Thank you dry. 8 minutes. Now past 11 programming on NPR is supported by Macalester College. Welcome in commencement speaker, un secretary-general Kofi Annan class of 1961 and alumni parents and Friends. Thank you. I've got you. Time are my stems. I have got you. deep in the heart of me so deep in my heart that you're really a good morning and welcome to midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm very active Frank Sinatra ol blue eyes died last night of a heart attack. He was 82 years old. He been in poor health for some time. Frank Sinatra was in a class all by himself many critics say Frank Sinatra was the greatest pop singer of the 20th century and today on this first hour of. Midday. We're going to take a look at Frank Sinatra and his music singer and music historian. Arne. Fogel is joined us this hour, and we also invite you to join our conversation. Ernie is says in fact, if you got a request Frank Sinatra record request, give us a call to 276 thousand. Is there Twin City area number to 276 thousand if you're calling from outside the Twin Cities 1-800. 242-282-8227 6001 800-242-2828 Frank Sinatra dad at the age of 82 seems hard to believe Barney. I was just reminiscing about the fact that the last time you and I did a radio program together. It was a celebration of Frank Sinatra's 80th birthday, and we had a program similar to what we were planning today. Today's a much sadder occasion, of course, which best pop singer of the 20th century is a legitimate say I think that to whatever extent you can make it a value judgment like that and certain no ways of judging it. Yes. He was he certainly was the culmination of a tradition and that's that's certainly valid. He was the end of an evolution there never was there. There hasn't been anybody to come along to supply a more definitive version of those that type of song by after Frank Sinatra. They're there at the end of the Tin Pan Alley era are either that golden age of Pop songwriting that they began to around the turn of the century and ended right around the time of the 1940s that we largely think of when we think the George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and Cole Porter and all of the writers of following that and that style that. Ended right around the time that Frank Not rush it to his assertive artistic maturity and he was in a position historically to be able to put the the button on that tradition and it had he been a less talented individual and less ingenious individual. He wouldn't have provided us with that button in just at fashion and he did the definitive version of the versions of those songs are in records by Frank Sinatra what it's hard to describe I suppose but what made him so different so unique. Well, he had a new sound there's a story that I think it's Connie Haynes or Jo Stafford one of the one of the lady singers in the Tommy dorsey's band. Stated that when Sinatra came into the Dorsey band and walked up to the does the microphone for the first time this young lady said to herself kind of skinny, but when he opened his mouth to sing, she knew hurt musical instincts told her that this was something brand-new. This was entirely different everybody who popular singing is an evolution in and of itself if it develops it changes it it the Eddie's in the wake of various events of Blues become popular in effect popular singing jazz changes and in effect popular singing country later on affected popular singing and at the time Jazz and pop music for very closely aligned in the 1930s and early forties and everybody wanted to sing like Bing Crosby. He was the most popular singer in had been the most influential a trendsetter and Pop singing and Sinatra himself said I figured the world didn't need another Crosby. He had been influenced by Crosby as has every singer who came along after Crosby in terms of microphone technique in terms of the mass media that the understanding of intimacy as it applies to the mass media and all of these things of Crosby was the Trailblazer in the innovator, but Sinatra took what there was to learn from Crosby and applied his own sense of musicianship to it. What weather is often referred to as the bel canto Italian. It's a sort of an opera term meaning a length and smoothness and seamlessness of of line in singing a where is a before Sinatra. You might have. Someone might have son. I'm so afraid of night cuz I'm too romantic and Sinatra came along going. I'm so afraid of me cuz I'm too romantic which that's a very lousy example of what I'm talking about but seamlessness, it's almost a throwback to a more classical type of singing and this was what his early style delineate it. Anyway, I was deleted by his release Thailand and He also in addition to this more refined almost classical sense of vocal projection came some other Innovations and eroticism that actually was largely hand-in-hand with that with that bel canto rather than something fighting that but that smoothness allowed him to insert little Ben's of the phrase a little turns and little subtle nuances that set themselves apart from that smoothness and we're very noticeable and very much appreciated by the young ladies because they were they were they just work we're so subtle in so that intimacy with the microphone. It was almost like breathing Whispering into the into the into the young girl's ear. And we deeply influenced by Billie Holiday who possessed a lot of those nuances and her singing and as he adapted it to what he was doing and his incredible sense of phrasing in a sense of what the lyric was reporting to say. What is this song writer mean to communicate? How can I live what he has written? And that's something he did even to a greater extent in later years. Yes. I we got a lot of requests already under knee, but I know you've got some you got some music I pick out a couple of things. I picked out a couple of things to play the beginning of this is of this song is very obscure. This is from an album that he did in the late 60s called a man alone. And these are all songs written by Rod McKuen who possibly hasn't stood the test of time the way some other poets and artists have but this is a wonderful song that he wrote for Sinatra. In which through mcewan's lyrics Sinatra is able to reminisce about his own early career and the effect that those young ladies had on his ego and the time and it's called the beautiful strangers. strange hold me for a night. I fell down in the dark man. on pillows softened in the afternoon appraised my flat little stomach and came back to my room. They spoiled me for time. And the taught me neon is just as nice. sunshine once in love with Amy always in love with Amy fascinated by you set your heart afire to stay. Once you're kissed by Amy. Tear up your list. It's a me. fly with Bonbon or tree and flower Moon your might be quiet the fickle heart free. Who loves Sugar Land later thinks it over and just quits. always in love with a v sweetly or romancer the answer will be That Amy rather stay with me. That of course is a Frank Sinatra who died last night at the age of 80 to Arne Fogel is with us this hour to talk about mr. Sinatra and his music his legacy. We have a number of requests that have already been called in and I will give you the phone number if you just tuning in and you can add your request to the list. We hopefully be able to get to it. It's 2276 thousand. That's the phone number to 276 thousand outside the Twin Cities one. 800-242-2828 was Frank Sinatra sound so effortless. Was it really easy for him to sing in to record and women do this but it's a lot of people who are familiar with him only a during the last half of his career are surprised when I play as early record because he was known for a kind of a hard-edged sound later on and has just heard. At the Amy song. He had a kind of a how much softer way of saying and it sounded easier, but he himself said once again ready to do anything the difference between his style and Crosby's from which all all singers that emerged at the time that his singing he felt his own singing style was more difficult said it was much more difficult because he had to in his words sing more and it being slightly somewhat closer to classical singing then a number of then what we usually think of his Pop singing particularly in those days. His breath control was was a Marvel and it was known at the time that he watched his old boss. Tommy Dorsey playing the trombone and I picked up some tips about the smooth and effortless seemingly effortless breath control and he was a swimmer and use swimming to to teach himself about breath control and Are the things that he had up until into the 1970s until his voice started to erode at pretty seriously was a good sense of breath control and he was able to do these long phrases. And so I think the roundabout way you are answer to that question would be that which was relatively easy for him would have been pretty difficult for everybody else who didn't take the time to learn the did develop the chops that need it interesting that you use the word for the term classical like yeah and it is supposed to singing Because Of course for many people what he's really associated with his kind of his hip Vegas-style which is anything but I do know that the main difference there is rhythm and it's but he still he listened to those some of those records you friends and stuff. The Tender Trap his first record of The Tender Trap in 1954 that he gets a note at the end. That's a swinger. It's an up-tempo thing. But he gets annoyed he bangs are I know it at the end of that song. That is absolutely mind-boggling. It's amazing similarly in the 1940s when he sings George and Ira gershwin's where is my best from Porgy and Bess? He has a high note at the end. That is something that very few popular singers. I would have described his popular singers would be able to do it. Just absolutely beautiful singing from it from me any from any definition Request we got a whole bunch of a Marney which is which one we're going to play first. Well, I don't know who sent these and I don't know their names or anything, but that we have some wonderful EverQuest in that they're not necessarily the most familiar tunes and I I kind of like being able to present some of the things that are less well-known. This first one is somebody requested a song from Frank's very first repris album first to record his own label repris. And Johnny Mandel is the orchestra leader here and this is Cole Porter's In the Still of the Night. Like the beat beat beat of the TomTom. when the jungle Shadows Fall Like The Tick Tick Tock the state Lee clock as it stands against drip drip All The Raindrops when the song. So within you In the Still of the Night As i gaze out of my window. At the moon, it's flight my thoughts all straight to you. In the Still of the Night While the world is in slumber. All the times without number baby when I say I love you. Are we? Site like the Moon. growing them Dawn Marie and the chill Stu Cousin Itt Just like I loved you. Rihanna songs just like the Moon that keeps getting them way out on the rim of that thing and let's do to change chill Still of the Night. In the Still of the Night and then we also had a little a little segment of another so I got a little segment of Night and Day that's because I gave the man the wrong disc you have gotten a huge collection how many how many records did Sinatra record any guess he made a couple of different ways to divide it up you if you want to say, how many albums did he make about 200 albums? How many single selections did he make up for a close to 2,000? I believe. I don't know the exact numbers and the wonderful thing it and it's a testament to his timelessness and his Everlasting popularity is the fact that you can do a show like this off of compact disc and be assured that merely not all that nearly. Every commercially released Sinatra selection is available on CD R has been available on CD Anna and most of them in the box sets that collect his entire catalog. For it at these various labels, we better get to another request here while we have a minute before we take a break. Okay. This is a song called Stars fell on Alabama and this is a prank in the mid-1950s. We lived our little Drama Wiki. And the Stars fell on Alabama last night. I can't forget the glamour your return the wild Stars fell on Alabama. I never planned in my imagination a situation and in the center just you and me. My heart beat like a hammer. You tired and stars fell on Alabama last night drama. Spell another. I can't forget the glamour your tell their tender live last night in my imagination station. So Heavenly off fairy light. No one else. Go ahead and just doing me my heartbeat just like a hammer fell on, Alabama. snow music of Frank Sinatra on this first hour of midday Arne Fogel is with us talking about the music of Frank Sinatra. We've got lots of requests that will be playing at the rest of this half-hour and will continue in just a moment as the temperature rises. So do complaints about large livestock feed Lots the Minnesota Legislature this year passed a law designed to deal with feedlot issues. I Mark style of Main Street radio join us for a special broadcast Tuesday, when will look at what the loss is and how local governments are becoming more active on the issue TuneIn for our Main Street radio midday from comfrey Tuesday at 11 on Minnesota Public Radio knlw FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities. NPR's Main Street radio coverage of oral issues is supported by the blandin foundation strengthening rural communities that reducing violent activities through community-based programs in rural Minnesota. There is a severe thunderstorm watch in effect for the basically the southern half of Minnesota until 3 this afternoon that would include the Twin City metro area showers and thundershowers a matter fact likely all across the State against severe weather is possible in the southern half the state highest today mid-seventies to the upper 80s Twin City forecast includes that severe thunderstorm watch pretty warm and humid today with the high temperature reaching the upper 80s right now. It's partly cloudy and 81 degrees in the Twin Cities are near Fogel is with us talking today about the music of Frank Sinatra. Mr. Sinatra died last night at the age of 80 too late last night. In Los Angeles of a heart attack and he had been sick for some while Arnie. We've got a lot of requests to play. What's coming up next year? Let's see. What did we just play stars fractured Bama Stars fell on Alabama by planned it ahead of time. But it that nobody told him to do that. Nobody wrote that for him. That was just something that he did and it's interesting because people always talk about his respect for the songwriter and getting across the meaning of the song songwriter intended and yet at the same time. He took such great liberties with the some of the lyrics particularly later on and some of those up-tempo songs, but always in service of the feeling that he wanted to get across here's a song from a later era and a different type of Sinatra. This is a gorgeous arrangement from Gordon Jenkins and part of an album called September of my years and the surprise a lot of people because it became a single at the height of beatlemania and this is Frank with Gordon Jenkins the orchestration of a Very Good Year by request When I was 17. It Was a Very Good Year It was a very good year for small town girl soft summer night. weird heart from the LIE on the Village Green when I was 17. When I was 21. It Was a Very Good Year It Was a Very Good Year And that's a very good recording but it's a very long one and we have a lot of requests to get in and very poignant particularly today. All of the records that he made from about age 50 on a very thought-provoking for me because I'm approaching that age very very quickly. But if starting at about age 50, he started singing very autobiographically about about life and then the ebbing and flowing of the years and with great feeling in great depth and poignancy and albums like that one and later on. And so how do you suppose he came out during the height of beatlemania? How did he break through that because Music just about disappeared there wasn't that he wasn't the only one of that style to be able to to make it during that era. There was a great people forget to do with the great kind of a intermingling of styles are particularly fond of the Year 1964, which was the year that the Beatles made their great first appearance on the charts in America, but the number one records in 1964 also for Louis Armstrong Barbra Streisand Dean Martin and those artists an Armstrong particularly, but certainly Dean Martin and Barbra Streisand went on to have many more the top 10 recording is a throughout the 60s and so did Frank Sinatra Frank Sinatra was viewed as an artist still popular with young adults. You might say in the 1960s and he had some of his most successful singles in the 60s Frank Sinatra did not have a million-selling single. Until the 1960s his album sold in the millions before that and his first record. We had a record that he made with Harry James and his orchestra that was released. Many years later when he became very popular on his own and that sold a million, but that was a Harry James Record featuring Frank Sinatra Frank. Sinatra did not have a million-selling single until he started hitting that number with things like something stupid and Strangers in the Night and that's always amazes people that little statistic one that that he was reluctant to recorded first, but he was convinced to because the song Ready for great friends of his Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, and once he completed the recording he liked it so much that he decided to make it the title song of his forthcoming album. It's called nice and easy for 1960. Let's take it nice and easy. It's going to be so easy for us to fall in love. Hey, baby, what's your hurry? Relax, and don't you worry? We're on the road to Rome that's safe to say but let's make all the stops along the way. The problem of course is to Simply hold your horses. To rush would be every time. Garland mega bus stops along the way the problem of course is to Simply hold your horses. Well, I think we lost nice and easy there. Yes. I just did he introduce that music or was that a lot of fingers snap your fingers weather performing but to do it on a record is totally unique and that's that's class and that's power and that's total self-knowledge to say to yourself. This is a record and you don't do things like this on her on a record. But damn I'm going to snap my fingers because that's the way I feel and I trust my instincts and it's going to be just fine and that's what he did and darn if it isn't just fine, you know, and it gives you a little bit of a lift because you have that Sinatra image in your mind and you hear that extra little finger snapping thing in it and it works it really works. He said he wasn't all that eager to record the song in the first place. I read somewhere that he didn't he didn't like On my way, of course is is always identified with Frank Sinatra read the day. He didn't like that song at all. Is that true? I didn't know that I've never heard that I would imagine that he liked it a lot because he called at the national anthem clamps. He he would die before he'd sing it on a show he'd say and now that's all paws for the anthem or he put it somewhere like that. But it it's possible that you didn't like it to begin with and then he would like it because of what the song came to to mean, but he certainly sang it. Well particularly on his initial recording great arching of a feeling. He starts very low-key and a mixed very powerful and then he brings it way down again, and then he brings it up. Again. That's another great thing about Sinatra As an interpreter and we talked about being a great interpreter of lyrics He knew how to how to arch a performance Arch phrases and by that. I mean not just you think about assigning meaning and depth to the lyrics. You're not just looking at every word and how can I be an actor without this word or this ends? You're thinking in terms of the song as An as an entire day and being kind of quiet perhaps it low-key thoughtful to begin with and slowly building the intensity of your performance as you get to maybe a third of the way through the song and then bring it back down again another word to its planning and thinking your way through the entire song. I and arching your phrasing to accommodate the feeling that you're trying to convey an overall message. This is a great there's no guidebook for this stuff while there is now it's called how Frank Sinatra did it, but they're they're essentially had been no guidebook as to how to do this kind of singing he gives you stand cliche alert. He wrote the book. I know there's a song that you definitely want to do a play this hour and we went make sure we get this one on before we run out of time here. Yes. This is us. Once again. These are all requests of very good request that people have seen one or two is four songs that he had never recorded interesting enough. But most of these are songs that they recorded two very wonderfully and this one is Louise very large in the Sinatra a legend because this is supposedly The Story Goes that he this is at a time when his career was running rather low and towards the very beginning of the 1950s in Columbia Records was getting ready to drop him. MGM films was getting ready to drop him or already had dropped him. He was doing he was on television regularly, but he was no longer a big pool in theaters and clubs and it was really He was getting to be considered passe as hard as that seems for us to believe today. He step into the studio one of his last sessions for Columbia and sang a song that he had a hand in writing called. I'm a Fool to want you and in the back of his mind was the what many people believed to have been the love of his life, which is Ava Gardner And he as The Story Goes when the session ended when the song ended he dashed out of the studio choking back tears, whether that's true or not. We'll never know. But what we do know is that you listen to this performance and you realize that he might as well have been because it's deeply felt and and it's a it's a pitiless thing to listen to It's it's quite moving. I'm a Fool to want you. I'm a Fool to Drug can be true. I love that's there for others to I'm a Fool to hold you. Search your phone. to hold you to see cops not mine. To share kiss the devil has no. timer But then you would come the time when I would need you. and once again I have to say take me by I love you. Is he? I know it must be. but right or wrong Wow. Am I wrong in thinking that that sounds altogether different than the kind of things usually associate with Frank Sinatra. I suppose it would if you were more accustomed to listening to post 1950s Frank Sinatra the vet that little. His down. His career low Point serves as a line of demarcation stylistically for Frank Sinatra. I'm he was a very different singer before his comeback. Why did he fall out of favor in the first place? He said my favorite because his music was changing and after after World War II music changed a lot of popular music changed a lot in ways that we still feeling today. If there was a great jeddak democratization of of popular music and a lot of the things that have been brewing in a in an underground sort of way country. Blues began to seep into into it went to a greater extent into the popular music and and even though it was still orchestrated in that sort of lush Tin Pan Alley fashion. You began to hear Goodnight Irene and doggie in the window a little bit later and some of these things that resemble folk songs gussied up for Mass taste, but folk songs are then rhythm and blues type of inflections and things came in and and The Rock and Roll waltz by Kay Starr and some of these things and what ends up happening is is the singers from beforehand if they can't make that jump. Well, they they start to go out of fashion. Frankie Laine became very popular. He had a rhythm and blues Edge Johnny Ray had a rhythm and blues Edge someone watered down for the consumption of the taste of the time. But Frank Sinatra didn't have that edge and so he began to sound antiquated. But when he came back with a new sound it was something totally different from what anybody else was doing and he dragged a certain segment of the audience along with him who didn't like what was the prototypical rock-and-roller country in rhythm and blues R&B. Unfortunately, we're out of time for this segment. You going to be back at 9 tonight? That was John Raby to do a special 2-hour broadcast on Frank Sinatra rice. That's right. And you get to play Suppose there were so many requests here. We only touched on a few of them. I'm going to take this list with me and we'll get some more of these tonight. Okay. Thanks so much for coming in today. One last word for people who want to start off a I get a Frank Sinatra starter kit. What's the best CD they should get to oh my Heavens that's very different there. There are some of these of the repris collection in the capital collection. Somebody's multi CD sets that go by label if you've got a lot of money to Sending you really like Frank Sinatra a lot. You should know that there are collections of his as I said before of everything that he ever did for certain labels and I believe those are still in print and those are what I have. So I really don't know that some of the other sets but the his stuff is very available and it should be pretty easy to to just look for the songs that you like a cancer preciate it my Cellular in music is story and Arne Fogel joining us Frank Sinatra died last night at the age of 82. to wait for dinner at 8 loves the theater. What never comes late? Never bother with evil she hate. That's why the lady is Tramp. She'll have no crap game with shoppies in front. And she won't go to Harlem in Lincoln and she won't dish the dirt. Where are the rest of the broad that's why the lady is a tramp? She loves the free. When did her hair? Life without care she's broke, but it's okay. It's been so damn it. That's why the lady That's why the lady. That's why the lady is a tramp. Frank Sinatra, once again 9 tonight a special 2-hour broadcast with Arne Fogel John. Raby will be hosting great opportunity to hear more Frank Sinatra and more about Frank Sinatra. This is midday coming to you on Minnesota Public Radio will continue in a moment. These are the values of piece of freedom and of justice and the progress and development of generosity and solidarity enough respect for human rights. This is John Raby with an invitation for you to join us for a special broadcast at un secretary-general Kofi Annan to address the graduating class of Macalester College. It's Sunday at 2, Minnesota Public Radio k n o w FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities. time now for The Writer's Almanac