Tag: Frank Sinatra

Music cover and re-cover

Sinatra

I’ve often mused on musical covers by the same artist. This would be a re-cover in the parlance of the Coverville podcast, which I listen to regularly.

The post was initiated by a 2021 video of a lawyer talking about Taylor Swift rerecording her early albums issued under her original contract. The attorney wondered if the public would purchase the songs again; from the last time I checked the Billboard album charts, three of the ten albums were “Taylor’s version.”

I should compare the old songs with the new ones, but I’m not a Swifty and would feel inadequate to point out the differences in the recordings. (However, I’m quite amused and bemused by the MAGA disdain for her.)

Conversely, I could discuss some of the variations among the records of Frank Sinatra on different labels long before Taylor. A good example would be Snatra’s Sinatra.

“Ten of the album’s twelve tracks are re-recorded versions of songs that Sinatra had previously released, with ‘Pocketful of Miracles’ and ‘Call Me Irresponsible’ being first-time recordings for Sinatra.

“Sinatra’s two previous record labels, Columbia Records and Capitol Records had both successfully issued collections of Sinatra’s hits; this album was the attempt of his new label, Reprise Records, to duplicate this success by offering some earlier songs in stereophonic sound, which by 1963 was an exploding recording technology.” You should be able to hear that album in its entirety here; then, you can tool around and find earlier iterations.

Fab

The Beatles had different versions of Get Back and Let It Be, from the single to the album version. Both Get Back and Medicated Goo by Traffic have singles that come to a dead stop – I still own the 45s – while the album cuts do not. Get Back: LP and single. Medicated Goo album cut; I can’t find the single.

I also considered remakes such as Fame and Fame ’90 by David Bowie, Think and Think ’89 by Aretha Franklin, and a supposedly improved version of John Hiatt’s Have A Little Faith In Me. In each case, I prefer the original. However, I have an odd affection for the Trans version by Neil Young of Mr. Soul compared with the Buffalo Springfield take.

In Paul Simon’s In The Blue Light, he re-covers ten of his songs that he thought were previously overlooked. One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor: original (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon) and remake.

My favorite: Crying – the original is by Roy Orbison, the re-cover by Orbison and k.d. lang.

Egregious sins exist on remakes of some compilation albums. I have a Herman’s Hermans greatest hits collection that is all redos; Peter Noone is singing them, but it ain’t the same. Likewise, I have a 4-CD set of soul songs, with the only originals by deceased artists. These are very disappointing.

Licensing rights are often the issue. Rhino put out The Ray Charles Anthology, with 17 songs from his ABC/Paramount period and three live versions of songs he first recorded when he was on Atlantic Records.

Live versions versus studio albums? A whole ‘nother conversation. I tend to like the studio versions, though the live performance of I’m So Glad on Goodbye Cream shreds the studio track from Fresh Cream.

That said, I needed to do much more compare and contrast, scouring YouTube to do the topic justice; frankly, it was too daunting.

Musical discovery in 2022

Francis Albert Sinatra

Janis.Jorma.typewriterThere’s a blogger who does this EOY thing. I’m going just to pick off the music categories right now.

What was your greatest musical discovery in 2022?

It was weird. I bought more music than in the previous two years combined. Almost none were from artists who first started recording in the 21st century.

I just received this. Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonen – The Legendary Typewriter Tape: 6/25/64 at Jorma’s House. Haven’t given it a sufficient listen, but I will.
Nobody Loves You When You’re Down And Out

One item I got was a boxed set. Twelve CDs of Steeleye Span. I think I MIGHT have one LP of theirs. But it was the fact that it was relatively inexpensive (c. $60) that sealed the deal.
Gaudete
Thomas The Rhymer

I bought a new Elvis Costello album, The Boy Named If. This is another one with the Imposters. I have about a third of Elvis’ 30-odd albums. It’s always hard to hear old music by older artists without comparing them with other works in their oeuvre. I’ll need to listen to it some more.
The Death Of Magic Thinking

The same is largely true of Bonnie Raitt’s first album in six years, Just Like That… It’s never less than solid, but it’ll need a few more spins.
Down The Hall

Perhaps the most interesting album I listened to was from a guy who died in 1998. Frank Sinatra put out Watertown, a concept album, in late 1969. The main composer of the album is Bob Gaudio of Four Seasons fame. It was re-released in 2022 with additional tracks. I think it works.
Watertown 

I did get SOME newer music. I enjoyed Jon Batiste’s 2022 Grammy Award-winning album, WE ARE.                                                                                                     Cry

Older tunes

And there are some other older albums I picked up. After seeing the Broadway production of David Byrne’s American Utopia on television, I bought the Broadway Original Cast Recording. While not as good as viewing it, it was mighty fine.
I Should Watch TV 

The 1992 album Partners by accordion player Flaco Jimenez features a lot of guests, including Stephen Stills, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt
Don’t Worry Baby, featuring Los Lobos

Of course, I listened to a lot of extant music. Recently, my wife asked me how many CDs I had. I guesstimated about 2000. Then I counted them. And by counting, I tabulated the number in a drawer and multiplied because math. It’s closer to 3000. And if you HAVE that many CDs, you ought to PLAY them. And I do.

Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year

First, a story that I might have told before in part. After the Paul Simon album Graceland came out, there was a 12-inch version of Boy In The Bubble that came out. I heard it on the radio, probably the local Q104, and I loved it. So I ran to my nearest record store and asked to order it. For whatever reason, it never arrived. I did record my friend Rocco’s vinyl onto a cassette, which is probably still in my attic somewhere.

I bought the Paul Simon box set at some point, hoping it would be on there. No luck. Then after 2011, I bought the 25th-anniversary version; surely, IT would contain the track I sought. Alas, no. BTW, I sent my old copy of the CD to some blogger who wasn’t familiar with Graceland.

Finally, this year, Rocco downloaded the track and burned me a CD.
Boy In The Bubble (12-inch)
Some lyrics:

The way we look to a distant constellation
That’s dying in a corner of the sky…
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long-distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah

Frank Sinatra would have been 100

Sinatra would occasionally muscle his way onto the pop singles charts against the likes of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

sinatraWhen the Times Union Center, or the Knickerbocker Arena, as it was then called, was first opened in downtown Albany in 1991, Frank Sinatra was the first performer. I didn’t go, but it seems that I’ve managed to have collected music representing most of his career.

I’ve acquired two CDs of his V-discs, recorded on Columbia Records, tracks sent out to the troops during World War II. He was idolized by “bobby soxers”, predated the adulation Elvis Presley and the Beatles would experience.

Then I have a boxed set of his Capitol singles from the 1950s. This is my favorite period, after Sinatra fell out of favor for a time, in no small part because he dumped his wife, the mother of his children, for actress Ava Gardner, in what was a tumultuous romance. Sinatra reemerged after appearing in the movie From Here to Eternity, a gig Gardner helped him get; he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

By the time I was old enough to really know who he was, he had left Capitol in 1961 to start his own record label, Reprise Records. And the Rat Pack mystique was in full force. He would occasionally muscle his way onto the pop singles charts against the likes of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles – Paint It, Black and Paperback Writer were the #1 pop hits immediately before Strangers in the Night, a song Sinatra hated. Still, my favorite Sinatra song, That’s Life, also came out in this period. So I do have the Reprise box as well.

This 1966 Esquire article explains the Sinatra mystique, and thus my ambivalence about his persona. The Frank of this period reminded me of the caricature played by Joe Piscopo and others on Saturday Night Live, the guy who was old-fashioned, using “cats” for guys and “chicks” for women. He retired, then unretired in the early 1970s.

I started “getting” him in the 1980s and actually bought the two Duets albums in the 1990s. He died in 1998. And my appreciation of his music, especially the albums, has grown.

Links

My Sinatra Top 10

Sinatra rock meme (I used to do those quite often on this blog)

CBS News: Sinatra at 100

Ken Levine: Somebody should say this about Sinatra; I agree

Stragglers in the night

Coverville 1103: A Cover Story for what would have been Frank Sinatra’s 100th

Sinatra

In honor of what would have been Sinatra’s 95th birthday, I came up with a Top 10.

When I was coming of age, listening to music as a preteen and teenager, it was your basic British invasion and American response, Motown, and the like that I related to. It was NOT those old fogeys such as Dean Martin or Francis Albert Sinatra. In fact, Sinatra had the AUDACITY to actually chart a few times in the 1960s, including a duet with his daughter Nancy called Something Stupid (which I STILL feel is pretty vapid).

But somewhere along the line, I started appreciating his work. First, it was the Capitol albums of the 1950s, and even the Columbia albums of the 1940s, then eventually even the Reprise songs from the 1960s and beyond.

When Albany finally got a decent-sized performance arena in 1991, then called the Knickerbocker Arena (now the Times Union Center), the very first concert was by Sinatra. I didn’t go, but it did cross my mind at the time.

In honor of what would have been his 95th birthday, I came up with a Top 10, but I’ve discovered that he would re-record some songs. He had a hit with That’s Life in 1966, but I owned the song on a 78. And I’m not expert enough with Sinatra to always distinguish them.

10. Young at Heart (1954)
9. Here’s to the Losers – couldn’t find a recording of Frank, but this is a Sinatra Review
8. Learnin’ the Blues
7. I’ve Got the World on a String
6. Hey Jealous Lover
5. Well, Did You Evah. This is a duet with Bing Crosby, from the movie High Society. Very much of its time, to be sure.
4. Night and Day. I like this 1961 Reprise version much better than the more poppy 1957 Capitol version.
3. Chicago
2. Witchcraft
1. That’s Life

Wild Thing by Jimi Hendrix, a live version featuring Strangers in the Night in the solo section.

Happy birthday, GC, who hated Sinatra.

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