Part 2 - LEARNIN' THE BLUES - The Jazz Stars Play The Sinatra Songbook by Simon Spillet

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Among those listening closely to … [the ballad] side of Sinatra during the late war years was a shy, teenaged trumpeter from St. Louis, who'd arrived in New York in 1945, ears wide open to new sounds and new approaches. Miles Davis may have alighted on the city to play the rollercoasting, overdriven “modern” jazz of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie but it was to be the careful, take-your-time pacing of Frank Sinatra that was to leave a more indelible mark. 

“I learned how to phrase by listening to Frank,” he later confessed, “his concept of phrasing.” It wasn't just phrasing though; when Davis finally freed himself from the deep mire of hard drug addiction and his career really got going in the mid-1950s, his recordings frequently used the same material as Sinatra's. Sometimes it was as if they were engaged in a non-verbal conversation from coast-to-coast. Sinatra's landmark concept album In The Wee Small Hours was issued in April 1955, one of its songs being the Schwartz-Dietz ballad I See You Face Before Me; Davis taped his version two months later, its muted, close to the mic mood of introspection seemingly an echo of Sinatra's.

But this was only the beginning; indeed, the trumpeters albums during his first golden period – 1955-1963 – unashamedly pilfered songs which Sinatra has made his own – S'posin', I Thought About You, There's No You, Baby Won't You Please Come Home, I Could Write A Book, It Never Entered My Mind, Spring Is Here, How Am I To Know and so on. In an age of a burgeoning rock and roll-led attack on musical standards (in every sense) it was possible to view Davis and Sinatra's albums as the 'adult' alternative: quality contemporary music, swinging yet still full of dance-friendly romance; emotional yet not sappy; serious yet not solemn.

Later on, Sinatra and Davis would meet – sometimes drinking together at New York's legendary Jilly's bar …

- Simon Spillett, from Part 1 LEARNIN' THE BLUES - The Jazz Stars Play The Sinatra Songbook 

“Phrasing. Lyrics. Emotion. These three words alone might well sum up what Sinatra bequeathed to the jazz world. And that may be the best way in which to view his relationship to the idiom – not by concentrating on the existing controversy of whether the singer truly ever took anything from jazz, but rather in cherishing what he gifted it in return. Imagine, for example, a jazz world without the lyric sensitivity of a Lester Young, or the melancholy drama of Miles Davis, or even the bleak yet beautiful balladry of John Coltrane. Without Sinatra we might not have heard any of those things.”

- Simon Spillett, from Part 2 LEARNIN' THE BLUES - The Jazz Stars Play The Sinatra Songbook 

The piece that follows is the second part of the notes Simon Spillett prepared for LEARNIN' THE BLUES - The Jazz Stars Play The Sinatra Songbook Acrobat.ADDCD 3270. 

Simon has previously shared essays on Hank Mobley, Hank with Miles Davis, Booker Erwin, Stan Getz, Jim Hall, Paul Jeffrey and Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. on this page, and he has his own website which you can visit via this link.

Obviously, I’ve spent a lot of time with Simon’s writing as each of the previous pieces had to be closely read while formatting them for the blog.

In my opinion, his Sinatra essay may be his best to date.

© -  Simon Spillett, copyright protected; all rights reserved, used with the author’s permission.

“Throughout the 1950s and into the '60s, plenty of other modern jazzmen happily raided the same Great American Songbook source as Sinatra. Some, like saxophonists John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter, clearly held affection for material the vocalist had performed during their youth; both included Sinatra's “breakthrough” 1939 hit All Or Nothing At All on albums issued in the early 1960s. Coltrane was very obviously a fan – his late 1950s sessions for Prestige are littered with material that Sinatra had given his treatment to during the 1940s, when the saxophonist was an up and coming musician, including Violets For Your Furs, Come Rain or Come Shine, Lover, I Love You, Time After Time, Stardust and others. His masterpiece album Ballads, a sort of instrumental distant cousin to In The Wee Small Hours, taped in 1962, also includes the definitive jazz reading of the 1944 Van Heusen/Cahn composition penned for Sinatra's daughter, Nancy (With The Laughing Face).

(Some even thought Coltrane's way with such material superior to that of his inspiration. “[He] expresses the passion and revelation of fully entered and wholly realized experience,” wrote Robert Levin of the saxophonist 1962. “That is why Coltrane's songs are hip and why, say, Frank Sinatra's are not.”)

At times these choices were coincidental. Indeed, as Sinatra cheerfully rifled his way through the back pages of Kern, Porter and Arlen to compile the playlists for his Capitol albums he was (perhaps unwittingly) doing exactly the same thing as many of the days modern jazz icons, such as Gerry Mulligan, a leading composer as well as performer, who alighted on Rodgers and Hart's 1937 vintage The Lady Is A Tramp some four years before it became a FS staple, and pianist Russ Freeman who happened on the melancholy delights of Rube Bloom's 1938 ballad Don't Worry About Me around the same time Sinatra cut it for Capitol. Like the vocalist, players such as Freeman and Mulligan were looking back to their youth for repertoire, finding new ways to spin old songs for post-war tastes. There was something in the air, clearly, and it was at this point in time that American popular song – the form that had evolved as a distinct musical entity handed between the likes of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers – began the self-congratulatory, retrospective celebration of its own worth that continues uninterrupted to this day. Without Sinatra and Capitol, the notion of the Great American Songbook as a clearly defined, time-bracketed yet endlessly saleable creation might never have taken hold and in that, if nothing else, his influence can be said to permeate jazz in the 21st century – just think how many albums of “standards” continue to be released or how rife is the nostalgia for “good old tunes” even among those not born when the likes of Porter and Kern were at work.

Nostalgia also probably informed Sonny Rollins' choice to include This Love Of Mine, a ballad co-composed by Sinatra dating back to Dorsey days, on his first recording date as a leader in 1951. Likewise West Coaster tenorist Richie Kamuca's 1957 stroll through Nevertheless is possibly a misty-eyed recollection of a song Sinatra had first done in 1950, complete with a captivating contribution from trumpeter Billy Butterfield.

The rather more general inspiration of Sinatra as songbook archaeologist can be felt in drummer Max Roach's tear through Cole Porter's 1935 composition Just One Of Those Things, both included on the 1954 album Swing Easy! and performed by Sinatra (as down-on-his-luck songsmith Barney Sloan) in the film Young At Heart. Grit aside, the two share little connection and one can hardly imagine Sinatra relishing a tempo which the Roach band's bassist George Morrow recalled as “murder”. Similar sentiments might be expressed about trombonist J. J. Johnson's bright tempo account of a further Porter theme, immortalised on Songs For Swingin' Lovers, I've Got You Under My Skin. Sinatra's version – featuring another trombone great Milt Bernhart – had taken a truly lip-busting twenty-two takes to complete. Johnson's version keeps a far cooler head.

Another Swingin' Lovers title, You're Gettin' To Be A Habit With Me has the distinction of featuring one of the musicians actually present on Sinatra's version, trumpeter Harry 'Sweets' Edison, whose signature tin-muted sound was a key feature on the singers recordings from 1955 onwards. Edison is abetted by another avowed Sinatra fan, tenorist Ben Webster, a master musical storyteller in his own right, and pianist Oscar Peterson, among the first jazz musicians to ever dedicate an album solely of Sinatra-associated material (A Jazz Portrait of Frank Sinatra, Verve, 1959)

Contemporary Sinatra also blew fresh winds into the sails of the era's best jazzmen. Cy Coleman's Witchcraft, which the vocalist had first recorded in 1957, found its way into the early repertoire of pianist Bill Evans trio, its twisting, unpredictable harmonies making ideal material for a band soon to rewrite many of the music's rules. Even hotter off the press was teen trumpeter Lee Morgan's precociously assured account of All The Way, Sinatra's tear-jerking ballad from the soundtrack to the 1957 film The Joker Is Wild. The original Capitol single was released in the autumn of 1957, Morgan's version being taped early the following year. 

Surprisingly, the less superficially jazz-friendly of Sinatra's new recordings would also sometimes yield something of value to improvisers. Learnin' The Blues, originally on the B-side of a 7” EP but later pressed as a single, was issued in April 1955; by December a studio unit headed by Count Basie guitarist Freddie Green had it rearranged as a feature for Al Cohn's doleful bass clarinet. The Tender Trap – immortalised in Sinatra's stunning pre-title sequence performance in the 1955 film of the same name – became a vehicle for the twin tenors of Charlie Rouse and Paul Quinichette, while the deliciously non-PC Lean Baby (written by Billy May and scored for Sinatra in May's signature style by Heinie Beau), recorded at the singers second Capitol session in April 1953, emerged as a suitably slinky showcase for the fruity-toned saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. Eight years after it was issued as a single, another Sinatra hit, the former Gene Autry vehicle South of The Border, got re-dressed as a groovy congas 'n' bop outing for altoist Lou Donaldson.

Sinatra's ballad-themed albums for Capitol made an especially rich seam for jazzmen to mine. Dating to 1962, Art Blakey's simmering take in In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning is a feature for his Jazz Messengers sideman, trombonist Curtis Fuller. From the same year came tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon's tough-but-tender account of the Styne/Cahn anthem Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry, a wordy song Sinatra had first waxed back in the 1940s but which he returned to with deeper sentiment on 1958's Only The Lonely. Like Sinatra, Gordon had a patient way with a musical narrative and he let’s melody and tone do most of the work for much of this version, saving himself for a powerful, surging ending. Trumpeter Art Farmer's soft, almost confessional take on I'm A Fool to Want You, from 1961, is far subtler, greatly aided by that most elegant of pianists, Tommy Flanagan.

Mellow-toned guitarist Wes Montgomery also captured the Sinatra ambience perfectly on a 1961 version of what is undoubtedly the ultimate saloon FS song, One For My Baby, first recorded by the singer in 1947 but more closely associated with the later album version, the downbeat highlight of Only The Lonely. Pacing was always one of Montgomery's strengths and as he stretches out (to nearly eight minutes) over pianist Hank Jones' lulling, nightclub-after-hours, vamp one can picture the raincoat-clad, down-but-not-out Sinatra, sipping a scotch somewhere at the bar.

Having fully acknowledged that Sinatra could both act as a practical influence (the ineluctable lure of his phrasing) and a source of material (both recent and more recherché) the jazz community did its share of tongue-clucking when, in 1962, he finally released a overtly jazz-based project, the Reprise album Sinatra-Basie. It wasn't that they frowned on the idea – quite the opposite – but they were aghast at the sudden and long overdue bum's rush to recognise that, yes, Sinatra was a true member of the board, a card carrying jazz singer able to fit without compromise alongside the idioms' royalty. In some circles, delight mingled with utter surprise. “Quite frankly, I was expecting the worst,” John C. Gee's page long appraisal of the album in Jazz News and Review stated. “[But] he sings with all his customary skill and with an added zip that is not always apparent these days.” Indeed, Sinatra's own comments on the album - “I've waited twenty years for this moment” - might have applied equally to the reaction among his former doubters. At last, Sinatra was in, and as the 1960s moved forward, a closer affiliation to jazz became more noticeable. 

The same year as his Basie collaboration was recorded he toured the world with a small band, not a format in which he'd always sounded entirely comfortable but which now he seemed to command with ease. Within a further three years he'd headlined at the Newport Jazz Festival – again with Basie – as well as regularly appearing with the band on shows throughout the United States, one of which is immortalized on the atmospheric Sinatra at The Sands. There was also a recorded summit with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, taped in 1967, resulting in the album Francis A. & Edward K., the end result of which, while containing several gem-like performances (including a delicious account of Follow Me, from the stage version of Lerner and Lowe's Camelot), is somewhat compromised. To this day it is a cause for earnest regret that that album featured neither Ellington's arranging nor any of his compositions, the latter an omission that appears close to imbecilic. Unlike the summit with Basie, there was sadly to be no encore. But the jazz-side didn't stop there. During the 1970s and 80s, Sinatra appeared with the bands of both Woody Herman (1974's The Main Event) and old Dorsey associate Buddy Rich (a superb televised concert from the Dominican Republic in 1982) and his final solo album, L. A. Is My Lady, gave space for a cross-generational span of jazz soloists, ranging from Basie-ites Frank Foster and Joe Newman through to jazz-funk superstars The Brecker Brothers and Steve Gadd. To some coming late to the party, this was a new Sinatra – down among the boys in the band – a world away from the showbiz pizazz of the Sands, the Dad-pop pretence of Something Stupid and navel-gazing of My Way.

But to the musicians themselves, Sinatra was doing what Sinatra had always done, right from day one – surrounding himself with the best, relishing the one-take spontaneity that comes with the jazz sensibility and having a ball. True, 1970's FS hadn't given jazzmen much to work with (although the decade did see the release of yet more of his work with the father of the Bossa-Nova Antonio Carlos Jobim, recordings that had all the intimacy of classic small group modern jazz) but his continued impact on generations of jazz musicians decades younger than him was felt ever more keenly in the final years of his life. In 1996, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano – one of the most talked of talents of 1990s jazz and a former Woody Herman sideman who had actually played with Sinatra – released Celebrating Sinatra (Blue Note), an imaginative and diverse reworking of thirteen pieces from the vocalists repertoire, incorporating a career-spanning choice of material ranging from the Dorsey years I'll Never Smile Again through Chicago and right up to Fly Me To The Moon, proving yet again how deeply intertwined with American jazz the singer remained.

A year later, another tenor saxophonist Bob Berg – a tough, post-bop performer weaned on the free-wheeling excesses of late Sixties John Coltrane – recorded the album Another Standard (Stretch Records), a nine-track celebration of the Great American Songbook, with more than a flavour of Sinatra to its contents, including All The Way, It Was A Very Good Year, The Summer Wind and other songs associated with the singer. If the music was firmly rejigged to fit Berg's close to the precipice style, its core message was timeless, the album's sleeve notes capturing a quote from the leader that was almost a word-for-word echo of that of his predecessor, Lester Young. “I remember when I was very young, someone told me that if you really want to learn a standard you should learn the lyrics,” remarked Berg. He then mentioned the p-word –  the very thing that united everyone from Young to Miles Davis in their admiration for Sinatra. “It helps you phrase better, it's so important. And of course lyrics convey certain emotions.”

Phrasing. Lyrics. Emotion. These three words alone might well sum up what Sinatra bequeathed to the jazz world. And that may be the best way in which to view his relationship to the idiom – not by concentrating on the existing controversy of whether the singer truly ever took anything from jazz, but rather in cherishing what he gifted it in return. Imagine, for example, a jazz world without the lyric sensitivity of a Lester Young, or the melancholy drama of Miles Davis, or even the bleak yet beautiful balladry of John Coltrane. Without Sinatra we might not have heard any of those things.

The final word belongs not to a post-bop figure of the Lovano/Berg generation, nor to one of those classic modern jazz icons who counted Sinatra as an early influence. It belongs to a musician the vocalist had known since the earliest days of his professional career, vibraphonist Red Norvo, who'd heard Sinatra sing at New Jersey's Rustic Cabin, and who had offered him a job with his own band, a position that the singer had to turn down having just signed the contract with Harry James that would shortly make him a star.

Twenty years later, in the late 1950s, Norvo's quintet became a regular fixture at The Sands in Las Vegas, and soon after began a working association with Sinatra, leading to engagements across the US and an Australian tour in spring 1959. In 1997, a recording of the pairings Melbourne show was issued by the Blue Note label (a corporate fudge owing to the fact Blue Note were then part of the Capitol stable, this didn't stop the label from releasing the album in a mock Reid Miles-style cover, a case of revisionist thinking gone a little too far), including some reminiscences by Norvo within its booklet notes. Then nearly ninety, and having been friends for close to sixty years, the vibraphonist had nothing to gain from pushing the idea of Sinatra as a “jazz singer” yet he was adamant that this was indeed what he was.

“He listened to jazz all the time,” Norvo remembered. “He gave us the feeling he was part of the group.”

Maybe that's it then: rather than elevate and isolate Sinatra and ask still more questions about whether we consider him a jazz artist or not, perhaps we should simply let him have his place within the group, among the musicians, where Norvo and others maintained he felt he was truly home.

One thing's for sure; the symbiotic relationship that existed between him and many of the jazz giants of his era created an incredibly rich concentration of good music, whichever label you choose to file it under.”

Simon Spillett

July 2018

DISC ONE:

1. The Lady Is A Tramp (Rodgers-Hart) – The Gerry Mulligan Sextet

Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax); Jon Eardley (trumpet); Bob Brookmeyer (valve trombone);

Zoot Sims (tenor sax); Peck Morrison (bass); Dave Bailey (drums)

September 21st 1955, New York City

2. Lean Baby (Alfred-May) – Illinois Jacquet

Illinois Jacquet (tenor saxophone);  Count Basie (organ); Hank Jones (piano); Freddie Green (guitar); Ray Brown (bass); Jimmy Crawford (drums)

July 22nd 1952, New York City

3. Learnin' The Blues (Silver) – Freddie Green

Freddie Green (guitar); Joe Newman (trumpet); Henry Coker (trombone); Al Cohn (bass clarinet);

Nat Pierce (piano); Milt Hinton (bass); Jo Jones (drums)

December 18th 1955, New York City

4. Witchcraft (Leigh-Coleman) – Bill Evans Trio

Bill Evans (piano); Scott La Faro (bass); Paul Motian (drums)

December 28th 1959, New York City

5. This Love Of Mine (Sinatra-Parker-Sanicola) – Sonny Rollins Quartet

Sonny Rollins (tenor sax); Kenny Drew (piano); Percy Heath (bass); Art Blakey (drums)

December 17th 1951, New York City

6. You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me (Dubin-Warren) – Harry 'Sweets' Edison

Harry 'Sweets' Edison (trumpet); Ben Webster (tenor saxophone); Oscar Peterson (piano); Barney Kessel (guitar); Ray Brown (bass); Alvin Stoller (drums)

March 5th or 30th 1957, Los Angeles

7. The Tender Trap (Cahn-Van Heusen) – Paul Quinichette/Charlie Rouse

Paul Quinichette (tenor saxophone); Charlie Rouse (tenor saxophone); Wynton Kelly (piano);

Wendell Marshall (bass); Ed Thigpen (drums)

August 29th 1957, New York City

8. Makin' Whoopee (Kahn-Donaldson) – Red Garland Trio

Red Garland (piano); Paul Chambers (bass); Art Taylor (drums)

August 17th 1957, Hackensack, New Jersey

9.  I've Got You Under My Skin (Porter) – J. J. Johnson

J. J. Johnson (trombone); Tommy Flanagan (piano); Paul Chambers (bass); Max Roach (drums)

April 11th 1957, New York City

10. Nancy (With The Laughing Face)  (Silvers-Van Heusen)– John Coltrane Quartet

John Coltrane (tenor saxophone); McCoy Tyner (piano); Jimmy Garrison (bass); Elvin Jones (drums)

September 18th 1962, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

11. S'posin' (Denniker-Razaf) – Miles Davis Quintet

Miles Davis (trumpet); John Coltrane (tenor saxophone); Red Garland (piano); Paul Chambers (bass); Philly Joe Jones (drums)

November 16th 1955, Hackensack, New Jersey

12. Angel Eyes (Dennis-Brent) – Bill Perkins

Bill Perkins (tenor saxophone); Jimmy Rowles (piano); Ben Tucker (bass); Mel Lewis (drums)

December 11th 1956, Los Angeles

13. Just One Of Those Things (Porter) – Max Roach plus Four

Max Roach (drums); Kenny Dorham (trumpet); Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone); Ray Bryant (piano); George Morrow (bass)

September 17th 1956, New York City

DISC TWO:

1. In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning (Hiliard-Mann) – Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers

Art Blakey (drums); Freddie Hubbard (trumpet); Curtis Fuller (trombone); Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone); Cedar Walton (piano); Reggie Workman (bass)

October 23rd or 24th 1962, New York City

2. South Of The Border (Kennedy-Carr) – Lou Donaldson

Lou Donaldson (alto saxophone); Herman Foster (piano); Ben Tucker (bass); Dave Bailey (drums); Alec Dorsey (congas)

April 27th 1961, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

3. All The Way (Cahn-Van Heusen) – Lee Morgan

Lee Morgan (trumpet); Sonny Clark (piano); Doug Watkins (bass); Art Taylor (drums)

February 2nd 1958, Hackensack, New Jersey

4. Nevertheless (Kalmar-Ruby) – Richie Kamuca Quartet

Richie Kamuca (tenor saxophone); Carl Perkins (piano); Leroy Vinnegar (bass); Stan Levey (drums)

June 1957, Hollywood

5. All Or Nothing At All (Lawrence-Altman) – Wayne Shorter

Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone); Eddie Higgins (piano); Jymie Merritt (bass); Marshall Thompson (drums)

November 2nd 1961, Chicago

6. I'm A Fool to Want You (Wolf-Herron-Sinatra) – Art Farmer Quartet

Art Farmer (trumpet); Tommy Flanagan (piano); Tommy Williams (bass); Albert Heath (drums)

September 21st, 22nd or 23rd 1961, New York City

7. The House I Live In (Allen-Robinson) – Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone); Kenny Dorham (trumpet); Wade Legge (piano); George Morrow (bass); Max Roach (drums)

October 5th 1956, Hackensack, New Jersey

8. Don't Worry 'bout Me (Bloom-Koehler) – Russ Freeman Trio

Russ Freeman (piano); Joe Mondragon (bass); Shelly Manne (drums)

October 27th 1953, Los Angeles

9. I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry (Styne-Cahn) – Dexter Gordon

Dexter Gordon (tenor saxophone); Sonny Clark (piano); Butch Warren (bass); Billy Higgins (drums)

August 27th 1962, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

10. I Thought About You (Mercer-Van Heusen) – Miles Davis

Miles Davis (trumpet); Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone); Wynton Kelly (piano); Paul Chambers (bass); Jimmy Cobb (drums)

March 21st 1961, New York City

11. I See Your Face Before Me (Schwartz-Dietz) – John Coltrane

John Coltrane (tenor saxophone); Red Garland (piano); Paul Chambers (bass); Art Taylor (drums)

March 26th 1958, Hackensack, New Jersey

12. One For My Baby (Arlen-Mercer) – Wes Montgomery

Wes Montgomery (guitar); Hank Jones (piano); Ron Carter (bass); Lex Humphries (drums)

August 4th 1961, New York City