Frank Sinatra's voice enters like a dream. It's so rich and smooth, it's almost hard to believe he's real. I love this album - the gloom and melancholy that pervades the room while it plays. As a whole, its a great work of art. It would be difficult not to appreciate his treatment and interpretation of these jazz standards.
The album starts with the title track written for Sinatra. He is lying awake in the morning - the beginning of the album mirroring the beginning the day. This song is an apt introduction to the rest of the album. The theme is loneliness, unrequited love, lost love, etc. Without knowing quite how to phrase this, I'll say that there is no traditional verse- chorus format which my ears are accustomed to. I believe its still strophic form, with a phrase or two in each strophe, usually the title repeated to bring unity to the song, but a catchy hook and a chunk of music designated as chorus does not occur in most if not all of the songs on this album. To me, this creates more of a stream of consciousness feel. In a way, this is a more realistic way to portray dejection, creating a more authentic bleak, despondent atmosphere. The second track, "Mood Indigo" is a jazz piece, composed by Duke Ellington and Barney Bigard a clarinetist in Ellington's band from the late 1920's to the early 1940's. Sinatra pulls off the jazz phrasing smoothly, and puts his own mark on this jazz standard recorded by many great jazz vocalists and instrumentalists both before and after this release. "Glad to Be Unhappy" interests me lyrically. It's another characteristic sad love song, but points to a human quality perhaps not always articulated. As miserable as love can sometimes be, do we not sometimes revel in that emotion? It does allow us, or in this case Rodgers and Hart to write a great standard with universal appeal. Again, it's one of the many tracks on this album to be recorded by a long list artists. The rest of the album follows suite. Sinatra sings about his broken heart backed by the orchestra. His voice is overpowering and follows his own tempo that in turn follows the emotion of each song, but still never abandons or pulls his accompaniment. There are two more Rodgers and Hart songs, a Cole Porter and a Harold Arlen - all names I recognize from Ella's Songbooks. "Can't We Be Friends" is one of my instant favorites, composed by Kay Swift and important female composer of Tin Pan Alley with ties to Gershwin.
Frank Sinatra is famed to have perfected the concept album with this release in 1955 under Capitol Records. It is his second collaboration with Nelson Riddle, featuring darker material than that in his days of bobby soxers appeal. The album is full of contradictions, mostly of the lyrical variety and a careful listen pulled my emotion and understanding of each song back and forth only to be left unfulfilled at the end of each song. It puts you in the head space of Sinatra and if you can relate to the events his sings about it works even better. Althougth Sinatra's separation from Ava Gardner clearly made him less than happy, as we can hear, it sure is appreciated by music lovers and the lonely alike.
I've got a few more Sinatra albums on deck to listen to coming up. I could get sidetracked awhile on Sinatra. If you get a chance to read Reuben Jackson's poem "Frank" it's a good one and mentions the album.
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