In 1938, Sinatra found employment as a singing waiter at a roadhouse called "The Rustic Cabin" in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, for which he was paid $15 a week.[52] The roadhouse was connected to the WNEW radio station in New York City, and he began performing with a group live during the Dance Parade show.[53] Despite the low salary, Sinatra felt that this was the break he was looking for, and boasted to friends that he was going to "become so big that no one could ever touch him".[54] In March 1939, saxophone player Frank Mane, who knew Sinatra from Jersey City radio station WAAT where both performed on live broadcasts, arranged for him to audition and record "Our Love", his first solo studio recording.[55][i] In June, bandleader Harry James, who had heard Sinatra sing on "Dance Parade", signed a two-year contract of $75 a week one evening after a show at the Paramount Theatre in New York.[56][j] It was with the James band that Sinatra released his first commercial record "From the Bottom of My Heart" in July. No more than 8,000 copies of the record were sold,[60] and further records released with James through 1939, such as "All or Nothing at All", also had weak sales on their initial release.[61] Thanks to his vocal training, Sinatra could now sing two tones higher, and developed a repertoire which included songs such as "My Buddy", "Willow Weep for Me", "It's Funny to Everyone but Me", "Here Comes the Night", "On a Little Street in Singapore", "Ciribiribin", and "Every Day of My Life".[62]
How a singer you never heard of sold 150 million records
In his first year with Dorsey, Sinatra recorded over forty songs. Sinatra's first vocal hit was the song "Polka Dots and Moonbeams" in late April 1940.[74] Two more chart appearances followed with "Say It" and "Imagination", which was Sinatra's first top-10 hit.[74] His fourth chart appearance was "I'll Never Smile Again", topping the charts for twelve weeks beginning in mid-July.[75] Other records with Tommy Dorsey issued by RCA Victor include "Our Love Affair" and "Stardust" in 1940; "Oh! Look at Me Now", "Dolores", "Everything Happens to Me", and "This Love of Mine" in 1941; "Just as Though You Were There", "Take Me", and "There Are Such Things" in 1942; and "It Started All Over Again", "In the Blue of Evening", and "It's Always You" in 1943.[76] As his success and popularity grew, Sinatra pushed Dorsey to allow him to record some solo songs. Dorsey eventually relented, and on January 19, 1942, Sinatra recorded "Night and Day", "The Night We Called It a Day", "The Song is You", and "Lamplighter's Serenade" at a Bluebird recording session, with Axel Stordahl as arranger and conductor.[77] Sinatra first heard the recordings at the Hollywood Palladium and Hollywood Plaza and was astounded at how good he sounded. Stordahl recalled: "He just couldn't believe his ears. He was so excited, you almost believed he had never recorded before. I think this was a turning point in his career. I think he began to see what he might do on his own".[78]
After the 1942 recordings, Sinatra believed he needed to go solo,[79] with an insatiable desire to compete with Bing Crosby,[n] but he was hampered by his contract which gave Dorsey 43% of Sinatra's lifetime earnings in the entertainment industry.[80] A legal battle ensued, eventually settled in August 1942.[81][o] On September 3, 1942, Dorsey bade farewell to Sinatra, reportedly saying as Sinatra left, "I hope you fall on your ass",[80] but he was more gracious on the air when replacing Sinatra with singer Dick Haymes.[65] Rumors began spreading in newspapers that Sinatra's mobster godfather, Willie Moretti, coerced Dorsey to let Sinatra out of his contract for a few thousand dollars, holding a gun to his head.[83][p] Upon leaving Dorsey, Sinatra persuaded Stordahl to come with him and become his personal arranger, offering him $650 a month, five times his salary from Dorsey.[85] Dorsey and Sinatra, who had been very close, never reconciled their differences. Up until his death in November 1956, Dorsey occasionally made biting comments about Sinatra to the press such as "he's the most fascinating man in the world, but don't put your hand in the cage".[86]
In 1946 Sinatra released "Oh! What it Seemed to Be", "Day by Day", "They Say It's Wonderful", "Five Minutes More", and "The Coffee Song" as singles,[116] and launched his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra,[117] which reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart. William Ruhlmann of AllMusic wrote that Sinatra "took the material very seriously, singing the love lyrics with utter seriousness", and that his "singing and the classically influenced settings gave the songs unusual depth of meaning".[118] He was soon selling 10 million records a year.[119] Such was Sinatra's command at Columbia that his love of conducting was indulged with the release of the set Frank Sinatra Conducts the Music of Alec Wilder, an offering unlikely to appeal to Sinatra's core fanbase at the time, which consisted of teenage girls.[120] The following year he released his second album, Songs by Sinatra, featuring songs of a similar mood and tempo such as Irving Berlin's "How Deep is the Ocean?" and Harold Arlen's and Jerome Kern's "All The Things You Are".[121] "Mam'selle", composed by Edmund Goulding with lyrics by Mack Gordon for the film The Razor's Edge (1946),[122] was released as a single.[116] Sinatra had competition; versions by Art Lund, Dick Haymes, Dennis Day, and The Pied Pipers also reached the top ten of the Billboard charts.[123] In December he recorded "Sweet Lorraine" with the Metronome All-Stars, featuring talented jazz musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Harry Carney and Charlie Shavers, with Nat King Cole on piano, in what Charles L. Granata describes as "one of the highlights of Sinatra's Columbia epoch".[124]
Sinatra's decline in popularity was evident at his concert appearances. At a brief run at the Paramount in New York he drew small audiences.[151] At the Desert Inn in Las Vegas he performed to half-filled houses of wildcatters and ranchers.[152] At a concert at Chez Paree in Chicago, only 150 people in a 1,200-seat capacity venue turned up to see him.[153] By April 1952 he was performing at the Kauai County Fair in Hawaii.[154] Sinatra's relationship with Columbia Records was also disintegrating, with A&R executive Mitch Miller claiming he "couldn't give away" the singer's records.[151][s] Though several notable recordings were made during this time period, such as "If I Could Write a Book" in January 1952, which Granata sees as a "turning point", forecasting his later work with its sensitivity,[157] Columbia and MCA dropped him later that year.[159] His last studio recording for Columbia, "Why Try To Change Me Now", was recorded in New York on September 17, 1952, with orchestra arranged and conducted by Percy Faith.[160] Journalist Burt Boyar observed, "Sinatra had had it. It was sad. From the top to the bottom in one horrible lesson."[151]
Sinatra grew discontented at Capitol, and fell into a feud with Alan Livingston, which lasted over six months.[216] His first attempt at owning his own label was with his pursuit of buying declining jazz label, Verve Records, which ended once an initial agreement with Verve founder, Norman Granz, "failed to materialize."[217] He decided to form his own label, Reprise Records[218] and, in an effort to assert his new direction, temporarily parted with Riddle, May and Jenkins, working with other arrangers such as Neil Hefti, Don Costa, and Quincy Jones.[219] Sinatra built the appeal of Reprise Records as one in which artists were promised creative control over their music, as well as a guarantee that they would eventually gain "complete ownership of their work, including publishing rights."[220] Under Sinatra the company developed into a music industry "powerhouse", and he later sold it for an estimated $80 million.[221] His first album on the label, Ring-a-Ding-Ding! (1961), was a major success, peaking at No.4 on Billboard.[222] The album was released in February 1961, the same month that Reprise Records released Ben Webster's The Warm Moods, Sammy Davis Jr.'s The Wham of Sam, Mavis River's Mavis and Joe E. Lewis's It is Now Post Time.[223] During the initial years of Reprise, Sinatra was still under contract to record for Capitol, completing his contractual commitment with the release of Point of No Return, recorded over a two-day period on September 11 and 12, 1961.[224]
On June 6, 1988, Sinatra made his last recordings with Reprise for an album which was not released. He recorded "My Foolish Heart", "Cry Me a River", and other songs. Sinatra never completed the project, but take number 18 of "My Foolish Heart" may be heard in The Complete Reprise Studio Recordings (1995).[331]
While Sinatra never learned how to read music well, he had a fine, natural understanding of it,[347] and he worked very hard from a young age to improve his abilities in all aspects of music.[348] He could follow a lead sheet (simplified sheet music showing a song's basic structure) during a performance by "carefully following the patterns and groupings of notes arranged on the page" and made his own notations to the music, using his ear to detect semitonal differences.[349] Granata states that some of the most accomplished classically trained musicians soon noticed his musical understanding, and remarked that Sinatra had a "sixth sense", which "demonstrated unusual proficiency when it came to detecting incorrect notes and sounds within the orchestra".[350] Sinatra was an aficionado of classical music,[351] and would often request classical strains in his music, inspired by composers such as Puccini and Impressionist masters. His personal favorite was Ralph Vaughan Williams.[352] He would insist on always recording live with the band because it gave him a "certain feeling" to perform live surrounded by musicians.[353]By the mid 1940s, such was his understanding of music that after hearing an air check of some compositions by Alec Wilder which were for strings and woodwinds, he became the conductor at Columbia Records for six of Wilder's compositions: "Air for Oboe", "Air for English Horn", "Air for Flute", "Air for Bassoon", "Slow Dance" and "Theme and Variations".[z] The works, which combine elements of jazz and classical music, were considered by Wilder to have been among the finest renditions and recordings of his compositions, past or present.[347] At one recording session with arranger Claus Ogerman and an orchestra, Sinatra heard "a couple of little strangers" in the string section, prompting Ogerman to make corrections to what were thought to be copyist's errors.[347] Critic Gene Lees, a lyricist and the author of the words to the Jobim melody "This Happy Madness", expressed amazement when he heard Sinatra's recording of it on Sinatra & Company (1971), considering him to have delivered the lyrics to perfection.[354] 2ff7e9595c
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