The old man, it turns out, didn’t give an inch.
When rock ‘n’ roll began to significantly alter the American musical landscape in the late ’50s and ’60s, no major artist decried the new fashion more vigorously than Frank Sinatra, himself the epitome of the jazz-pop tradition.
Since then, a variety of musical trends have emerged, with hard rock, heavy metal, “gangsta” rap, rock-based blues, traditional country and the like each finding its own segment of a continually splintering audience.
Through it all, Sinatra clung to his swing-band roots, a tack that he reiterates and, in effect, celebrates in “Frank Sinatra Duets” (Capitol), his first new recording in a decade. In other words, by making this album with a hard-charging Big Band, and by singing his swing standards with soul singer Luther Vandross, gospel-influenced Aretha Franklin, pop diva Anita Baker and rocker Bono, Sinatra essentially is speaking to the next generation’s stars on his own, jazz-based terms.
“Frank was standing practically in the center of the band when we were making this record-he wanted to be surrounded by that sound, he wanted to be engulfed in it,” says Phil Ramone, the veteran pop maestro who produced “Duets.”
“The man will always be a Big Band singer.”
But considering the range of performers who were singing with Sinatra, “it was a musical challenge, just getting all those styles and all those keys to come together on one album,” says Patrick Williams, who conducted the band. Williams also fine-tuned Sinatra’s classic Nelson Riddle, Don Costa and Quincy Jones arrangements to accommodate the duets.
“For me,” Williams says, “it was kind of like working on the World Series.”
Except that in the World Series, at least all the players are in the ball park at the same time. Not so for “Duets,” in which Sinatra and the band recorded the album’s 13 numbers together, with the guest singers later laying on their tracks from far-flung corners of the world.
Thanks to new digital technology that enables a studio-quality recording to be made over special telephone lines, Tony Bennett sang from New York, Liza Minnelli from South America.
“Without the convenience of being able to record all these people wherever they happened to be in the world,” says producer Ramone, “we’d still be working on this album today. You just can’t get that many different artists into one recording studio at one time these days-not with the way people are jetting all around the planet at all times of the year.”
Musically, the album represents Sinatra in classic fighting form, his taut rhythms, punchy lyrics and oft-combative stance crystallizing much of the singer’s mature style.
There are a few moments of vulnerability here, too, as in his duet with Carly Simon, in which he sings “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry” while she nearly whispers “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” It’s one of the most sophisticated tracks on the album, as melancholy as any on Sinatra’s “concept” albums of the ’50s.
Among the other tracks, Baker’s stands out, her sumptuous alto caressing the lines of “Witchcraft,” which she and Sinatra turn into a palpably erotic poem.
The most inexplicable performance owes to Bono, whose work on “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” virtually sums up the chasm between rock and jazz styles that Sinatra long has bemoaned. Bono’s wobbling pitch and impersonation of scat suggest that, while he may admire Sinatra’s idiom, he hasn’t the skill to work in it.
Finally, for those who consider this album Sinatra’s “swan song,” as some listeners have suggested, guess again. The initial sales figures, promotion and attention that this album already has generated assures that Sinatra will be out with a follow-up record next year.
