Product Description

Frank Sinatra was not only the greatest popular singer of the century - he was also the ultimate recording artist. In addition to introducing and perfecting a unique vocal style, he also functioned as his own in-studio "producer," personally supervising every aspect of his recordings, from choosing the songs and arrangers to making minute adjustments in mike placement. One of the thrills of listening to Sinatra is wondering how he did it - and "Sessions with Sinatra: Frank Sinatra and the Art of Recording" explains it all, bringing the dedicated fan and the casual music lover alike into the recording studio to glimpse the fascinating working methods he introduced and mastered in his quest for recorded perfection.

Musically, a representative sample of Sinatra performances and sessions are discussed in detail. Supporting commentary from musicians, arrangers, engineers, and Sinatra himself help to create a highly personal atmosphere, offering the reader a front row seat at a Sinatra recording session.

Milestone albums and songs are analyzed from multiple perspectives, affording the reader the unique opportunity to trace the development of a song or album from concept to orchestration to final recording. Each of the talented arrangers that Sinatra held in high esteem are profiled, with a study of the Sinatra-Nelson Riddle partnership emerging as the definitive musical marriage of the singers career.

Interwoven throughout is a concise history of the technical processes that occurred during the singer's career, including studies of the microphone, wax and lacquer disc recording, overdubbing, the Long Play record, magnetic recording tape, the transition from mono to stereo, and digital recording. The studios that Sinatra recorded in (at Victor, Columbia, Capitol and Reprise) are also discussed in depth.

Over 100 photographs of Sinatra working in the studio with musicians and arrangers, listening to playbacks, and, of course, singing visually enhance the text. Handwritten musical sketches, as well as reproductions of original orchestrations used at the actual sessions are also displayed. Never before have the details of the creative and technical processes been documented as completely as they are within this one volume.

Colorful, entertaining and authoritative, "Sessions with Sinatra" tells the story of how he created recordings that translated the most intense personal emotions into richly crafted performances of unrivaled expressiveness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #644702 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Granata, producer and director of Sinatra's Columbia recordings, offers a rare glimpse into the work that went into making the Sinatra sound. He covers all the technical details, from Sinatra's early pioneering of the microphone as instrument to transcripts of his many studio directions and casual late-night jokes. Granata summarizes the major recording eras in Sinatra's career, from the Columbia years (1943-1952) to his Duets work in the mid-1990s with singers such as Bono and Chrissie Hynde. With a foreword by adoring sound engineer Ramone and afterword by Nancy Sinatra, this testimony to Sinatra's studio time is weakened only by its unwavering homage. But much can be read between the lines. What is said (Sinatra is quoted, "You can never do anything in life quite on your own.... Making a record is as near as you can get to it") and what can be extrapolated (Sinatra did not, perhaps, appreciate the debt owed to songwriters, musicians, producers and arrangers) can make for good reading. Late in the book, Granata confesses, "Sinatra's personal relationships with the musicians were complex.... Maybe Sinatra feared the old adage, 'Familiarity breeds contempt.'" It's evident throughout that Sinatra asserted his ideas and ego masterfully, creating his unique sound and image with an iron will. Those who enjoyed Bill Zehme's book on Sinatra's style, The Way You Wear Your Hat, will welcome this look at the technique, skills and behind-the-scenes action involved in one of the longest, most successful singing careers in U.S. history. 100 photographs. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
For all the mountains of verbiage expended on Frank Sinatras personality during his life and since his death, very little has been written about Sinatra as a singer and recording artist. Granata, who has had access to all the extant unedited tapes of Sinatra's hundreds of sessions in the studio, ably fills that gap here. Granata is project director of the massive re-release of Sinatra's Columbia recordings; his essay in Frank Sinatra and Popular Culture (1998) was singled out for praise in reviews of that collection, and provided a foretaste of this longer study of Sinatra as singer and musician. As he points out, Sinatra's career coincided with several important developments in the technology of sound recording, spanning nearly seven decades from the era of wax master recordings to the digitally recorded compact disc. Sinatra sang through the big band era to the post-modern post-rock era, from mono to stereo, from lacquer and shellac to magnetic tape. As a result, this erudite but lucid volume comprises not merely a history of Sinatra's career but also a crash course in the developing story of preserving music in recordings. Granata, who never lets you forget that Sinatra was a supremely gifted musician, includes interviews with dozens of the men and women who worked with him in the studio, illustrating his working methods. The result is a truly musical biography that charts the most important part of Sinatra's legacy, his singing. If you can only buy one Sinatra bookafter you've bought all the hundreds of records or CDsthis is the one to have. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
"...Here's how it works: Pour yourself a drink in honor of Ol' Blue Eyes and read about Only the Lonely, then pop a disc in and let the brilliantly calibrated self-pity of 'Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry' wash over you. Or peruse Granata's re-creation of the sessions for the vivacious Ring-A-Ding Ding!, Sinatra's swinging 1961 collaboration with Johnny Mandel, then put it on and get up and snap your fingers to 'The Coffee Song.' You won't be sorry that you did." -- Dan DeLuca - Philadelphia Inquirer & Chicago Tribune, March 5, 2000

"...This magnificent book, loaded with photos, is a must-read for Sinatra followers, singers and potential singers, fans of the recording-studio scene and Great American Songbook enthusiasts." -- Philip Elwood, San Francisco Examiner, Jan. 14, 2000

"...written with such affection for the artist’s abiding creative intelligence that the music itself virtually flows from the pages." -- Lee Hildebrand, Express Online, August 2000

"Mr. Granata's amazingly detailed accounts of the legendary records the singer made should become an essential part of any library..." -- Lee Milazzo, The Dallas Morning News, November 12, 2000

"Sessions with Sinatra," a new book about the singer's studio sessions, is breaking all records for sales of a celebrity book, and is the favorite gift among Hollywood insiders...this beautiful book gives readers a keen sense of each recording session." -- Alice O'Neill - Los Angeles Features Syndicate, January 7, 2000

Frank Sinatra lives on in his recordings and, less directly, in the books about him, a flood that has yet to abate. Unlike the Sinatra-as-celebrity titles, this one focuses on the music, examining the singer's career in the recording studio. A painstaking researcher, Granata has overseen the restoration of Sinatra's vintage recordings and recaps key recording sessions in documentary detail, showing that Sinatra supervised everything from song selection to microphone placement. He illuminates Sinatra's work by analyzing his distinctive vocal qualities and depicting his relationships with songwriters and other collaborators; above all, he extols the contributions of Sinatra's arranger of choice, Nelson Riddle. By clearly explaining technical developments from wax discs used in Sinatra's early sessions to the digital process that allowed him to collaborate with other superstars on his final project, "Duets," Granata also provides a pocket history of modern sound reco! rding. Finally, by showing how much thought and effort Sinatra put into his recording sessions, Granata reveals how seriously - despite his breezy, devil-may-care persona - he took his craft. -- Gordon Flagg - Booklist, November 15, 1999

“If you grew up with Sinatra or found him along the way, this is a book you'll relish.” -- The Tampa Tribune, April 2, 2000

Customer Reviews

"Sessions with Sinatra" is Superb!
Charles Granata's "Sessions with Sinatra"is amazingly the first book to take you into the recording studio with the century's finest popular singer.

Spanning the RCA-Dorsey era, through "Duets," Granata has interviewed arrangers, musicians, producers and engineers and goes behind the scenes into the actual recording of such classic albums as "Only the Lonely," "Songs for Swinging Lovers," "Sinatra-Basie" etc (little known fact:Jobim wasn't the only guitarist to play on the Sinatra-Jobim LP.)

"Sessions with Sinatra" is not only a must for any serious Sinatra fan, but for any student of America's pop musical history.

"Sessions with Sinatra" read back to back with Kitty Kelly's "His Way," might give one a fascinating portrait of both the man and the musician.

The center of 20th century popular music...
Granata does a great job taking us behind the scenes for the technology and people who brought us the best popular music of the century. The photos, which focus on the studio instead of the amply documented night life theme, are probably worth the price of the book, but the author is an expert in recording technology and provides anecdotes and discussion as to how and why Sinatra had such an impact and continues to make his mark.

Because we take it for granted today, it is easy to forget that the way in which recordings were created had much to do with the kind of music that was recorded. Granata notes one occasion on which a perfect take had to be remade because a three-and-a-half minute song was too long for Columbia's equipment at the time. What stands out, though, is that for all the bad press Sinatra gets for his impatience on movie sets, he clearly managed the recording process down to the minutest details during the Columbia and Capitol years, resulting in a degree of musical excellence that was not exceeded even during the technologically more advanced 1960s Reprise era. Granata gets high marks for explaining all of this in a way that is highly readable for those of us who love music and have limited understanding of engineering concepts.

The most fascinating chapter may well be the one dealing with a nadir of Sinatra's career, the Duets project of 1992/3. Throughout, we learn that Phil Ramone was constantly selling the project to the singer, while FS (to his credit) continually called the whole purpose of the project into question. If you think Duets sounds like a mistake, you should read this account of how Sinatra was pushed into making these pale remakes from his legendary songbook.

Also worthwhile is Granata's recommended recording list in the appendix. If you are a new Frankophile, this is a great place to start and will lend additional meaning to the text, because you can HEAR how FS works the voice and lyrics in Ol' Man River and other classics.

Highly recommended, even if you already have Friedwald's excellent 'The Song is You.'

A Masterpiece
No book has ever captured the experience of a recording session and the recording experience like Charles Granata. Long known as an authority of Frank Sinatra's work, this book actually conveys why Sinatra's recordings are classic and still speak to us. Granata's viewpoints are fair and, in the case of the controversial Mitch Miller recordings, as balanced as a writer can be in presenting all sides of the story. His interviews with such under-appreciated musicians such as arranger George Siravo ( who contributed far more to the canon of Frank Sinatra than most people realize) are particularly valuable. I am delighted that he has quoted extensively from Nelson Riddle's arranging book (which I edited for publication), which has much valuable information about how Nelson worked with Sinatra. The history of the recording field, rare photos and even reproductions of score pages simply make this a must-have volume.