The glowing tributes to Frank Sinatra by all the networks were, of course, right on the mark–the man was a great artist–but they missed a central ironic point. It has been years since such great music has been heard on the broadcast media, but no one talked about the great songwriters without whom there could not have been a Sinatra.
There is catalog of some 20,000 songs from the era of the great American popular song, including the output of George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen and many others that are little heard today. One got a little tired of hearing “There’ll never be another Sinatra” over the weekend. Chicago alone has many artists who could undoubtedly match his plane of artistry but who will probably never have the opportunity.
This point has been tellingly brought home to me in the last few months, as the producer of a radio series featuring this great music performed by some of the best artists in town. The pilot has received critical acclaim from everyone in the business, we have one of the top agents in the city enthusiastically marketing it, we have the endorsement of one of the great legendary song performers and, you guessed it, not one major radio syndicator or station seems to be interested.
An item from history gives me some hope, however. When Johann Sebastian Bach died in the mid-18th Century, his music quickly faded into obscurity. Felix Mendelssohn “rediscovered” it almost a century later. I sincerely hope it will not take that long for this country to reclaim its unparalleled musical legacy, and maybe we can have more Sinatras.
