“SINATRA’S VOICE WENT through range changes. His sound changed. He went from the violin with Axel [Stordhal, Sinatra’s primary arranger in the 1940s], the pure violin sound, to the sound underneath, the viola, with Nelson [Riddle in the 1950s]” (Sammy Cahn). “The voice itself would evolve over the years from a violin to a viola to a cello, with a rich middle register and dark bottom tones” (Pete Hamill). In the late Sinatra of the concert years, biographer Shawn Levy even hears a tuba.
Ever since I read Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Correspondences” in college, I have been attracted to the idea that we wend our worldly way “through forests of symbols” and that there are secret linkages between distinct areas of experience. (Thus, from a poem of mine called “Effects of Analogy”: “Bop is to analytical cubism / as John Coltrane is to Malcolm X / as Dante is to Virgil /as a tank is to a wooden horse.”) To the paradigm of musical instruments, I would suggest these further correspondences:
1940s: The Voice. Violin. Ideal medium: radio. Allegorical songs: “All or Nothing at All,” “Oh! Look at Me Now.” “God, he looked like a star. He had the aura of a king as he sat signing autographs with a solid-gold pen” (Sammy Davis, 1944). Occupational hazards: female mass hysteria, right-wing columnists. Foibles: Lucky Luciano, hyperactive libido, whiskey, temper tantrums.
1950s: The Capitol Years. Viola. Ideal medium: long-playing record. Allegorical titles: “You Make Me Feel So Young,” “Come Fly with Me,” “All the Way.” Analysis based on McLuhan: “hot” FS perfect for radio and the movies, disastrous on TV. Occupational hazards: the FBI, the press. Foibles: Ava Gardner, hyperactive libido, whiskey, temper tantrums.
1960s: Chairman of the Board (so dubbed by William B. Williams of WNEW). Cello. Ideal medium: nightclub act. Allegorical titles: “Fly Me to the Moon,” “It Was a Very Good Year,” “My Way.” Major TV success: A Man and His Music (1966). “Only two guys are left who are not the boy next door—Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra” (Sammy Davis). Sinatra to Tony Bennett when Bennett was enduring a crisis in confidence: “Just produce. Money follows talent.” Occupational hazards: the FBI, the press. Foibles: JFK, Sam Giancana, whiskey, temper tantrums.
1970s and beyond. Old Blue Eyes. Bass trombone. Ideal medium: concert hall, Madison Square Garden, Dodger Stadium, the Pyramids at Giza. Occupational hazards: an addictive need for adulation, unwillingness to get off the stage. Foibles: Ted Agnew, Nancy and Ronnie Reagan. Mottos: “Hell hath no fury like a hustler with a literary agent.” “Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the Bible says love your enemy.” “May you live to be a hundred, and may the last voice you hear be mine.”