Product Description

This splendid musical biography is the first book to document Frank Sinatra's musical legacy through seven decades, revealing the man through his music. Friedwald examines what has made Sinatra such an enduring influence on American pop culture, and draws upon interviews with the musicians, performers, arrangers, and songwriters with whom Sinatra has worked. 16 pages of photos.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #440755 in Books
• Published on: 1997-03-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.com Review
Not surprisingly, most of Frank Sinatra's biographers have raked through the muck of the singer's marriages, divorces, mob connections, and outbursts of foul-mouthed misogyny. Will Friedwald takes a different tack. Oh, the biographical facts are there, but Friedwald is mostly interested in the Voice--that irresistible, inimitable instrument, the absence of which would punch a major hole in the soundtrack of life. This is certainly the best book ever written on Sinatra's music, which means that it sheds a great deal of light on American pop music in general. And while Friedwald gets downright rhapsodic when it comes to the career highlights, he's not afraid to tweak Ol' Blue Eyes when he comes up with a dud.

From 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.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Frank 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
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

THE book for Sinatra fans and those who are discovering him
What better testimonial can you give to a book than saying it makes you so fired about about its subject that you want to discover more of his/her work? Will Friedwald's Sinatra! The Song is You will delight Sinatra fans and "turn on" anyone even REMOTELY interested in finding out why Sinatra was named the 20th century's Best Singer. It is without question the best book EVER written on Sinatra's music due to its style, details and because Friedwald does not pull any punches: he praises Sinatra for good work and criticizes him for work that falls short. All this is done without pretension, cutesy-ness or padding. The usual personal and professional biographical info is there, but mostly for historical context. Friedwald's interest is in Sinatra the singer -- and in Sinatra's VOICE as an instrument that developed, matured and eventually (and sadly) deteriorated. Going through each performing and recording stage of Sinatra's long career, Friedwald analyzes particular songs, explains Sinatra's trailblazing role in creating thematic "concept" albums, and gives fascinating details on how and why certain classic arrangements and songs were cut in the studio. He praises and blasts Sinatra's various arrangers. What's unquestionable is that Sinatra took this kind of music to an entirely new level. This book successfully conveys the ARTISTRY of Sinatra's music so you WANT to hear MORE. Reading this book took me from a mild to fanatical Sinatra fan as I started listening to the albums, remembering what I had read and appreciating what Sinatra was doing with his voice. Sinatra! The Song is You heightens an appreciation of a musical genre that is either on it's way out as we move into the 21st century --or waiting for a new innovative artist to come along to revive its popularity and take it to the next level.

Great book for the serious Sinatraphile
Will Friedwald has deservedly won great acclaim for this highly entertaining "dissertation" on Sinatra's music: his vocal technique and style changes through the years, his classic albums, and his arrangers and studio musicians. Friedwald guides us album by album, grouped by arrangers Axel Stordahl, Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, and Billy May. Other chapters discuss his big band years and his later years. Friedwald's taste in music closely parallels my own, and I am not surprised that he is also a big fan of other great vocalists such as June Christy, Mel Torme, Ella, Chris Connor, etc. He concentrates most importantly on the concept albums and the great tracks that aren't necessarily the "big hits," but are great achievements in popular song. His suggestions on what to avoid are almost always on the mark. I was amused by his descriptions of Don Costa's "elevator music" arrangements, and of poor Linda Ronstadt, who does not fare well in this book, as some incensed readers have pointed out (lighten up! ).

Friedwald has evidently interviewed hundreds of musicians associated with Sinatra in one way or another, and therein lies the greatest strength of this book. Some of his stories told by people who were there at the time are so memorable, I still chuckle when I think of them a year after I read the book. His description of the recording sessions for the Sinatra/Ellington album are a hoot. One wonders how this album is as good as it is. Also, Billy May seems like a fun character, and also a most modest fellow.

This is the only book about Sinatra's music that the serious listener should trust when collecting his albums. His descriptions of the classic 50s album Close to You are the only way I have of knowing what the album is like, since it is unbelievably out of print. Yet how many CDs have My Way on them? Also, I never would have known about the great torch song album She Shot Me Down (1981), inexplicably underrated and hard to find.

My only suggestion to Mr. Friedwald would be to think about the concept albums more as a whole, and how arrangers Jenkins and Riddle linked the songs together harmonically and (sometimes even) motivically. I think he will find this phenomenon in the Christy/Rugolo albums as well. Moreover, a careful listener can tell where deleted tracks were SUPPOSED to be, such as Everything Happens to Me in She Shot Me Down, The One I Love in No One Cares, and the Nearness of You in Nice'N'Easy. Big hint: Come Waltz With Me was NOT supposed to be the first track of All Alone (this would disrupt the two "bookends" of the album featuring the female vocalist), and the Nice'n'Easy album was most likely originally to be titled That Old Feeling.

This Book Needed To Be Written
Will Friedwald, we Sinatra fans thank you from the bottoms of our hearts for writing this book. Before this, all we had was utter garbage, such as Kitty Kelly's lurid biography that found his singing not only incidental to his life but not even worth covering in her book! Friedwald's book, however, is solely interested in Sinara the singer, the musician and the artist. The fellow musicians who knew him in that world also knew an entirely different person from the one who was tabloid fodder. Since I own 38 of his CD albums, this book answered many questions I'd had about those albums being created. If this is the Sinatra you want to know, this is the book to read. If you want to read the tabloid seamy one about his personal life by Kelly, which I'm ashamed to admit that I did, buy it instead but don't say you weren't warned. And hers even partially ruins listening to his recordings for you for awhile. But not long since great art always rises above the garbage.