Sinatra! the Song Is You: A Singer's Art
Frank Sinatra remains the greatest entertainer of our age, invigorating American popular song with innovative phrasing and a mastery of range and emotion. Drawing upon recent interviews with hundreds of his collaborators as well as with "The Voice" himself, this book is the only full-length work to chronicle, critique, and celebrate his five-decade career. Friedwald examines and evaluates all the classic and less familiar songs with the same astute, often witty, perceptions that earned him...
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"Frank Sinatra remains the greatest entertainer of our age, invigorating American popular song with innovative phrasing and a mastery of range and emotion. Drawing upon recent interviews with hundreds" Publishers Weekly This admiring account of Frank Sinatra's career provides only sporadic glimpses of the singer's personal life, focusing instead on the music. Friedwald (Jazz Singing) portrays Sinatra as an artistic rebel in the 1940s who campaigned for style and class against mediocrity and a bottom-line mentality. The crooner from blue-collar Hoboken, New Jersey, spent 20 years in an ultimately triumphant struggle to own and control what he produced, yet by the 1960s, market forces compelled him to work with material alien to his personal taste. Nevertheless, observes Friedwald, whose generally perceptive criticism is laden with superlatives, Sinatra expanded his musical palette while remaining true to his heritage. The colorful, prodigiously researched narrative focuses on Sinatra's collaborations with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, musical arrangers Axel Stordahl, Nelson Riddle and Billy May and songwriter/orchestrator Gordon Jenkins. (Sept.)
\ Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly\ This admiring account of Frank Sinatra's career provides only sporadic glimpses of the singer's personal life, focusing instead on the music. Friedwald (Jazz Singing) portrays Sinatra as an artistic rebel in the 1940s who campaigned for style and class against mediocrity and a bottom-line mentality. The crooner from blue-collar Hoboken, New Jersey, spent 20 years in an ultimately triumphant struggle to own and control what he produced, yet by the 1960s, market forces compelled him to work with material alien to his personal taste. Nevertheless, observes Friedwald, whose generally perceptive criticism is laden with superlatives, Sinatra expanded his musical palette while remaining true to his heritage. The colorful, prodigiously researched narrative focuses on Sinatra's collaborations with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, musical arrangers Axel Stordahl, Nelson Riddle and Billy May and songwriter/orchestrator Gordon Jenkins. (Sept.)\ \ \ \ \ Library JournalFrank Sinatra is a 20th-century icon-a singer, actor, and celebrity whose career stretches from boy singer with Tommy Dorsey in the Forties to creater of two bestselling discs of duets in the Nineties. In this musical biography, names like Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins (some of Sinatra's most significant arrangers) dominate, while Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow get but passing mention. Despite the serious intent, Friedwald writes in a loosely casual writing style (as in his earlier Jazz Singing, LJ 5/1/90) that tends to wear thin after a while. Also, a few examples with musical notation would have been welcome. Still, the level of detail in which his singing and recordings are discussed in over 500 pages is sure to delight true Sinatra fans, even if more casual readers may lose interest. Recommended for larger popular music collections.-Michael Colby, Univ. of California, Davis\ \
