Music, said Ludwig van Beethoven, the legendary composer and pianist, is the mediator between the life of the senses and the life of the spirit. It is also a powerful catalyst in the creative process of the genius, the connoisseur, the proficient, and the average, among us. It is the art of thinking with sound. It begins when words leave off. As philosopher Plato put it, in perspective, music is the most potent instrument than any other — for the mind and body alike. What’s more, music is quintessentially the highest form of culture and expression — it allows us to feel connected to everything marvellous.
Music is an uplifting experience — it is far more precise than words. It is akin to floating the language of being, and sound, into your subconscious. It is not one-dimensional; it is multi-dimensional, as Lord Byron paraphrased so succinctly with all his profound wisdom and impeccable poetic licence, “There’s music in the sighing of a reed;/There’s music in the gushing of a rill;/There’s music in all things.”
Frank Albert Sinatra [December 12, 1915-May 14, 1998] was a revelation of such an outlook — a man who did his music his own way. His saga was huge; not wieldy. It encompasses just too many songs, too many moods, too many aeons of time. But, it’s great music — music like no other. It’s Sinatra’s own. So much so, when you speak of Sinatra’s music, it is next to impossible to verbalise it without superfluous hyperbole.
Sinatra, his legion of fans cogently contend, was bigger than Elvis Presley and The Beatles combined. He conquered generations — as a messiah of music. If he was not the most important, also perceptively influential and popular musician of his century, nobody is. He’s one of a kind — the Frank Sinatra kind. What made him a phenomenon was he was just too good. He revelled himself in saloon songs, no less, among others; more so, when it’s just him and the piano as in “One for My Baby.”
Sinatra, who hobnobbed with presidents, leaders, celebrities, sportspersons, among others, was a master musical geometer too. He could make his music soft, glorious, easy, and sad. He could realign the melody in grief into a descending scale: of sadness dragged down at each step. His music revolved and transcended resistance too. It moved from the excellent to the exquisite — from the highs of “Summer Wind,” and “My Way” to the ‘lows’ of “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” They were extremes, all right; but, they crystallised a fascinating portrait of a great singer and his complex life.
Sinatra predated the digital revolution. It was a blessing, perhaps, primarily because technology would not have done him justice. He made the stage his stage — an empathetic extension of his psyche, a conscious connection between the singer in him and the audience. Sinatra’s music had something that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the ‘flow’ experience — the optimal know-how of creativity. It had grace and more than a trace of uncomplicated romance — something that evolved inside Sinatra like the elixir of pure joy and exploded into air through his archetypal voice.
Sinatra was the ‘perfectionist’ baritone man. He would pay attention to every minute detail — so much so, there’s nothing-ever-thrown-together, or left-to-chance, in his albums. He not only infused the misty structures of Billie Holiday, and hard jazz into pop, but he also functioned as a ‘conduit’ — for coloured music into white. In so doing, he did what Presley was destined to do for rock ‘n’ roll a generation later.
That was also Sinatra’s allure. Something you can always experience in his records. Something you can feel, taste, savour, and preserve in the deep recesses of your mind, heart, and soul — or, superficially too. Something that cannot be duplicated, manufactured, or re-mixed. When you have played a Sinatra song, it will fade in the air — and, yet stay there. You won’t be able to get it back through the air. It will stay in your head. In your heart, just as well. Sinatra’s songs were special. Soulful. You will feel their ‘souls’ — in your own spectrum of consciousness.
It is true that one had always developed a patronising attitude to the Sinatra legend — something much more than the myth of the man has permitted. Such things happen only with legends. Sinatra was no exception. When he aged, he proved himself to be a remarkable old man. Yet, like all men of his age, he was also culpable of falling into the trap of doing things folks of his age sometimes do. He would often force himself on his audience at the wrong places. Worse still, he’d sing, forget the words of his favourite songs, and crack mouldy jokes. Fans would be aghast, yes. But, they would tolerate him, because he’s ‘Frankie,’ a fairy tale — no more, no less.
Sinatra had his share of blemishes, all right — drinking, for instance. He gulped just too much. He was also prone to using abusive, insulting language, at times. He slighted stars like Shirley MacLaine and got away with it. He was Sinatra, after all. When he turned 80, his birthday became a highly keyed event — a ring-a-dinging series of tributes to the man, the artist and the legend.
Here’s its roll-call: of a host of CDs, which packed all of Sinatra’s studio recordings, including a 90-page book. This was not all. There were several repackaged offerings, including “The Best of the Columbia Years.” Add to it several new biographies, a syndicated eight-hour radio retrospective, art auction, and sale of memorabilia, aside from the Sinatra necktie collection, and you had them all — a commendation benefiting a legend.
It was a carnival, yes — a feast where Sinatra couldn’t refrain from redundancy. He called his song “What’s New,” incorporated in his “Sinatra 80th: Live in Concert,” as “one of the nicest songs.” He dubbed “My Heart Stood Still” as “one of the best love stories that anyone could speak, or sing.” What about “Soliloquy?” He said, “It is one of my favourite pieces of music ever, which I ever had to sing.” Sinatra just kept rolling on — a man with a big heart. Quite possessive of his close friends, and some of the most beautiful women he came in contact with, and married, Sinatra’s life-long crush for Ava Gardner is, in fact, far too well-known.
Sinatra’s voice compensated everything, including his fallibility. It was velvety and milky — a timbre like no other. Matchless. Beyond compare. Take this. His great hit, “Night and Day,” can never be equalled. So also his fine roles in films like From Here to Eternity, Pal Joey, which won him the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and Von Ryan’s Express, among others. What made him special was his willingness to learn, at every step — like a good student. His learning was personal, not a spectator sport.
Sinatra, the suave crooner and archetypal swanker, was more than one guy. He was his own Cecil de Mille of music, so to speak. His psyche delineated a lingo of its own: the sound of music in all its eternal resplendence.
It will remain unparalleled — for yesterday, today and tomorrow.
— First published in Financial Chronicle
