This post is being written on December 12, 2015. One century earlier, on January 12, 1915, Francis Albert “Frank” Sinatra was born. It seems appropriate, then, to choose one of Sinatra’s signature songs as the Song of the Week.
Sinatra began his career in the mid-1930s, singing with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey bands. He began his solo carer in the 1940s, becoming one of the most famous and influential singers of all time. Although he could not read music, is credited as a co-writer on only about half a dozen songs and appears to have had a perforated eardrum (at least that was the official reason given for his avoiding military service during World War II), Sinatra had a good voice and charisma and excelled in his ability to interpret songs written by others.
Some of those songs were interpreted so well by Sinatra that they have become almost indelibly linked to him – songs like “My Way;” “Strangers in the Night;” and this week’s Song of the Week, “Luck Be a Lady,” which was written by Frank Loesser1 for the musical Guys and Dolls.
In Guys and Dolls, “Luck Be a Lady” is sung by a gambler named Sky Masterson who is trying to salvage his relationship with the girl of his dreams, Sarah Brown, an evangelist working with the Save-a-Soul Mission. After a falling out, Sky had promised Sarah that he would deliver a dozen genuine sinners to her revival meeting. She refused to believe him and walked away, To prove that his word was good, Sky started a crap game, betting all the other players $1,000 against their souls. In other words, if he lost he had to pay each of them $1,000; and if he won, each would attend the revival. Sky won.
I am also picking “Luck Be a Lady” as Song of the Week because it may work as a bit of sympathetic magic as I referenced earlier when we needed some rain. I have been participating in a football pool this season, trying to predict the winners of each week’s NFL games and assigning confidence points to each pick. Before last week’s games I was first with respect to the number of games picked correctly and third in total points. However, last week I was out of town and did not give much thought to my choices2. I got 8 right and 8 wrong. I dropped to third in number of correct picks and remained in third for total points. I need to try to catch up this week; and that is going to take a little bit of luck.
Returning to the brief discussion of Frank Sinatra, let add that he was controversial because of his alleged connections to organized crime and his friendship with such politicians as John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. He suffered a heart attack and died in 1998.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1nQANoQT7Q
Luck Be a Lady
By Frank Loesser
But there is room for doubt
At times you have a very un-lady-like way
Of running out
Your on this date with me
The pickin’s have been lush
And yet before the evening is over
You might give me the brush
You might forget your manners
You might refuse to stay
And so the best that I can do is pray
Luck be lady tonight
Luck be lady tonight
Luck if you’ve been a lady to begin with
Luck be a lady tonight
Luck let a gentleman see
Just how nice a dame you can be
I know the way you’ve treated other guys you’ve been with
Luck be a lady with me
A lady never leaves her escort
It isn’t fair, it isn’t nice
A lady doesn’t wander all over the room
And blow on some other guys dice
Lets keep this party polite
Never get out of my sight
Stick with me baby, I’m the guy that you came in with
Luck be lady tonight
A lady never flirts with strangers
She’d have a heart, she’d be nice
A lady doesn’t wander all over the room
And blow on some other guys dice
Lets keep this party polite
Never get out of my sight
Stick with me baby, I’m the guy that you came in with
Luck be lady tonight
© WARNER/CHAPPELL MUSIC, INC. .___________________________________________
- Frank Loesser wrote many, many songs including “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” which still gets repeated radio airplay this time of year, more than 70 years after it was written.
- I also had some bad luck. Two games went into overtime, and the team I picked lost each of them. In two other games, my chosen team was ahead until the last couple of minutes, and then found a way to lose. I kn ow – it isn’t seemly to do this whining, is it?
Thanks for this one, Louis. It inspired me to look into Sinatra a bit. I was familiar with his music and his status as an icon of the pre- and post- WWII generation, but really didn’t know that much about him as a musician. I was surprised at what I discovered. Here are a couple of sources I found which gave me a better idea of why he has the place he does in the history of American music.
On December 13 George Will in his column made some observations about Sinatra which I discovered were right on point:
“… Frank Sinatra should be celebrated for his craftsmanship… With Sinatra, tune out the public personality and listen to his music as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan and Oscar Peterson did. They all, according to the culture critic Terry Teachout, named Sinatra their most admired singer.”
“For Sinatra, before a song was music, it was words alone. He studied lyrics, internalized them, then sang, making music from poems. His good fortune was that he had one of the nation’s cultural treasures, the Great American Songbook, to interpret. It was the good fortune of that book’s authors — Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Johnny Mercer and many others — that Sinatra came along to remind some Americans and inform others of that book’s existence.”
The Wikipedia entry on Sinatra under the heading “Sinatra, the Musician” also describes the gifts he possessed as a musician. As I said, it was quite a surprise to me. The guy had a gifted ear that transcended genres, and his singing was marked with impeccable timing (which Rudy mentions in his reply) and phrasing. He was on the 20th century American musical landscape from the 30’s through the 90’s, and his presence there was obviously earned by his musicianship.
Interesting stuff… Thanks, Louis.
I certainly don’t want to rain on your parade, so after you make a splash this week in your football pool, would you spend some time explaining the attraction to Sinatra and his singing. Sure, he can keep a beat (watch as he throws the dice right on the beat) and he ennuciates well, but I just don’t see why he became so popular. Good Luck.
I think the reason he became so popular was – in the last words from your comment and the basic subject of this post – good luck. He was in the right place at the right time, sort of like Elvis and Dylan and the Beatles. It is probably impossible to pinpoint one thing that caused any of their popularity.
The YouTube video that is in the post is from 1966, when Sinatra was already in his 50s. His voice wasn’t as good then as it was earlier and I think the performance includes a bit of acting like he thought the Frank Sinatra character should act. When he came into popularity in the 1930s and 40s his voice was a little bit sweeter and not forced. It is sort of like the difference between Leonard Cohen’s voice on his first two albums and his later albums.
There are a couple of things about his singing that seem important. One is that his initial popularity came at the end of and right after the big band era. He started as a singer for big bands and he picked up the phrasing and feel of those bands and carried it over to his solo career. For instance, there seems to be a bit of glissando as he moves into some of the notes. Many jazz singers from that era project sort of the same feel.
Another thing is that his delivery of lyrics was more conversational than that of many of the earlier pop stars. Others like Bing Crosby and Perry Como were doing the same thing and were also quite popular.
Putting all of that together, the young Frankie seemed to – as described in an interview I read with Tony Bennett – perform a song honestly with all the meaning and nuance intended by the composer, and even a little bit more.
He sang with some of the best supporting musicians of his time, and that also helped. He and his artistic collaborators had some fairly original ideas. For instance, his 1955 album, In the Wee Small Hours is often called the first “concept album.”
He wasn’t the best singer of his generation, but he was at the right place at the right time, and he and his publicists knew how to take advantage of that.
For an earlier (1950) song that has a beat and you kids can dance to it, you might listen to something like “The Continental.”
Okay, Dude, “Glissando?”, you win. I suppose if I listened to early Frank I might have a different impression, much like listening to early Elvis compared to Hawaiian Elvis. I would still take early or late Cohen over them both, Glissando or no Glissando.
I would also usually prefer to listen to Leonard Cohen. However, in “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” he says: “The ponies run, the girls are young/The odds are there to beat/You win awhile and then it’s done/Your little winning streak.” I was hoping for a longer winning streak to get me through the rest of the season. As for the glissando, I think sometimes Frankie had trouble hitting the right note, but had a good enough ear that he could slide into where he was supposed to be. That probably sounded better and more honest than being perfect.