, Dean and Sam-this time at the Villa Venice in Chicago. But the project was droppedand the tapes are now in private collections.

7. CONCERT AND NIGHTCLUB SHOWS. Some of these tapes

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are of poor quality, while others are line taps that represent mile-stones in the Sinatra career. A 1953 concert in Blackstone, England,for instance, captures a cocky Sinatra shortly after he had signedwith Capitol after a decline in popularity, and immediately beforehis appearance in the movie From Here to Eternity. A 1957 Seattleconcert (with conductor/arranger Nelson Riddle on a rare outing)features vintage songs from their great albums of the mid-fifties.Most of the appearances that Sinatra made in 1962 during a tourof the world for children's charities are on tape in good quality.Sinatra's only performance at the Newport Jazz Festival (with CountBasie in 1965) was long believed to be an unrecorded item untilJanuary 1970 when Boston collector James Perikli took an ad inBillboard to announce that he had the tape. As Sinatra's concertsbecame less frequent in the later years, they were valued even more-so as collector's items. Recordings therefore abound of shows atForest Hills, the Fountainbleau, Caesar's Palace, and so on. Thereare concerts with the Count Basie and Buddy Rich orchestras duringtours of the late sixties, appearances at benefits for Hubert Humphreyduring the campaign of '68, and still more appearances at benefitsfor a London university (with Grace Kelly and Bob Hope), for anarcotics addicts' halfway house in St. Louis (with Johnny Carsonand Dean Martin), for the heart-stricken entertainer Frank Fontainein Boston, for a fatherless family of nine in Indiana, and on and on.

8. RADIO & TELEVISION SHOWS: These are by far the mostcommon of non-commercial items, mostly because of the numerousold-radio buffs who swap material freely. Tapes here span the fullSinatra career-from a 1936 spot with the Hoboken Four on MajorBowes' Amateur Hour through the Harry James and Tommy Dorseyera, the Hit Parade shows, guest spots on Fred Allen and Jack Bennybroadcasts, Sinatra's own various radio and TV shows of the lateforties and fifties, his Man & Music specials of the sixties-right upto his moving acceptance of the Jean Hersholt award at the 1971Academy Awards. One scarce item in this category for many yearswas the musical version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which was

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televised in 1955. The program featured Paul Newman and EvaMarie Saint, along with Sinatra as the Stage Manager. Oddly enough,the show did not turn up in collecting circles until the early 70's.Ric Ross, who was once offered a film print of the 90-minute pro-gram for $10 a minute, searched for fifteen years before locating acopy of the soundtrack. At one point even Eva Marie Saint wasapproached. "She wouldn't allow a tape to be made from her print,though," says Ross.

What do the underground things tell us about Sinatra as a per-former that we do not already know from his commercial releases?Plenty. First of all, we learn that although the Sinatra career waslong and his songbook immense, he sang basically the same songsover and over in his concert and nightclub appearances: "Nancy,""The Lady is a Tramp," "I've Got You Under My Skin," "Ole ManRiver," "One For My Baby," et al. As former Downbeat editorGene Lees once put it, people ln.ve grown old listening to Sinatrasing "You Make Me Feel So Young." Toward the end of his careerSinatra would add a new flourish or two, usually as a finish-"That'sLife," "My Way," or the awful "My Kind of Town." But clearlyhis staple crop as a performer was a handful of standards-"oldchestnuts," as he called them in his act-that had heen kind to him,that he felt secure with, and that, after a point, he wouldn't dare toomit from a performance.

Secondly, despite Sinatra's reputation for handpicking his mater-ial and for respecting the lyrics of a song, his onstage renditionsoften suggest scorn for the songs he sang. During a Seattle concert,for instance, while the orchestra vamps as a prelude to "Hey, JealousLover!" he says: "I absolutely and unequivocably detest this song."Sometimes Sinatra does not even finish a song-or he will breezethrough it while delivering asides to sidemen and to knowledgeablemembers of the audience. During a Philadelphia concert he has theaudience sing along during the embarrassing "oo-be-doo-be-doo"coda to "Strangers in the Night." At Caesar's Palace he changesD

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that song's lyrics to: "Strangers in the night/Exchanging glances/Wond'ring in the night'/ Just where my pants is." During the sameperformance he alters the lyrics of "Please Be Kind" from "Tellme I needn't fear" to "Tell me that you're not queer." And so on.One is sadly reminded of the introductory remarks of Sir NoelCoward on another underground tape-this one a recording of aMonte Carlo benefit at which Sinatra appeared: "Never once abreach of taste; never a wrong move." Well, now. Here we clearlyhave someone who at times is more interested in pandering to thebarroom mystique than in singing a song. Of course, when a per-former does the same songs again and again, he will add a new flourishor two as the act begins to age; but at times it seems to be more aquestion of taste, not musical variety, in Sinatra's renditions, andone can only wonder if Sinatra himself would approve of many ofhis own performances.

The recording session outtakes, though, reveal a much differentside of the man: astute, professional, yet irretrievably human. Heis a creature of phlegm, missed cues, fumbled lyrics and many, manytakes. A performance may be an evening, but a recording is forever.Frank Sinatra's voice-especially its timbre-was a genuinely beauti-ful instrument, capable of doing marvelous things when he wantedto utilize it, and most of his work in the recording booth is quiterewarding. Some of it, though, is junk. Thus I draw my final con-clusion-that the man's judgment at times was highly questionableif not downright self-defeating.

Like most success stories, Frank Sinatra was a product of histimes, in this case the forties. And to some extent he was victimized,and his career perhaps foreshortened, by the quicksand of thosetimes. Throughout his career Sinatra remained basically a big bandsinger a la 1942. Only the labels changed: in the fifties he calledit "swing," in the sixties "ring-a-ding" or whatever. In any case,there is a sameness over the years. Songs that he sang in the fortieshe rerecorded in the fifties and rererecorded in the sixties while thesame generation followed him around on a nostalgia trip. (The motto

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of Reprise Records, the company that he founded, is, appropriatelyenough, "to piay again and again.") According to Bob Chiappari,the average age of the Sinatra Music Society member is 43, and heis reasonably professional. The organization includes attorneys,doctors, dentists, accountants, engineers, college instructors, andeven a psychiatrist. Surprisingly, most of the Society is male. Thefemale swooners of the forties are perhaps gone, but they have beenreplaced by middle-aged men who probably danced to Dorsey tunesin 1942, and perhaps still request them at the neighborhood pianobar today. Clearly Sinatra's hardcore audience was one that likedthe familiar. For them he was still The Voice, a touchstone withthe weatherworn past.

Thus, when Sinatra began to do some breakaway things towardthe end of his career, they wouldn't buy. His album of Rod McKuensongs, A Man Alone (Reprise 1030), did not move in spite of somefine low-key renditions perhaps because a portion of the disc con-sisted of Sinatra reading McKuen's mawkish poetry. Likewise, thefinal album that Sinatra recorded-Watertown (Reprise 1031)-wastoo far from midstream for the traditional Sinatra audience. "Itcould be argued that Frankie decided to quit before he got too farbehind," said Newsweek. "His last two record albums sold only63,500 copies and 35,000 copies, compared with a previous averageof 150,000."2

Perhaps this is true. One has only to lot)k at the thinning supplyof Sinatra albums at the local shopping center (where Watertown isin the discount bin at $.98 to draw a similar conclusion. It seemsespecially sad that Watertown should be the album caught in thethe middle, however, for it is a heartbreakingly beautiful piece ofwork-a song-cycle about a man whose wife has left him and thechildren. In the end she writes him a letter saying she will return,but she doesn't. But it's an album that is just too progressive, toofar ahead for the Sinatra regulars who are always looking backward.There is an obscurity to some of the lyrics, there is a dirge-likesameness to much of the music, and it is even obscurely packagedD

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in a plainish gray jacket that does not contain a song title on eitherof the outside panels. You have to buy the album, strip away thecellophane, and fold it open to see what you've got. And whatyou've got is a handful of brand new songs, with a pop poster ofFS thrown in as an extra. Sinatra, who began as a teen idol, thenbecame an Institution, was now once again being marketed as if hewere competing with Bobby Sherman. The effect is enough toleave a 43-year-old fan cold. Which it did.

Of course, there were other, earlier indications that Sinatra waslosing touch with his audience: wearisome renditions of things like"Winchester Cathedral," "Downtown," "Moody River," "Don?tSleep in the Subway," and-horror of horrors-an upbeat version of"Some Enchanted Evening," perhaps the worst cut that Sinatraever released. In fact, all_of these things were released.

Meanwhile, scores of great standards went unrecorded by thegreatest singer of popular songs that this generation has known, andbeautiful songs that he did record-such as "Don!t Take Your Lovefrom Me," "As You Desire Me," and a drawerful of other fine mastertakes-went unreleased. In addition, an album of excellent bossanova tunes was held back for so long that by the time ft was releasedit sounded as anachronistic as a calypso Lp.

The best thing that Sinatra could have done before exiting is adouble album set called Sinatra Sings Standards, with songs he hassung many times over the years but has never recorded: "Tenderly,""Time on My Hands," "Don't Blame Me," "I'll String Along WithYou," "You Took Advantage of Me," "My Foolish Heart," "AHundred Years from Today," and the list could go on. But no.The singer is gone, the songs have ended, and only for collectors donew, undiscovered melodies linger on.

Whomever gathers up the definitive collection of undergroundSinatra recordings ultimately is anyone's guess, but it probably,won't be Sinatra himself. This became apparent during the summerof 1970 after he had given two London concerts for a children'shospital and told a friend in Los Angeles, "Those two nights could

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have been my finest hours, really." Did he have copies of the shows?No. Word was sent through collecting circles to Fred May in England,who dubbed copies of the performances from his master tapes forSinatra's personal collection. Shortly afterward May received aninscribed gold cigarette lighter along with the singer's personal thanks.Said Sinatra's longtime personal secretary, Lillian Peloso: "Youpeople have bigger and better collections than we have!"

NOTES

1 This anecdote, like numerous others, is taken from a series of interviewsI conducted with Sinatra collectors through the mails during 1970-72. Likewise,all direct quotes attributed to collectors are taken from cassette-recorded in-terviews occurring during the same period.

2April 5, 1971, p. 49.

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