Frank Sinatra is the Gold Standard For Bob Dylan’s Shadows In The Night

Now for a little Frank Sinatra in the Night – the real thing sounds better than anyone else

By Stephen Pate -The popularity of Bob Dylan singing Frank Sinatra songs on his album Shadows In The Night may have you wondering: what’s the real thing like?

To test my theory the real thing is still the real thing, I bought one of Frank Sinatra’s great albums from the 1950’s – In the Wee Small Hours released in 1955.

You may be pleasantly surprised how modern and current Frank Sinatra sounds in retrospect.

I was immediately impressed with the album. It’s not some corny pre-rock and roll relic but the deeply felt, modern album of a man with the blues, sung with vocal timbre and range Dylan can only hope for.

The Beatles didn’t invent the concept album. Frank Sinatra did with the jazzy album In The Wee Small Hours which explores the depths of human loneliness, lost love, depression and the emptiness of late nights.

The theme extends from the cover painting which depicts Sinatra alone at night on the street, looking despondent as he smokes that cigarette alone to the 2-LP collection of classic blue songs from Broadway, jazz and pop music.

Sinatra broke the rules by releasing it as a double album with 16 songs on two 10 inch records or one 12 inch LP.  Vinyl LP’s were only introduced in 1948 and people were still buying Extended Play records, 45’s for single songs and 78’s in 1955.

Sinatra and Capital Records were trying to capture the old market and the coming trend. That sounds like today with music available on CD, vinyl and download with streaming the new boy on the block.

Dylan fans talk about Blood on the Tracks being his divorce album. Again, Sinatra had his own personal reasons to sing the blues in his own blood on the tracks.

The concept for In The Wee Small Hours sprang directly from the personal funk that Sinatra was experiencing after his separation from the gorgeous and voluptuous movie star Ava Gardner.

Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, better days

Frank Sinatra was almost a has-been by the early 1950’s.

The Johnny Fontane singer and wannabee actor character in The Godfather was a thinly veiled portrayal of Sinatra.

He plunged from Beatles-like sex symbol of the mid-1940’s to a washed-up singer by 1950.

In 1950, Sinatra separated from Barbara his wife and started a torrid love affair with Ava Gardner. After the divorce a year later, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra got married. It was a marriage doomed to failure.

Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, the strain was showing

Both were strong personalities and Frank is alleged to still kept up dalliances with other women. In 1953, Frank co-starred in “From Here To Eternity” his comeback movie. It won 17 Academy Awards in 1954 including Best Supporting Actor for Sinatra. Too late for the marriage though. Ava Gardner split from Sinatra and divorced him 3 years later.

Does any of this sound familiar? It’s the classic Blood on the Tracks scenario and Frank Sinatra was feeling the pain of love lost and separation no less than Bob Dylan 20 years later. Both endured long drawn out divorce battles with women they adored.

All of that in the hands of lesser artists would mean a maudlin collection of self pity songs. Not so with Frank Sinatra who was one of the greatest singers of all time. Sinatra could get inside a song and sing from the inside out, living the emotion no matter what the sentiment.

His voice had timber and range. Using fantastic breath control technique, Frank Sinatra could sing phrases that had other singers gulping for air. It wasn’t a party trick. You feel like he is singing so effortlessly and with tremendous emotion. Add to that, he could swing the blues.

For his perfect album he chose songs that spanned decades of music his audience would recognize. No one ever tried to put them all together in one album which would be the kiss of death to take listeners down a blue road for 16 songs.

Sinatra pulls it off beautifully with songs of regret, recrimination, late night loneliness, and bravado.  He makes the Rodgers and Hart classic “Glad to be Unhappy” almost believable.   I can’t remember someone trying to sing the Ellington classic “Mood Indigo”.

After all the blues, Sinatra draws up his courage and sings bravely,

I’ll be around,
No matter how
You treat me now

We’ve bought the rock and roll versions of these songs from Paul McCartney to Rod Stewart which are nice but they can’t hold a candle to the real thing – Frank Sinatra singing Frank Sinatra.

Song list

1. In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning (Hilliard, Mann)
2. Mood Indigo (Bigard, Ellington and Mills)
3. Glad to Be Unhappy (Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart)
4. I Get Along Without You Very Well (Hoagy Carmichael)
5. Deep in a Dream (Van Heusen, DeLange)
6. I See Your Face Before Me (Dietz and Schwartz)
7. Can’t We Be Friends? (James and Swift)
8. When Your Lover Has Gone (Swan)
9. What Is This Thing Called Love? (Cole Porter)
10. Last Night When We Were Young (Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg)
11. I’ll Be Around (Alec Wilder)
12. Ill Wind (Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler)
13. It Never Entered My Mind (Rodgers and Hart)
14. Dancing on the Ceiling (Rodgers and Hart)
15. I’ll Never Be the Same (Gus Kahn)
16. This Love of Mine (Parker, Sanicola and Frank Sinatra)

In the Wee Small Hours was remastered in 2009 and sounds fresh although I’d like to have the original vinyl my brother had. Available from Amazon.com, Amazon.ca in Canada, and Amazon.co.uk in the UK. The US or UK pricing is better than Canada.

Also available as a download from iTunes In the Wee Small Hours – Frank Sinatra

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