[lbo-talk] Frankie

[andie nachgeborenen]

What Frankie are you talking about? There's nothing
wrong with Axel Stohrdahl or Nelson Riddle. Au
contraire. The arrangements are models, the best, they
set the standard. Some of the early Columbis atuff had
indifferent orchestras and catch-as-catch-can
arrangements -- not the Dorsey stuff, his was a superb
orchestra and his arrangements were impeccable. Maybe
some of the later Reprise material was
over-orchestrated. But Sinatra was just the best, both
on term of talent amd taste,a nd that ran to
arrangements -- unless you react like young Luke, and
all that stuff sounds to you like "Lawrence Welk
shit," which I don't think is your problem. 

I was talking to my daughter about Frankie -- I was
listening to A Swinging Affair, one of the Capitol
discs (I just got the 16th-disc Capitol set on ebay).
My daughter has upgraded from rap to Srephen Sondheim
-- more Lawrence Welk shit, you'd say, Luke --it's a
real delight, actually, and I was telling her that
basically Luis Armstrong invented 20th century popular
singing (whough HIS later stuff was indeed marred by
poor orchestras and indifferent arrangements), Frankie
and Bing Croby, but no one listens to Bing any more
because, glorious as his voice was, he had absolutely
no taste. Unlike Franky, who basically determined the
canon of great popular song, Bing sang crap --
pseudo-Irish glock. Christmas songs. The 99.99% of
stuff in the Tin Pan Alley era that no one remembers,
for good reason. But a standard can almost be defined
as a song Frankie used to sing. Unlike Bing, who cared
about hits and money, wanted to sing what he sang
right, but didn't care what he sang, Frankie was an
agonized artiste, who paida  fanatics's attention to
the musicianship and arrangements and the
orchestrations. Which is why we still listen to him.
So go listen again to Only The Lonely or Nice N Easy,
and tell me that his worked was marred in that way.
Really!

Of course his horizons were limited; he couldn't hear
what Elvis was doing. Well, Elvis probably thought
Frankie sounded like Lawrence Welk. 

--- joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote:
> Michael P writes:
> 
> "His kind of music is deplorable, a rancid smelling
> aphrodisiac," Sinatra 
> was quoted as saying in 1956 of Elvis. And his
> feelings about the rest of 
> the rock community were no less loving. "Cretinous
> goons", he once wrote 
> (or was quoted in a 1957 Life article) of rock and
> rollers.
> 
> Which doesn't negate the fact that he was a superb
> signer whose performances were marred only by bad
> arrangements and crappy orchestras. Too bad.
> 
> Joanna
> 
> 
> 
> ___________________________________
>
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