It's the emotion, stupid

I was going to write today's entry about Frank Sinatra. About how my father had Sinatra records and when I was quite young I heard them over and over and didn't really like them - they sounded old-fashioned; a grown-up man in a suit singing with a conspicuously American accent. I meant to write about how my admiration for Sinatra grew as I got older, how I realized what a fantastic instrument he had, and how four years of trumpet study in high school led me to appreciate the bold intricacies of Nelson Riddle's arrangements. I wanted to illustrate this column with a definitive example of what an amazing singer Frank was, so I started listening over to all his hits, one by one on YouTube.

That's when I ran into a bit of trouble.

While it is true that I have come to admire Sinatra's phenomenal voice, his distinctive style and his brilliant showmanship, I realized that I've never put on his music to listen to just for my own enjoyment, and listening to all those hits made me realize why: even with that unbelievable voice, Frank Sinatra was awkward about getting too emotional in his songs.

Ah, I hear a chorus of angry denials. But I also hear those jazz licks, the finger snaps, the signature 'scoop' down to the note that became the signature of so many bad lounge singers, as parodied by Bill Murray on SNL. As a child, I instinctively recognized those vocal licks as 'tricks' to avoid getting too close to the emotion of the material, ways to keep the music intellectual instead of heartfelt.

I'm going to put it down to the fashion of the day. Vocal music was changing from traditions of religious music, opera and music hall comedy songs, and Frank was at the forefront of what would be considered at that time a more emotional style of singing - for a white guy. The overtly emotional vocal was the domain of Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole, of Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne. Frank was unknowingly breaking ground for white rock singers, even though he himself loathed rock and roll.

But in the end, happily, I was able to find a great example of Sinatra singing a gorgeous song with a lovely arrangement and actually allowing himself to get wrapped up in it. Must have let his guard down that day...