The Best American Poetry

Radio Free Sinatra

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My father, Frank Sinatra, and singers like Tony Bennett, Bing Crosby and Perry Como fought for years for performance royalties from radio stations, arguing it was unfair that performers are not paid and citing cases like Helen Forrest that show the harsh side of this injustice.

Helen was one of the most gifted singers of the 1940s. Known as the “Voice of the Name Bands,” she had hits like “I Cried for You” and “I Had the Craziest Dream.” Sadly, Helen spent her last years practically destitute because she received nothing when her songs were played on the radio.
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from "Radio Free America" by Nancy Sinatra: New York Times, August 3, 2009

If you don't know Helen Forrest's voice and you like jazz standards in the forties manner, I suggest you rectify this omission immediately, listening to the songs Nancy named plus such others as "All the Things You Are," "I've Heard That Song Before," and "Too Marvelous for Words." Helen Forrest was born Helen Fogel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1917. As a young woman, she sang on the radio under the name Bonnie Blue, but her big break came when Artie Shaw recruited her for his band in 1938. She later sang for the Benny Goodman and Harry James bands, and she was a regular on Dick Haymes's radio show. She had a very pure voice. Until I read Nancy Sinatra's op-ed column, I hadn't realized that Helen Forrest had fallen on hard times. She died at 82 in 1999.

-- DL

Date Night with the Obamas

Stacey and I walked down Sixth Avenue in the sunlight feeling good. At Housing Works, one of the great thrift stores de nos jours, I paid $25 for a beautiful Paul Stuart jacket that must have cost its owner thirty times more. Of course it needs revisions, I mean alterations, but some days are like that -- full of chance rhymes and serendipitous encounters, like a poem. Like finding the right silk tie to link the jacket to the red tennis shirt I was wearing, and I had just the right costume for date night, our date night, which also turns out to be the Obamas' date night, and the reason there are so many cops along Sixth Avenue is that the Obamas are here -- they're eating at Blue Hill on Washington Place, a "Greenmarket haven" featuring food that star chef Dan Barber grows on his upstate farm. We ate dinner there ourselves once.

The cops were cracking wise but keeping a straight face. The crowds were gathering on the avenue -- though it was now six o'clock and the Obama motorcade would not be moving up Sixth for another hour and a half. Turning left on West Third Street we stepped into the Blue Note, where Frank Sinatra Junior was going to sing some of his papa's tunes with an excellent band at around the same time that the curtain would go up at the Belasco, where the Obamas were going to see "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," August Wilson's play about black sharecroppers migrating to the industrial north.

Stacey managed to get us the two best seats at the Blue Note bar, and the next person to sit down wore a white jacket and a black shirt. If I ever write a spy novel, I can promise him a part. Stacey and I can recommend the concoction prepared by the bartender -- Vladimir by name, Serbia by origin -- consisting of tequila, agave, fresh lime and Grand Marnier, shaken vigorously with ice, then strained into a cold martini glass. Almost as much fun to make as to sip.

Sinatra Jr. called his father "Sinatra" and sang "Here's to the Losers" unexpectedly, and a song I hadn't heard before, said to be Johnny Mercer's last lyric, circa 1976. The music was undoubtedly Jimmy Van Heusen's, but what was the song called? "Empty Tables," maybe. Among the more predictable choices, Porter's "I've Got you Under My Skin," Arlen's "One for My Baby," and Gershwin's "A Foggy Day in London Town" showed that Nelson Riddle's peerless arrangements remain impreccable. From the Count Basie sessions, "Summer Wind" has weathered well; less so the bigger hit that was on the flip side of "Summer Wind" back in the summer of 1966: "Strangers in the Night." Each instrumentalist had his moment in the sun: the piano in "One for My Baby," the trombone in "Skin," the whole horn section in "Luck Be a Lady." Sinatra quoted his "uncle, Milton Berle" about how audiences used to be full of middle-aged men and their daughters. Tony Bennett was in the audience and took a bow. It was a lovely way to spend an evening.

-- DL

Haiku Exchange #3 [by David Lehman and David Shapiro]

Re: haikus from Sinatra
Date:    1/9/03 9:52:43 AM Eastern Standard Time

It's quarter to ten:
There's no one in the room
but rules of haiku!

New Year's a season:
squirrels contradicting whom --
And whose love is who?     -- DS, 1 / 9 / 03

Whose woods, whose leaves, whose
icicles hanging from trees?
Who deserves credit?

The yew tree gave us
years of green and private shade.
The snow storm felled it.   -- DL, 1 / 9 / 03

Re: Sinatra's in Season: Haiku snow falls

No more rhymes, just fact:
Pigeons above basketball
court -- past -- present tense --

Is the future fact?
Sinatra in outer space --
Glenn Gould's Goldberg cracked --  DS 1/ 10 / 03

... and you can get it

Sinatra’s always
in season: nice work
if you can get it.

So I wrote a piece
on him for “American
Heritage,” R Snow,

editor. The snow
needs no editing,
none shall get from me.

No sun’s as bright as
on a January day
with snow on the ground.  -- DL, 1 / 10 / 03

Sinatra makes Obama's hit list -- and McCain's

Thanks to Blender magazine (and NPR), we now know our presidential candidates' top ten favorite songs.
The only recording artist to make both lists is Frank Sinatra. John McCain picked Sinatra's "I've Got You Under My Skin" (probably FS's finest uptempo song) as number 8 on his list; Barack Obama made the more unconventional choice, "Easy to Love," and put it seventh. Both songs were written by Cole Porter. Unusual choices: McCain picks two songs by ABBA; Obama, a known Rolling Stones fan, opts for "Gimme Shelter," a daring selection though no doubt safer under the circumstances than "You Can't Always Get What You Want" or "19th Nervous Breakdown. " Inadvertently funny pick: McCain votes for the great Jerome Kern standard "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" -- in the Platters' doo-wop version. McCain's list is the more predictable -- Neal Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," straight from the seventh-inning stretch. And I'd rather listen to any other song by Louis Armstrong, a hero of mine, than "What a Wonderful World."

--DL

Jo Stafford Gone

It was the sort of hot humid day that most people hate but I perversely love. Driving to a pool at the base of a waterfall where floating I could feel like an ice cube in a highball, I listened to Bill Shedden's weekly "Classic Sinatra" program on WCNY (90.3 FM) in Syracuse. Labor Day will mark four full years of this weekly one-hour program, one of several shows that demonstrate the superiority of a public radio station that designs its own programing rather than buying the national feed (e.g. "Performance Today"). Shedden started this evening with Sinatra's late Capitol period (Porter's "You Do Something to Me" and Rodgers & Hart's "Lover"). Later he played a little-heard rendition of Berlin's "It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow" from 1940.

More songs from the Tommy Dorsey period were coming, because Jo Stafford -- who was one of the Pied Pipers accompanying Sinatra in the Dorsey band before her own highly successful career as a solo vocalist -- died at age 90 last Sunday. Congestive heart failure.

Jo Stafford -- "GI Jo," to ardent soldiers during World War II -- had as fine and as pure a voice as any Big Band "girl singer" or cabaret chanteuse in a period rife with great examples of both. Her interpretations were not unusual or offbeal but she had great pipes and sang with a sweetness that combined the essence of sincerity with the intimacy of a slow-dance. She sang with great clarity and had magnificent range. Her versions of "Too Marvelous for Words" and "Embraceable You" are definitive. I also recommend her versions of "Manhattan Serenade," "Yes, Indeed," and "The Things We Did Last Summer," all from the late 1940s. She is audible in "I'll Never Smile Again," "Let's Get Away from it All," and "O! Look at Me Now," which Dorsey arranged in 1940 and '41 when Sinatra was the boy singer and Connie Haines the girl singer in his band.

I once wrote a poem beginning "When I fall in love, I want Jo Stafford's voice in my ear."

-- DL

Sinatra Stamp To Go On Sale

The USPS releases the Frank Sinatra commemorative postal stamp (first class: 42 cents) on Tuesday, May 13, ten years (minus one day) after the death of Old Blue Eyes.

-- DL

Sinatra at the Waldorf (1945)

Tips on Tables - By Robert W. Dana - November 30, 1945

Sinatra Takes Over Wedgewood Room and Wins Crowd Despite His Illness

The quality of laryngitis is strained these nights at the Waldorf-Astoria's Wedgwood Room where Frank Sinatra is making a belated start on a short engagement. It is painfully obvious that he shouldn't be singing until he has had proper rest yet he sang 14 numbers Wednesday night, the concluding one "Old Man River."

Ordinarily the slim technician of modern song-phrasing is in his element with a large band behind him-wasn't he once a swing band vocalist? And Dick Stable's 22-piece band, featuring numerous violins and a harp, lends splendid support, but the voice that has hypnotized millions was like a butterfly in a whirlpool.

It was a masterful performance, nevertheless. There was the familiar stance, the bending of the microphone, the intent, searching glance that swept back and forth across the room in piercing penetration of the customers' thoughts and feelings and moods. He'd even turn now and then and seem to signal facilely to his piano accompanist.

Rises to His Best.

Frank's opening number was "Paper Moon"- light, airy and huskily fragile. Next came "It Might as Well Be Spring," "Laura" and "Its Been a Long, Long Time."The fifth tune was Irving Berlin's memorable "How Deep Is the Ocean," which is having a notable rebirth among top favorites. It revealed Sinatra at his best, too. From then on the singer seemed to have his laryngitis licked and the program became vibrant. He told of the time Jimmy Van Heusen and Phil Silvers were houseguests at his home and wrote a number called "Nancy With the Laughing Face," dedicated to the joy and sparkle that is his daughter. No great shucks of a composition but a tender, touching song.

After rendering "My Romance," from the still-remembered "Jumbo," and "When I Marry Sweet Lorraine," he pulled the first surprise of the evening with "Bess, Where Is My Bess." A haunting, lovely tune, he sang it very well
--

Fred, Frank, and Elvis

ELVIS PRESLEY, FRANK SINATRA and FRED ASTAIRE at Nancy Sinatra's opening night party, which was also celebrating the closing night for Elvis, at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, in 1969. Elvis's bodyguard, Joe Esposito, is in the background. "Elvis was a prince," says Mr. Abolafia. "He would give you the shirt off his back."

Photograph by Oscar Abolafia

from "A Photographer's Files" / Sidebar to "In an Era of Glitz, a Witness With Panache" by Lily Koppel

New York Times, February 10, 2008

-- DL

Jerome Kern's Birthday

It's Jerome David Kern's birthday. Jerry would have been 123 years old today. Jonathan Schwartz is devoting his Sunday show on WNYC-FM to Kern's songs as interpreted by Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Margaret Whiting, et al. Terrific, and interspersed are songs composed by Jimmy Van Heusen, born yesterday (and here's Stacey Kent with "The Tender Trap"). Van Heusen, real name Chester Edward Babcock, named himself after a shirt.

Here's my own playlist for today, twenty canonical Kern numbers (one of them played twice]:

A Fine Romance (lyrics Dorothy Fields) [as sung by Billie Holiday c. 1934]

All the Things You Are (Oscar Hammerstein) [Ambrosian Chorus/ London Sinfoniette/ John McGlinn]

Bill (P. G. Wodehouse) [Helen Morgan]

Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man (Hammerstein) [Teresa Stratas with Frederica Von Stade, Karla Burns, Bruce Hubbard, and chorus]

I'm old Fashioned (Johnny Mercer) [Eileen Farrell]

I Won't Dance (Fields) [Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald]

Long Ago and Far Away (Ira Gershwin) [instrumental Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt]

Look for the Silver Lining (Buddy DeSylva) [Judy Garland]

Lovely to Look At (Fields) [Fred Astaire]

Make Believe (Hammerstein) [Ambrosian Chorus / London Sinfoniette / John McGlinn]

Ol' Man River (Hammerstein) [Sinatra 1945]

Pick Yourself Up (Fields) [Mel Torme]

Pick Yourself Up (Fields) [Nat King Cole]

She Didn't Say Yes (Otto Harbach) [Ella Fitzgerald]

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (Harbach) [Sarah Vaughan]

The Song is You (Hammerstein) [Tommy Dorsey Orchestra with Sinatra vocal]

The Way You Look Tonight (Fields) [Astaire in Swing Time]

They Didn't Believe Me (Harold Reynolds) [Sinatra radio c. 1950]

Why Do I Love You? (Hammerstein) [Ambrosian Chorus / London Sinfoniette / John McGlinn]

You Couldn't Be Cuter (Fields) [Ella Fitzgerald]

-- DL