Saturday After Hours (Prayer Meeting)

*

That's death
That's what all the people say

On this day in history, 14 May 1998, Mr. Francis Albert Sinatra flew the coop (i.e., this mortal realm) with the parting words to his wife, "I'm losing it...." (I believe the Wikipedia account of this is incorrect or incomplete based on my memory of news coverage at that time.) But tonight I will bypass the obvious choice for commemorating the occasion---"That's Life"---and defer to my ultimate Sinatra cut.



For my money, his phrasing on this is perfect---immaculately understated, which often it was not when he felt the urge to play the aging ring-a-ding hipster or just goof around in live performances. As much as I esteem the vocal, I feel that the real star of this cut is the Nelson Riddle arrangement and the way he conducts his orchestra through it. It sparkles, reflecting the interplay of reedy cross-breezes both near and distant, with clear water surfaces lapping easily at beachfront sand. I've never been able to describe to myself in words what I find so artful and organic about this chart, where string tremolos emerge at the end of a jaunty, muted-horn line and muscular but laconic reed figures leave holes for the similarly reedy organ in the higher registers. Speaking of the organ, the way it is "stopped" fascinates me. In any other setting I think it would sound cheesy and trivial, but here it supplies an essential vibe to the entire mix; the sound would be impoverished without it.  (Editor's note: Mr. Crutch does not consider this to be an adequate verbal account of the "feel," but he tried nevertheless. Please make a note of it.)

As an aside, I don't think it's too geezerly to argue that in 1966, in Chicago and all over America, both radio (AM!) and pop music were much richer and more urbane than they ever were again. It was the closing of a sort of innocent era in broadcast mass media, where the music sales charts weren't fragmented ad infinitum by age group, region, race, and purchasing power for the benefit of advertisers. "Top 40" really did mean "Top 40," and it didn't matter whether the performers on "the survey" were the Stones, or The Four Tops, or Simon and Garfunkle, or Sinatra, Roger Miller, The Sandpipers, Dusty Springfield, Ramsey Lewis, or Mitch Ryder, the Hollies, Martha and the Vandellas, or... Nancy Sinatra. If you listened to WLS or WCFL during this brief era, you heard it all on an equal footing, presented by trusted curators such as Dex Card and Ron Riley. Sure, a kid wouldn't necessarily admit to his friends that he liked "A Walk in the Black Forest," by Horst Jankowski; or "Sweet Talkin' Guy," by The Chiffons, but many of these sounds wormed their way through his tender little auditory cortex to next in the memory stacks, there to vibrate deep within for decades or more.

Anyway, back to the libretto: here's hoping that Frank didn't really lose it on that 14th day of May. And as for the sarcastic-seeming epigraph at the beginning of this post; no disrespect is intended. I intended it as a tribute of sorts to Sinatra's legendary crudeness on and off stage, well documented in Kitty Kelly's biography of him. These things about Sinatra you have to take alongside the pensive stylings of this gifted, juvenile, complex, and often-tortured guy.

Summer Wind, Frank Sinatra with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra (1966, from "Strangers In The Night," Reprise Records, catalog information not available), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.