Sinatra 100: Good Songs From Shit Years (‘70s & ‘80s)

Date
December 13, 2015

Miracler
Nick Dedina

Location
San Francisco

Liner Notes from ND

I remember being confused as a child about how my main black & white crush Mary Tyler Moore changed so quickly between the few years separating Dick Van Dyke Show of the mid-60s and her own starring role of the ‘70s.

Does it all go to polyester prints and eating disorders so fast???

Sinatra rules the 1930’s, ‘40s, and ‘50s and though his output (song quality-wise) started going wobbly in the mid ‘60s he still put a lot of his best music out even then.

The ‘70s and ‘80s were train-wrecks officially, though. The worst of both worlds – so few official releases and then so bad when they’d finally come out.

Frank knew this. He was also depressed at the state of his voice and how MOR went from meaning the meeting of jazz and pop to meaning soft-rock.

Sinatra sang live-in-the-studio along with the entire band his whole career – if one person messed up, the take was ruined. Suddenly, the booze bloated and shaky star vocalist was the one messing up.

Most of the stuff on this set shows he could have released reams of solid material during this time – he was just overthinking things. In the studio he was singing junk like “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around The Old Oak Tree” – in concert he was relaxing with a jazz quintet and singing standards, many of which he would never officially record. Check out the bop-fueled “Lover, Come Back To Me” or the guitar only “As Time Goes By.” Holy smokes!

Still, this period is when I was a kid and I discovered Sinatra. I saw a couple of his movies on TV and started playing my parents old records (the upbeat ones only) along with the birth-of-punk records my older brother was bringing home. Then, around 9, I heard “Send In The Clowns” (in, you guessed it, the dentist office) sitting next to my mother in the waiting room. I was getting teary-eyed it was so sad – I looked up at my mum and she sighed and said, “The skinny democrat still shines through sometimes.”

You tell me – I don’t listen to this official era of Sinatra too often but damn, I think a lot of these bootleg recordings are just wonderful, croaky voice and all. Sinatra’s ability at reading a lyric ended up overcoming his declining voice – Ella Fitzgerald’s vocal decline is even more tragic. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy – David Simon just taught me that quote.

There should have been about 12 studio albums of this stuff.

Happy to have this.

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