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#41
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"hank alrich" wrote in message .. . Doc wrote: Yeah, Goulet recorded a lot of schlock and I've heard could be a horse's ass, but he had a formidable vocal instrument. He could not swing his way into a wet paper shopping bag. Whether that's true or not, as a vocalist he was in a class Sinatra couldn't even dream of aspiring to. As were any of the others I noted. You seem oblivious to the implications of phrasing. The "implications" of phrasing? Holy inappropriate word usage Batman! I assume you mean the technique of phrasing. Or simply "phrasing". Having played lead trumpet in a number of big bands and having done some arranging and songwriting, I'm reasonably familiar with concepts such as swing, phrasing etc. I've found that when people say "he's got great phrasing" it often means their vocal chops are shot. If you think Sinatra was great, knock yerself out and enjoy. I won't be joining you in your adulation. |
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#42
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Yeah all that stuff about Crosby being a sadistic father kind of sealed
my opinion of him. I Never liked his voice, even as a child. Face it, he was a narcassistic asshole with a mediocre voice, and an incredible amount of luck. |
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#43
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On Mon, 27 Dec 2004 21:44:20 GMT, "Doc"
wrote: His fellow Rat-Packer Sammy Davis had more singing talent in his glass eye than Sinatra ever dreamed of. snip Agreed. Dunno about that but I think he was overrated as a singer. snip Even Astaire said he couldn't sing! Sorry, I've never gotten excited about Sinatra, even in his so-called prime. Anything after about the mid 50's I find unlistenable. He was the most slickly packaged singer of his era but far from the most talented. snip Well, to be fair, his Dorsey days showed he COULD sell a song, as witnessed by the mobs at the Brooklyn Paramount would attest, but by '49 or so, he was more interested in screwing Ava Gardner than he was in singing. Ray Eberle, Ed Ames, Dick Haymes, Dino, Billy Eckstine, Jack Jones, Sammy Davis, Vaughn Monroe, the young Tony Bennett before his pipes turned to leather, among others were all far better singers. snip Dick Haymes was probably one of the most underrated male vocalists of all time. Vaughn Monroe really held his own in the late '40s (he was EVERYWHERE on radio) but there's only so much you can do with a baritone in pop music...but a great set of pipes and a superior talent. As is always the case, I have no doubt there were legions of unheralded coulda-beens that never garnered great fame who were also better. Sinatra had at best a passable timbre without much power when he was very young and when that was gone, he had nothing left but mob connections, good marketing, hype and excellent bands full of musicians he was mostly qualified to serve coffee to, to keep his name alive. snip Sinatra always had a weak voice...no power, limited range...Sammy could sing rings around him in the rat pack days. What he DID have was 1.) interpretive ability, which someone like a Vaughn Monroe completely lacked, 2.) a very unusual timbre that emerged making his voice, as weak as it was, instantly recognizable (as was Crosby's), and as you said, 3.) Lucky Luciano and his pals. The Feebs under Hoover tried desperately to indict Sinatra and amassed the biggest FBI file ever kept on an entertainer http://foia.fbi.gov/sinatra.htm , but Sinatra wisely had friends in very high places, like JFK and later, Ronnie RayGun, himself a crook. You have to look at Sinatra as an entire package, not just as a vocalist. Public fascination with the mob, the glitter of Vegas and his self-described "ring-a-ding" attitude all combined to offset his vocal failings. I have to agree that anything he did after "Come Fly With Me" in '57 was pretty marginal, altough I must admit I listen to these albums probably more to hear the likes of Billy May, Nelson Riddle (a genius with a score), Don Costa and others...those were some SUPERB charts played by some SUPERB guys, and as well engineered as any recordings ever have been...thus, propping Sinatra up all the more. Well, let me modify that. I do think he had talent as an actor. I enjoy him far more in movies than as a singer. snip Like I said, Sinatra was a total package...he could "sorta sing," but it wasn't the vocal quality, it was the same interpretive abilities probably brought about by his life's experience that made him a powerful figure in the mind of the public. It was that same experience that gave him such powerful credibility as an actor. dB |
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#44
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#45
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On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:10:20 GMT, "Paul Stamler"
wrote: He recorded both, in 1949, and released them as a double-plug single on Decca. See: http://www.countryworks.com/artist_full.asp?KEY=TUBB Wow, he re-released it in '49 and got a top 10 hit on both sides?? That's truly amazing, considering NO one knows anything about it today, while Crosby groans out his '49 re-recording backed by John Scott Trotter every year without fail. I'd heard that Crosby's '49 redo of "White Christmas" was one of the first singles cut on the experimental new Ampexe 200As that he'd backed financially. How true this is, I have no clue, but Crosby's backing of Ampex is common knowledge. dB |
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#46
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On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:01:46 GMT, "Doc"
wrote: Not by the people who wrote his songs. Despite his having an untrained and slightly "croaky" voice, they loved the way he delivered them. snip Sinatra did have early vocal training, as a teenager. He wasn't a very apt pupil, from all accounts, and a lot of what he was taught in vocal classes seemed to be lost on him in later years. The cynic in me strongly suspects their enthusiasm was largely due to the fact that he was huge star and whatever he sang got tremendous publicity. snip ....thus providing the rationale for fakes like Enrique Iglesias, Britney Spears and Ashlee Simpleton, the "Texas Jigger"...manufacture a star with a lot of hype, and the lemmings will go over the cliff into your cashbox every time. Vaughn Monroe? Robert Goulet's godfather? Thanks for reminding me of another singer I should have put on the list. Yeah, Goulet recorded a lot of schlock and I've heard could be a horse's ass, but he had a formidable vocal instrument. "If Ever I Would Leave You" was a gem. Haven't heard him in a long time, don't know what kind of shape his pipes are in these days. snip Lousy. I heard him in Vegas not too long ago...his range is severely truncated, he looks like a department store manniquin with all that makeup, and his stage presence is NOT good. Years of booze and cigs sure took their toll there, as they did with Sinatra and Bennett. Even Waynie-the-Pooh over at the Stardust is more entertaining...in a bizarre sort of way. As far as Vegas fare goes, Steve and Eydie (for better or worse) can clean Goulet's clock anyday...if you can stand Eydie's screaming at you for any length of time. The one who's drawing them like flies in Vegas today? A nobody-cum-star named Steve Gahns. I've yet to figure this out, other than it's the biggest hype campaign in town I've ever seen. I think your problem is that you don't like Sinatra as a person, and I can't blame you for that. Well, honestly I just don't think much of his voice. I'd say "he was an asshole but he could sing" if I believed that. I could listen to Sammy Davis, Goulet or Ed Ames all day. You'd have to pay me to listen to Sinatra for any length of time. Well, I might tolerate him to hear those fantastic Nelson Riddle arrangements. Btw, I've always heard that Sinatra's career stalled after parting ways with Riddle and picked up again when he started using him again. snip Riddle was 100% responsible for Sinatra's comeback starting in '54, and Billy May's hot charts and wailing saxes propelled it even further in the mid/late '50s. Sinatra and May had a parting of the ways, Sinatra went back to Riddle, then started drifting around. Many of his '60s and '70s albums were utter bombs without Riddle around to prop him up, but sold anyway, due to the name Sinatra had manufactured for himself. Gordy Jenkins and the LA Phil couldn't do much to help him on the "Future" part of "Trilogy" in '79, and even the '60s Don Costa-backed cover stuff was weak. Without a hot band to back him, Sinatra would fall flat on his face, and the ballads, even with Riddle, would be come booze-soaked laments, although I think that was part of the attraction...people loved hearing that painful groaning! To be fair, "Future" was a HUGE gamble for Sinatra, and a very unconventional set of music for a pop vocalist. So, I give Sinatra kudos for even trying it. It sold well in spite of itself. However, he wisely backed himself with a big name in itself with the LA Philharmonic, just to hedge his bet. Recently saw a Sinatra movie that I'd never heard of before - "Kings Go Forth" I think it was from '58. Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood. Interesting movie that apparently never got much notice despite the big names. The subject matter of interracial marriage I'm sure was highly controversial at the time. Also featured a cameo by trumpet great Pete Candoli who also provided the playing to Tony Curtis' faking. snip The movie supposedly didn't play well in the South (hmmmm...those pesky red states again!) and also angered many WW II and Korean War vets, knowing that Sinatra had dodged the bullet in WW II and had a pretty cushy life on the home front...sort of like our current president! The prejudice angle had been played to the hilt a year earlier in '57 with "Sayonara" and seemed to play universally well, probably because it didn't involve a black player. Why anything written by Michener didn't take 400 reels of film to document is beyond me. I remember seeing "Kings Go Forth" and thinking the screenplay was a bit weak, while Sinatra pretty much held the whole thing together opposite a fresh and well directed Natalie Wood. Curtis was...well...Curtis! dB |
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#47
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On 29 Dec 2004 04:46:08 -0800, "db" wrote:
Yeah all that stuff about Crosby being a sadistic father kind of sealed my opinion of him. snip Revisionists (including his own family!) have tried to bury this again, but the infamy continues. I Never liked his voice, even as a child. Face it, he was a narcassistic asshole with a mediocre voice, and an incredible amount of luck. snip I don't know...Crosby could be soothing at times, but one-dimensional. It's been said more than once that the reasons that Bing Crosby and Kate Smith made it at all was the fact that the timbres and strengths of their voices could "punch through" on those horrid Western Electric carbon mikes of the '30s, and thus would sound better on radio. Once stardom on radio was achieved, record sales naturally followed, as did major star status. Kate Smith never had ANY education on ANYTHING musical in her life, and couldn't read music. Everything she did was purely instinctive...a true natural talent, in that she simply had tons of energy behind her voice. As recording improved over the years, she became more of an artifact of earlier days, but until the end, NO one could belt out a song from the stage without reinforcement like Kate Smith could...she was THAT LOUD! dB |
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#48
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"DeserTBoB" wrote in message ... Excellent post, interesting background stuff. The movie supposedly didn't play well in the South (hmmmm...those pesky red states again!) and also angered many WW II and Korean War vets, knowing that Sinatra had dodged the bullet in WW II and had a pretty cushy life on the home front...sort of like our current president! Bob Hope apparently conned his way into avoiding a similar label with his USO touring. His being "too old" was a somewhat weak excuse. I looked into this a while back. If he had been just one year younger he would have been legally required to register for the draft. He was a former boxer and avid golfer, certainly seemed physically fit enough. If he had genuinely wanted to pull some strings and get in, I imagine he could have. Jimmy Stewart who was only about 4 years younger than Hope was labeled 4-F and told to hit the road because of his weight, but said "screw that", gained weight and saw combat as a bomber pilot. Accounts I've seen indicated he was an excellent airman and officer. I imagine he was motivated by machismo as much as by patriotism, not wanting to be remembered as having been too scrawny for military duty. No doubt it didn't hurt his career in the long run to have stepped up to the plate like that when he didn't have to. The prejudice angle had been played to the hilt a year earlier in '57 with "Sayonara" and seemed to play universally well, probably because it didn't involve a black player. Somewhat humorous that though it was about a white woman who had married a black man, they managed to go through the whole flick without a black face ever being shown. |
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#51
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#52
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#53
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#54
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"Robin Chandler" wrote in message ... On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 21:34:04 GMT, "Doc" wrote: Have Yourself A Merry Christmas by the Pretenders. I don't know when this was released but I just noticed it this year on our local station that's playing holiday music 24/7 through Christmas. Good god, this chick couldn't hit a pitch with a truck, sounds like it was recorded in a karaoke bar. It's so bad it's hilarious. She couldn't carry a tune if it was in a basket. However, the worst holiday song has to be: That miserable kid that sings " There's Something in the Chimney" Bob Rivers I think? I hate that Christmas Shoes song as well (ok it makes me tear up!!). I like the religious songs but also like the Adam Sander song, (Goldie Hawn is a fine looking Jew!!!, well at least she was).... I have to wonder if Billy Gilmann is porking Charlotte Church.....? Maybe that's why his xmas's are warm -n- fuzzy? Nobody can sing White Xmas like Bing. Nobody can sing The Xmas Song (Chestnuts) like Nat. (Karen Carpenter close second) Nobody can sing Frosty the Snowman like Durantee. Karen Carpenter sings like a bird, she needed better material and more food. Amy Grant is sweet. Andre Kostolonetz (sp?) is the Sleigh Ride king.... Why do James Taylor's songs all sound the same? Brian Setzer plays in weird keys, but I like his stuff!!! Whoever told Gloria Estefan she could sing? Great band though! Barbara Streisand? I keep hearing "Sam ya made the pants too long"!!! Barry Manilow? That "Skate on a River Song" sounds just like another song he wrote right down to the chord changes....Yuk.... I do like "Another New Years Eve" though, the live version circa 1977.... Manhattan Transfer? Great vocals....Stay away from xmas though! The production on their Xmas CD is so bad I have to dive for the treble control so my teeth stay in my mouth. The engineer must have spent 20 years listening to NS-10's and blew his hearing out. Awful.... Screw my awful spelling! Time for another beer...................... |
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#55
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"Robin Chandler" wrote in message ... Whoever told Gloria Estefan she could sing? Isn't that great at giving bj's either... Great band though! They agree with me... |
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#56
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#57
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#58
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message news:znr1104497782k@trad... In article . net writes: Whoever told Gloria Estefan she could sing? Isn't that great at giving bj's either... And just how do you know this? Um, that of course being the point of the joke... Actually I think she has a nice voice. Not my absolute favorite but on some things she really shines. One of my complaints is that while she's done some great tunes, she's also done a number of weaker tunes with these wandering, scalar, painfully uninspired melodies. |
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#59
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On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 22:08:38 GMT, "HiC"
wrote: Actually I think she has a nice voice. Not my absolute favorite but on some things she really shines. One of my complaints is that while she's done some great tunes, she's also done a number of weaker tunes with these wandering, scalar, painfully uninspired melodies. snip Eh....J-Lo's got a bigger ass, though. dB |
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