Songs and related Episodes

(23) Which one do you choose from Sinatra's songs as the best?
I've Got You Under My Skin (in Japanese) translated by Yoshie Kishida



Frank Sinatra(1915-1998)


 
I heard that many critics choose this one, and I have no objection to it.

 This is the masterpiece to improve that he is the singer that we can find once a hundred years. People say he is genius, but he gained his own way finally with his great efforts to listen to his own singings and study about it a lot. The first edition of this song was released in 1956 when he was forty-one. This is a good example to show his swing style.

 "Use your mentality"...I have never found that kind of cool phrase in Japanese songs!! Everyone, just listen as the advice by Cole Poter and Sinatra, even though it makes your ears burn!!

 In the swing era, many good vocalists attached to big bands were brought up in it like Sinatra. They parted their bands and became topnotch singers. Sinatra made a debut in Harry James and his Orchestra in 1939 and the next year he was poached and moved into Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra. You know how he spent his glorious way as a singer after that!!


 
Some people say, "Sinatra should not have sung till his later years."

 Surely his voice became so rough and didn't reach to high tones, but I still loved his songs at that time. The soul of songs is beyond singers' voices and ways of singing, I believe. If someone says like the above, I think that they are the kind of people who regard younger ladies are better. Of course people get older and weaker physically. But the elder we become, the more we gain than the amounts we have lost, I'm sure.

 Vladimir Horowitz had concerts even though he became feeble and shaky, and I also felt that he should have stopped playing, like the people I mentioned above. But now, I reflect on myself.





Bing Crosby
(1903-1977) 
Mel Tormé
(1925-1999 ) 
Perry Como
(1912-2001 )
Ella Fitzgerald
(1917-1996) 




Sarah Vaughan
(1924-1990)
Anita O'Day
(1919-2006)
June Christy
(1925-1990) 
Chris Conner
(1927-2009)

 
From the later of 1920's to 1940's, Bing Crosby from Paul Whiteman Orchestra, and Mel Tormé who did the great parts as a singer, an arranger and a drummer in Chico Marx Band at the age of 16 are well known. In the middle of 1930's, a male singer Perry Como from Ted Weems & His Orchestra, female singers like Ella from Chick Webb Orchestra and Sarah from Earl Hines Orchestra were also very popular. Three white ladies of Stan Kenton Band are so cool, Anita O'Day sings sooooo jazzy, and June Christy and Chris Conner have attractive husky voices.

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