2007.07 弗兰克-辛纳屈是美国音乐史上最伟大的歌唱家

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CULTURE
His Second Act
Editor’s Choice: How Frank Sinatra staged the most spectacular comeback in American cultural history

By Benjamin Schwarz
JULY/AUGUST 2007 ISSUE
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Frank Sinatra, the greatest vocalist in the history of American music, elevated popular song to an art. He was a dominant power in the entertainment industries—radio, records, movies, gambling—and a symbol of the Mafia’s reach into American public life. More profoundly than any figure excepting perhaps Elvis Presley, Sinatra changed the style and popular culture of the American Century.




FRANK SINATRA creating the Great American Songbook

Frank Sinatra: The Man, the Music, the Legend, a long-awaited collection of essays gathered from a famed 1998 conference at Hofstra University and edited by Jeanne Fuchs and Ruth Prigozy, probes various aspects of Sinatra’s influence in his long career (he was a national figure from 1939 until his death, in 1998). But it insists, both explicitly and in its editors’ selection of subjects and themes, that the “proper historical setting” for its subject “is the fifties.”

Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr.BURT BOYAR,REGAN BOOKS
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Frank Sinatra: The Man, the Music, the LegendJEANNE FUCHS AND RUTH PRIGOZY (EDITORS),UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PRESS
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Although that point can be debated, the 1950s—more precisely, the period from 1953 to the mid-1960s—was clearly the era of Sinatra’s supreme artistic achievement and deepest cultural sway. It amounted to the most spectacular second act in American cultural history. In the early 1940s, following his break with the Tommy Dorsey band, Sinatra had emerged, thanks largely to swooning bobby-soxers, as pop music’s biggest star and a hugely popular Hollywood actor. By the end of the decade, he was all but washed up, having lost his audience owing to shifting musical tastes and to disenchantment over his reported ties to the Mob, and over his divorce, which followed a widely publicized affair with Ava Gardner, whom he married in 1951. He soon lost his voice (he would never fully recover his consistently accurate intonation and precise pitch), his movie contract with MGM, his record contract with Columbia, and Gardner—their passionate, mutually corrosive entanglement plainly and permanently warped him. But in 1953, his harrowing, Oscar-winning performance as the feisty, doomed Maggio in From Here to Eternity made him a star again.

More important, in that year he also signed with the trendsetting, L.A.-based Capitol Records, a move that afforded him his greatest role: his own musical and stylistic reinvention. The 16 concept albums that followed, his most remarkable achievement and among America’s enduring cultural treasures, defied public taste and redirected it toward what would be known as the Great American Songbook. With his key collaborator, the arranger Nelson Riddle, Sinatra jettisoned the yearning, sweet-voiced crooning of his Columbia years in favor of a richer voice, greater rhythmic invention, and more knowing and conversational phrasing. He had always said that Billie Holiday was his most profound musical influence, and at Capitol, accompanied by Harry Edison, the former trumpeter for Count Basie, he was even more deeply open to jazz influence, as he invested up-tempo songs (which he had rarely performed at Columbia) with a tough, assured swing. For their part, jazz musicians overwhelmingly selected him “the greatest-ever male vocalist” in a 1956 poll, and Lester Young and Miles Davis—never partial to white musicians—ardently praised him.

And now, apparently because of his tortured relationship with Gardner, Sinatra burned off all remaining affectations and sentimentality and sang his ballads with bitterness, directness, and masculine vulnerability (“Ava taught him how to sing a torch song,” Riddle said). A midcentury artist with an admitted “overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation,” Sinatra invested those largely decades-old ballads with a modern anxiety and ambivalence. In his album sequences and in such swinging songs as “Night and Day,” “Day In, Day Out,” “Old Devil Moon,” and especially his greatest recording, the 1956 “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” he juxtaposed bravado and panic, ecstasy and uncertainty.

With this new sensibility, which Pete Hamill has aptly termed the “Tender Tough Guy,” Sinatra created—as several of the pieces in this collection illuminate—the most important model of masculinity for a generation of Americans. He had transformed his persona from that of a skinny, boyish, even androgynous heartthrob with Brylcreemed curls, too-big jackets, sailor suits (!), and floppy bow ties into that of a suave man of authority and sensitivity in crisp, slim-line suits. He appealed not to teenage girls but to their mothers and fathers. The jazz critic Gary Giddins, one of the most astute writers on the singer, summed up the transformed Sinatra: “Above all, he was adult. He sang to adults.”

In so doing, Sinatra held at bay the cultural changes that had helped bring about his earlier downfall. He came of age musically in a peculiar period: the only era in which jazz, as played by the big bands, was the most popular musical form. Since the 1940s, he had been recognized as the leader of a movement to establish the music of such composers as Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, and Jerome Kern as an art form, but postwar audiences turned away from Sinatra primarily because they no longer wanted to hear the music he wanted to sing. Ironically, his decision to embark on a solo musical career hastened the demise of the big bands and unmoored a mass audience from sophisticated popular music. While urbane songs would have appealed to audiences who danced to Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, until Sinatra altered popular taste, the postwar soloists—even such savvy chanteuses as Peggy Lee and Rosemary Clooney—made their fortunes and kept their contracts by recording novelty songs. Sinatra saw this firsthand, when Columbia enjoined him to record the godawful “Mama Will Bark,” with the busty comedienne Dagmar (it’s as bad as you imagine—complete with simulated barking).

On his hugely popular and artistically glorious Capitol albums, Sinatra expanded and enlivened the repertory of standard American songs (astonishingly, before his recording of it, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” hadn’t been a significant entry in the Porter catalog) and became its most commanding interpreter. With his clear, relaxed enunciation and sublime phrasing, he also codified the sound and rhythm of casually elegant spoken American English. The seamlessness, ingenuity, and rightness of that phrasing is readily apparent when you try to sing along with him and still can’t foretell his stresses and caesuras in a recording you may have heard a hundred times. (David Finck and Samuel L. Chell dissect Sinatra’s vocal artistry in two succinct and exceptionally precise pieces in this collection.)

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Nonetheless, Sinatra’s musical achievement—which constituted perhaps the last sustained occasion when elite and mass musical taste would coalesce—was really only a prolonged holding action made possible by his preternatural talent and charisma. As Will Friedwald, the most thorough analyst of Sinatra’s musicianship, wrote, Sinatra was, for all his popular appeal, “completely out of touch with American culture as it evolved from [the late 1940s] onwards.” Friedwald—no surprise—excoriates popular culture, not Sinatra, for this. But whether or not you agree, the fact that, as Giddins points out, Sinatra’s artistic maturity coincided with the peak of Elvis’s appeal shows the extent to which Sinatra’s imperishable accomplishment was a cultural outlier. And though Sinatra’s second act clearly represented the justifiably bemoaned final triumph of grown-up pop-cultural taste, Sinatra himself helped hasten the inevitable triumph of youth culture. His musical persona may have been “adult,” but he insisted on merging that with his public face, which was too often anything but. You could hardly blame the kids for rejecting him.

To be sure, Sinatra, an exquisitely complicated man, was doggedly committed to racial equality long before it was a fashionable cause. He was also a consistently generous artist and capable of astonishing grace and thoughtfulness. But—aside from consorting with killers; procuring for the doped-up, mobbed-up, and coarsely exploitative JFK (if anything, Camelot sullied Sinatra, not the other way around); and regularly displaying a potentially murderous temper—he perversely made sure that his ardent listeners grasped that his juvenile, vulgar, and increasingly pathetic Rat Pack antics couldn’t be reconciled with his carefully wrought musical reinvention. This was made clear on his 1966 album Sinatra at the Sands, which contains both his lovely and swinging renditions of “Angel Eyes” and “Luck Be a Lady,” accompanied by the Count Basie Orchestra, and his notoriously cringe-inducing monologue that combined yucky corniness and mean-spiritedness. If this was mature urbanity, who needed it?


Sinatra gave Sammy Davis Jr. his career, and his fiercely loyal, public embrace of Davis, often in the teeth of bigotry, was principled and heroic. But in their Rat Pack shows, he made Davis the butt of race-oriented jokes, and Davis knew a Sinatra both vindictive and considerate, both scummy and courtly. Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr. assembles beautiful and revealing snaps that this gifted amateur took in the 1950s and ’60s of the Hollywood elite at play (including a sad and sweet image of a little-black-dressed Marilyn tucking a small boy into bed as a late-night party hums in the other room), of Vegas showgirls, of politicians and mobsters, of Martin Luther King Jr. And of course there is Sinatra, in all his dangerous glamour—joshing with Shirley MacLaine and the rest of his band of nocturnal carousers, brooding, on the phone in sharply tailored pajamas (no doubt after sleeping through a good chunk of the day). Speaking of that glamour, Davis said, “Only two guys are left who are not the boy next door: Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra.”

Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr.BURT BOYAR, REGAN BOOKS
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Frank Sinatra: The Man, the Music, the LegendJEANNE FUCHS AND RUTH PRIGOZY (EDITORS), UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PRESS
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Benjamin Schwarz is the former literary and national editor for The Atlantic. He is the author of a forthcoming book on Winston Churchill.



文化
他的第二幕
编辑推荐：弗兰克-辛纳屈如何上演了美国文化史上最精彩的复出。

作者：本杰明-施瓦茨
2007年7月/8月号
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弗兰克-辛纳屈是美国音乐史上最伟大的歌唱家，他将流行歌曲提升为一种艺术。他是娱乐业--广播、唱片、电影、赌博--的主导者，也是黑手党进入美国公众生活的象征。除了埃尔维斯-普雷斯利之外，西纳特拉比任何人物都更深刻地改变了美国世纪的风格和流行文化。




弗兰克-西纳特拉创造了伟大的美国歌曲集

弗兰克-辛纳屈：男人、音乐、传奇》是一本期待已久的论文集，从1998年在霍夫斯特拉大学举行的一次著名会议上收集而来，由珍妮-福克斯和露丝-普里戈齐编辑，探究了辛纳屈在其漫长职业生涯中的各方面影响（他从1939年到1998年去世，一直是全国性人物）。但它明确地以及在编辑们选择的主题中都坚持认为，其主题的 "适当的历史背景 "是50年代。

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弗兰克-辛纳屈：男人、音乐、传奇JEANNE FUCHS和RUTH PRIGOZY（编辑），罗切斯特大学出版社
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虽然这一点可以争论，但20世纪50年代--更确切地说，从1953年到60年代中期--显然是辛纳屈取得最高艺术成就和最深刻文化影响的时代。它相当于美国文化史上最壮观的第二幕。20世纪40年代初，在与汤米-多尔西乐队分手后，辛纳屈成为流行音乐的最大明星和大受欢迎的好莱坞演员，这在很大程度上要归功于痴迷的鲍比-索克斯。到了十年末，他几乎被洗白了，由于音乐品味的变化和对他与黑帮的关系的不满，以及在与艾娃-加德纳（Ava Gardner）的一段广为人知的婚外情之后的离婚，他失去了他的观众。他很快就失去了他的声音（他永远不会完全恢复他一贯准确的音调和精确的音高），他与米高梅的电影合同，他与哥伦比亚公司的唱片合同，以及加德纳--他们的激情、相互腐蚀的纠葛明显地永久地扭曲了他。但在1953年，他在《从这里到永恒》中饰演性格暴躁、注定失败的马吉奥，这一令人痛心的奥斯卡获奖表演使他再次成为明星。

更重要的是，在这一年，他还与总部设在洛杉矶的Capitol唱片公司签约，此举为他提供了最大的作用：他自己的音乐和风格的重新塑造。随后的16张概念专辑，是他最杰出的成就，也是美国永恒的文化瑰宝之一，挑战了公众的品味，并将其重新导向后来被称为伟大的美国歌曲集。与他的主要合作者，编曲家纳尔逊-里德尔（Nelson Riddle）一起，辛纳屈放弃了他在哥伦比亚时代的渴望、甜美的声音，转而采用更丰富的声音、更大的节奏发明和更有见地的对话式的措辞。他总是说Billie Holiday是对他影响最深的音乐，而在Capitol，在前Count Basie的小号手Harry Edison的陪同下，他对爵士乐的影响甚至更加深刻，因为他为快节奏的歌曲（他在哥伦比亚很少表演）注入了强硬、可靠的摇摆。就爵士乐手而言，在1956年的一次投票中，他们以压倒性的优势将他选为 "有史以来最伟大的男歌手"，莱斯特-杨和迈尔斯-戴维斯--从不偏爱白人音乐家--都对他赞不绝口。

而现在，显然是因为他与加德纳的痛苦关系，辛纳特拉烧掉了所有剩余的感情和感伤，用苦涩、直接和男性的脆弱来唱他的民谣（"艾娃教他如何唱火炬歌"，里德尔说）。作为一个承认 "对悲伤和欢欣的能力过强 "的中世纪艺术家，辛纳屈在那些基本上是几十年前的民谣中注入了现代的焦虑和矛盾情绪。在他的专辑序列和诸如《夜以继日》、《日进斗金》、《老妖精的月亮》等摇摆不定的歌曲中，特别是他最伟大的唱片，即1956年的《我把你压在身下》，他把张扬和恐慌、狂喜和不确定性并列起来。

有了这种新的感觉--皮特-哈米尔恰当地称之为 "温柔的硬汉"，辛纳屈创造了--正如本集的一些作品所阐明的那样--一代美国人最重要的男子气概模式。他将自己的角色从一个瘦弱、男孩气、甚至是雌雄同体的心动者的形象转变为一个穿着清爽、纤细的西装、具有权威和敏感性的风流人物。他吸引的不是少女，而是他们的母亲和父亲。爵士乐评论家加里-吉丁斯（Gary Giddins）是研究这位歌手的最精明的作家之一，他总结了转变后的辛纳屈："首先，他是成年人。他为成年人唱歌"。

这样一来，辛纳屈就了那些曾帮助他早先堕落的文化变化。他在一个特殊的时期进入了音乐时代：那是唯一一个由大乐队演奏的爵士乐是最受欢迎的音乐形式的时代。自20世纪40年代以来，他一直被认为是将科尔-波特、欧文-柏林、罗杰斯和哈特以及杰罗姆-克恩等作曲家的音乐确立为一种艺术形式的运动的领导者，但战后的观众却远离了辛纳屈，主要是因为他们不再想听他想唱的音乐。具有讽刺意味的是，他决定开始独唱的音乐生涯，加速了大乐队的消亡，并使广大观众与复杂的流行音乐脱钩。虽然高雅的歌曲会吸引那些为本尼-古德曼（Benny Goodman）和阿蒂-肖（Artie Shaw）跳舞的观众，但在辛纳屈改变大众品味之前，战后的独唱者--甚至像佩吉-李和罗斯玛丽-克鲁尼这样精明的歌女，通过录制新奇的歌曲来赚取财富并保持他们的合同。辛纳屈亲眼目睹了这一点，当时哥伦比亚公司要求他与丰满的喜剧演员达格玛一起录制可怕的 "妈妈会叫"（它和你想象的一样糟糕--完全是模拟的狗叫声）。

在他大受欢迎和艺术上辉煌的Capitol专辑中，辛纳屈扩大并活跃了标准美国歌曲的曲目（令人惊讶的是，在他录制这首歌曲之前，"I've Got You Under My Skin "还不是波特目录中的一个重要条目），并成为其最有力的诠释者。由于他清晰、轻松的发音和崇高的措辞，他还编纂了随意优雅的美国英语口语的声音和节奏。当你试着和他一起唱，但仍然无法预知他在你可能已经听过一百次的录音中的重音和尾音时，这种措辞的无缝性、独创性和正确性就很明显。(大卫-芬克和塞缪尔-L-切尔在本集的两篇简明而异常精确的文章中对辛纳屈的声乐艺术进行了剖析）。

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尽管如此，辛纳屈的音乐成就--这也许是精英和大众音乐品味凝聚在一起的最后一个持续的机会--实际上只是他超凡的天赋和魅力所带来的一个长期的保持行动。正如对辛纳屈的音乐能力分析得最透彻的威尔-弗里德瓦尔德（Will Friedwald）所写的那样，尽管辛纳屈很受欢迎，但他 "完全与美国文化脱节，因为它是从[1940年代末]开始发展起来的。" 弗里德沃德--毫不奇怪--为此指责流行文化，而不是指责辛纳屈。但无论你是否同意，正如吉丁斯所指出的，辛纳屈的艺术成熟期与猫王的吸引力高峰期相吻合，这一事实表明，辛纳屈不朽的成就在多大程度上是一个文化异类。尽管辛纳屈的第二次表演显然代表了成人流行文化品味的最终胜利，但辛纳屈本人也帮助加速了青年文化的不可避免的胜利。他的音乐角色可能是 "成年人"，但他坚持将其与他的公众形象相结合，而他的公众形象往往不是这样。你很难怪孩子们拒绝他。

可以肯定的是，辛纳屈是一个非常复杂的人，早在种族平等成为一种时尚之前，他就顽强地致力于种族平等。他也是一个一贯慷慨的艺术家，并且能够表现出惊人的优雅和体贴。但是，除了与杀手勾结；为吸毒的、暴民的、粗暴的肯尼迪拉皮条（如果有的话，是卡米洛特玷污了辛纳屈，而不是相反）；以及经常表现出潜在的杀人脾气之外，他还变态地确保他的热心听众明白，他那幼稚、粗俗、越来越可悲的鼠帮滑稽行为与他精心打造的音乐革新是无法协调的。这一点在他1966年的专辑《Sinatra at the Sands》中说得很清楚，其中既有他在贝西伯爵乐团的伴奏下对 "天使之眼 "和 "幸运女神 "的可爱和摇摆的演绎，也有他那臭名昭著的令人作呕的独白，它将恶心的玉米和卑鄙的行为结合起来。如果这就是成熟的城市化，谁还需要它呢？


辛纳屈给了小萨米-戴维斯他的职业生涯，他对戴维斯的强烈忠诚和公开拥抱，往往是在偏执的情况下，是有原则和英雄的。但在他们的 "老鼠会 "演出中，他让戴维斯成为种族笑话的主角，而戴维斯知道一个既报复又体贴，既卑鄙又讨好的辛纳特拉。小萨米-戴维斯的照片》汇集了这位有天赋的业余摄影师在20世纪50年代和60年代拍摄的好莱坞精英们的照片（包括一个悲伤而甜蜜的画面：穿着小黑衣的玛丽莲为一个小男孩盖好被子，而另一个房间里正在举行深夜派对）、拉斯维加斯的女郎、政治家和黑帮分子、小马丁-路德-金和他的朋友。当然还有辛纳屈，在他所有的危险魅力中--与雪莉-麦克莱恩和他的其他夜行者乐队一起玩耍，沉思，穿着剪裁整齐的睡衣打电话（无疑是在睡过了一天的大块时间之后）。谈到这种魅力，戴维斯说："只剩下两个不是邻家男孩的人了。卡里-格兰特和弗兰克-西纳特拉"。

照片：小萨米-戴维斯，BURT BOYAR, REGAN BOOKS
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弗兰克-辛纳屈：男人、音乐、传奇JEANNE FUCHS和RUTH PRIGOZY（编辑），罗切斯特大学出版社
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本杰明-施瓦茨是《大西洋》杂志的前文学和国家编辑。他是即将出版的关于温斯顿-丘吉尔的书的作者。