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SOMETIMES OVERSHADOWED BY the Capitol Years, from 1953 to 1961, or the years after, when “our hoodlum singer” (as Johnny Carson put it at a St. Louis Rat Pack concert) founded his own record company, the 1940s are the closest thing to an overlooked decade in Frank Sinatra’s career. The songs Sinatra sang in the forties—whether with the James or Dorsey bands or on his own records for the Columbia label—could provide most of the soundtrack for any documentary of that decade. This is a lovely way to spend an evening.
1.
“All or Nothing at All” (music, Arthur Altman; lyrics, Jack Lawrence). Though initially recorded in 1939, this most famous of the songs Sinatra sang with the Harry James Orchestra is included here on a technicality. The 1939 recording didn’t become a hit until it was rereleased as a single four years later. Sinatra in 1944: “It’s a funny thing about that song. The recording we made of it five years ago is now in one of the top spots among the best sellers. But it’s the same old recording. It’s also the song I used to audition for Tommy Dorsey, who signed me on the strength of it. And now it’s my first big record.”
2.
“I’ll Never Smile Again” (Ruth Lowe). As recorded on May 23, 1940, by the Dorsey orchestra with Sinatra and the Pied Pipers vocal group. A breakout hit. One of the Dorsey songs Sinatra will record as a solo in his Capitol period, with a Gordon Jenkins arrangement, on No One Cares.
In the studio for Columbia.
Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
3.
“Oh! Look at Me Now” (music, Joe Bushkin; lyrics, John De Vries). January 6, 1941. Another landmark from the three years Sinatra spent as Tommy Dorsey’s boy singer. Sung as a duet with Connie Haines backed by the Pied Pipers. In the allegory of Sinatra’s career, this song—which he rerecorded as a solo arranged by Nelson Riddle on A Swingin’ Affair in 1957—figures heavily: “I’m so proud I’m bustin’ my vest.”
4.
“Be Careful, It’s My Heart” (words and music, Irving Berlin). June 9, 1942. Like Artie Shaw, Sinatra recognized the value of recording a repertory of songs written by the masters, and thus he did as much as anyone to (a) extend the life of the music, and (b) launch the concept of “the standard.” In this excellent Dorsey arrangement of an underrated Berlin ballad, Tommy’s trombone sweetly states the melody all the way, and then Sinatra’s vocal follows suit.
5.
“(There’ll Be a) Hot Time in the Town of Berlin” (music, Joe Bushkin; lyrics, John De Vries). I’ve heard two versions of this tune, which Bushkin, singer Lee Wiley’s pianist, wrote to boost morale among our troops abroad. The CBS radio broadcast of October 17, 1943, which became a V-disc, is swell, but I prefer the more relaxed delivery of March 4, 1944 (arranged by Axel Stordahl, and available on the box set Frank Sinatra in Hollywood).* This is one of “the songs that fought the war,” in theater critic John Bush Jones’s phrase. Our lads were going on “to take a hike / through Hitler’s Reich” and amend his “Heil” to “whatcha-know-Joe” or “gimme some skin.”
6.
“Dick Haymes, Dick Todd, and Como.” October 23, 1944. Sammy Cahn, who could craft a lyric at a moment’s notice, took “Sunday, Monday, and Always,” the Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen hit, and substituted these lyrics about some of the competitors in the battle of the baritones. You’ll find it on Columbia’s The V-Discs box. There are jokes about the singer’s lack of heft and the bobby-soxers’ adoring screams, which yet may cause him grief, “but if they ever stop / I’ll find that I’m back on relief.”
7.
“All the Things You Are” (music, Jerome Kern; lyrics, Oscar Hammerstein II). Recorded January 29, 1945. Axel Stordahl and orchestra. The apotheosis of the great American love song, from one of Broadway’s two greatest melodists. Concluding crescendo illustrates young singer’s high range. From The Best of the Columbia Years, 1943–1952.
8.
“Where or When” (music, Richard Rodgers; lyrics, Lorenz Hart). See comment (above) on “All the Things You Are,” recorded on the same day.
9.
“Saturday Night (Is the Loneliest Night in the Week)” (music, Jule Styne; lyrics, Sammy Cahn). Recorded on February 3, 1945, “Saturday Night” is an instant metonymy for the home front during World War II.
10.
“Put Your Dreams Away” (Ruth Lowe, Paul Mann, Stephen Weiss). Recorded May 1, 1945. Sinatra’s radio—and later his TV—theme music. A full-throated display of his ability to sustain a note seemingly past the breaking point.
11.
“Oh Bess, Oh Where’s My Bess?” (George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, Ira Gershwin). Recorded February 24, 1946. When Sinatra worked the Wedgwood Room at the Waldorf in late November 1945, he opened with “Paper Moon,” sang “Laura” and “It Might as Well Be Spring,” and surprised the critics most with this selection from Porgy and Bess. The singer’s emotional identification with his material reaches operatic heights.
12.
“That Old Black Magic” (music, Harold Arlen; lyrics, Johnny Mercer). Recorded March 10, 1946. Arlen, the jazziest of the songwriters, and according to Ethel Waters, the “Negro-est” white man she knew, wrote songs of extraordinary complexity. In Mercer he found his ideal lyricist: “For you’re the lover I have waited for / The mate that fate had me created for.”
13.
“The Coffee Song (They’ve Got an Awful Lot of Coffee in Brazil).” The music is by Dick Miles, the lyrics by Bob Hilliard, the same fellow who wrote “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” Recorded July 24, 1946. A charming nightclub number reflecting the late 1940s fascination with South America. In Brazil, folks use “coffee ketchup” to spice their ham and eggs, and “coffee pickles way outsell the dill.” Close your eyes and you’re at the Copa.
14.
“Begin the Beguine” (Cole Porter). October 19, 1946. Arranged by George Siravo, who was responsible for Sinatra’s best charts until Nelson Riddle at Capitol. Porter liked to say that the key to writing Broadway hits was to “write Jewish music.” Listen to this tropical-sounding, minor-key dance number—which veers even further from the standard thirty-two-bar structure than Arlen’s “That Old Black Magic”—and you’ll appreciate Richard Rodgers’s remark that the popular composer who “has written the most enduring ‘Jewish’ music” is Porter, “an Episcopalian millionaire who was born on a farm in Peru, Indiana.”
15.
“All of Me” (music, Gerald Marks; lyrics, Seymour Simons). Arrangement by George Siravo, November 7, 1946. Sinatra recorded this number many times, most notably on the Swing Easy album he did with Nelson Riddle’s arrangements in 1953. That will remain the touchstone, but the Siravo version comes close, a sexy example of “kidding the lyrics.” The singer’s strut belies the words (“Your goodbye / left me with eyes that cry”) and ends up sounding as belligerent as, say, “Why Should I Cry Over You?” Of numerous alternate takes, I like best the one that ends not with the Sinatra whistle but a mutter: “You better get it while you can, baby. I’m gettin’ outta here.”
16.
“My Romance” (Rodgers and Hart). April 25, 1947. Sinatra excelled at live duets during his radio years. He was up for a duet with anyone: opera singers (Lawrence Tibbett), actors (Van Johnson), the drummer Sy Oliver (who wrote “Yes, Indeed”), the Pied Pipers vocal group (“Somebody Loves Me”), and superb girl singers ranging from Eileen Barton (“Come Out, Wherever You Are”) to Doris Day (“Let’s Take an Old-Fashioned Walk”). Here he and Dinah Shore do justice to the lyric that states the rationale for popular music, namely that it can make fantastic dreams come true even when you’re wide awake. How do you know it’s a good duet? When the performers sound like they’re genuinely having fun.
17.
“The Song Is You” (music, Jerome Kern; lyrics, Oscar Hammerstein II). October 26, 1947. Definitive version of a great standard.
18.
“Body and Soul” (music, Johnny Green; lyrics, Edward Heyman).* Recorded November 9, 1947, with Bobby Hackett on trumpet. Music critic Gary Giddins calls this the best “straight” (i.e., non-jazz) rendition of a marvelous song whose release has been singled out—by jazz commentator Jamie Katz—as “the Golden Gate of musical bridges.”
19.
“It All Depends on You” (Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson). Recorded July 10, 1949, with Hugo Winterhalter’s orchestra, and a fine sax solo from Wolfe Taninbaum. Sinatra does a little bebop scat following the bridge of this swing classic. Track five on Swing and Dance with Frank Sinatra is the best among many satisfactory takes. Compare with how Ruth Etting does this 1920s song—or how the greatly underrated Doris Day, playing Ruth Etting, does it on-screen in Love Me or Leave Me.
20.
“Bye Bye Baby” (music, Jule Styne; lyrics, Leo Robin). July 10, 1949. Swell brassy number from Jule Styne’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In the movie version, the song is a giant chorus number with solos by Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe. Leo Robin’s lyric cleverly transforms goodbye to its opposite through the agency of a pun: the song begins with the title phrase and ends with the lovers reunited: “I know that I’ll be smiling / with my baby, by and by.”