Nobody did it better ... Frank Sinatra in 1970. Photograph: AP
Last weekend I found myself coming close to blows with someone on the subject of Francis Albert Sinatra, who died 10 years ago today. Halfway through an otherwise enjoyable dinner party, I found myself at liberty to fiddle with the iPod and serve up the next musical course. Naturally I opted for a run of classic Sinatra songs. Because everyone is agreed about Sinatra, right? Every last man and woman on the planet are in thrall to Sinatra, aren't they?
In the midst of warm approval there were a couple of dissenting voices. "Bit early in the night for schmaltzy easy listening isn't it?" piped up Barry, a solicitor. "Pick up the pace, granddad," demanded Simon, a tour manager. "If we wanted to hear nursing home music we'd have requested it."
I can agree to disagree about most subjects. But not Sinatra. Whenever I hear someone dismiss Ol' Blue Eyes out of hand, I'm incredulous and occasionally the red mist descends. How can anyone not "get" Sinatra? What's not to get?
Not that I'm suggesting that anyone should cherish his entire oeuvre. His vast recorded legacy spans 60 years and some of the output was far from sublime. You'd be advised to be warily selective when wading through his recordings with Tommy Dorsey in the early 1940s. His later work for the Reprise label was uneven at best. Burdened with voice problems and poor material through the 80s and 90s, large swaths of that catalogue is best forgotten altogether.
That still leaves hundreds upon hundreds of magnificent recordings, the best of them unarguably from the 1950s and early 1960s under the direction of Nelson Riddle. This was the era of Sinatra's supreme artistic achievement, when he established himself as the greatest exemplar of American popular song. There were singers who were more inventive (Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday) and singers who were more explosive (Mahalia Jackson, Little Richard) but no-one made you believe in a song quite like Sinatra. Whether performing an anguished ballad or a finger-popping swing number, Sinatra sang each line with a kind of fatal need that carried the weight of intense personal history. It was once said that he sang not about himself but from himself, and that sounds exactly right to me. When Sinatra was at the peak of his powers, nobody did it better.
You still need convincing? Then check out the following five recordings. If these songs don't convince you of Sinatra's innate genius, then nothing ever will.
I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes) Recorded during one of his many break-ups from Ava Gardner, the 1955 album In the Wee Small Hours ached with tender resignation at every turn. This is the highlight for me. A song so majestic it might have been sculpted.
I've Got You Under My Skin There have been many great versions of this Cole Porter song but Sinatra consummately nails it on his 1956 version. The way he juxtaposes sexual bravado with lost-boy uncertainty is nothing short of thrilling. The trombone solo is not bad either.
One For My Baby (And One More For the Road) Sinatra often described himself as a saloon singer and this is the daddy of all saloon songs. Sinatra settles onto a stool for some quarter-to-three, over-the-bar confessions while an indecently pretty piano line underscores the sorrow. The most exquisitely torched of all the torch songs from 1958's Only the Lonely album, romantic cynicism never sounded so seductive.
You Make Me Feel So Young A masterclass in how to absorb a song's implications, seeking out every nuance in the lyric, completely personalising it. The classiest moment from 1956's Songs For Swingin' Lovers, Sinatra never rode an arrangement with such bewitching insouciance.
Theme From New York, New York The song might have been written for Liza Minnelli but Sinatra took hold of it in 1979 and made it all his own. He grabs you from the first triumphant note and his supernatural confidence carries you all the way. All together now, "Start spreadin' the news ..."
Check out our swinging Frank gallery here.
