POP MUSIC REVIEW : FRANK, SAMMY: 2 OLD PROS STILL IN TUNE WITH A TIMELESS LYRIC

Several years ago Frank Sinatra threw one of his public tantrums over a New York reviewer’s suggestion that his voice was shot. A few reports since have more than implied that he was no longer the man with the golden throat, and his Wednesday-night appearance at the Pacific Amphitheatre bore out the contention--to a degree. But a degree relatively slight. Astonishingly, Sinatra at 71 remains king of the hill, top of the heap; and at 10 years his junior, Sammy Davis Jr., who shared the bill, is still a tough act to follow.

It hasn’t been a palmy year for Sinatra. Surgeons have probed and snipped at his intestines, and his private persona was fairly well trashed in an unauthorized best-selling biography. And in the troubled larger scheme of contemporary things, references to Ol’ Blue Eyes and the Chairman of the Board carry a somewhat intramural ring of the industry high roller as an outmoded figure. All the outward signs point to Sinatra as a bit of an anachronism.

He takes less than a minute to blow those signs away.

For one thing, Sinatra has the indefinable capacity, in theatrical parlance, to “take the stage.” Nothing fancy. He walks on and takes command--without any coy or fey self-references to playing the living legend. He knows he’s principally there to deliver, not to receive tribute.

Backed by Bill Miller’s orchestra, which worked like a fine-tuned engine that could take any song in any gear, he opened with a good-natured “I’ve Got the World on a String,” holding the last “i” vowel in “ring around my finger” and whimsically back-kicking it into the audience soccer-style.

He followed with “For Once in My Life,” that showed us how he can still belt a song around. We also began to see, in his softer dynamics, how there are alleys down which his voice will no longer go. He followed with a loose-gaited version of “Summer Wind,” playing off its rhythms with change-up pitches. A driving swing version of “What Now My Love” carried an edgy vocal burr, as though he needed to clear his throat. And in “Maybe This Time,” the small vocal upchuck of that old Chesterfield cigarette Sinatra has alluded to elsewhere was redeemed by emotional bravado and, at a climactic point, a watersmooth melodic plunge that sliced through the orchestra like a ride in a fun park.

One of Sinatra’s musical hallmarks over the years has been taste. His stand-up uncluttered version of Arlen/Gershwin’s “The Man That Got Away” (“Man” changed to “Gal” here for the obvious reason) stoked the deep passion of probably the greatest American torch song ever written, and he punched it home with a dramatically calculated distress. He personalized somewhat the background for the “Soliloquy” number from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel” but effectively played out what is basically a poetic deliberation on fatherhood through the song’s own lyrical momentum.

Sinatra has always had the uncommon good sense to know that a great singer delivers a great song by getting inside of it instead of out in front of it. A song is a flower, or a rocket ship, or a Go Kart--the singer intuitively discovers the way to move it from within. Sinatra’s swing treatment of Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” gave a rhythmic amiability to a lyric that doesn’t get very far, and his rendition of “Mack the Knife” took into account how much that tune has been handed around ever since Bobby Darin shook it out in the late ‘50s--Sinatra was happy to let the orchestra help him punch it up. He sounds as though he’s reassessing “My Way” once again; that is, you get the song, but not the conviction.

It’s always difficult to get a clear take on the performance of someone like a Frank Sinatra; so many past associations and references tend to make the experience top-heavy with expectation or self-fulfilling prophecy. He’s been prominently with us for more than 40 years, which means his essence taps so deeply into our personal and cultural memory that its individual root is out of sight.

Sinatra today is like a scarred and aging heavyweight champion holding on in a quarrelsome division of brash 22-year-olds. But even now you can see what’s kept him on top: an absolute deference to the poetic genius and amazing expressiveness of our most notable pop songwriters, and a musical curator’s skill at showing them at their best--that is, lyrically alive. His own talents notwithstanding, he’s been buoyed in the public eye all these years by the evocation of romance that’s very much at the heart of American optimism.

Sammy Davis Jr. doesn’t dance anymore, or play the trumpet, or the drums. All his intensity and twists and turns are now impacted into his songs. On Wednesday he sang, among others, “Begin the Beguine,” “Tomorrow Is a Lonely Day,” “Satin Doll,” a medley from “Porgy & Bess,” the de rigueur “I Gotta Be Me,” “On a Clear Day,” “The Girl From Ipanema” and “Candy Man.” He found something new to put into almost all of them, sometimes a cappella, sometimes through scat singing, and sometimes running up a melody from the back side. He’s held on to his uncanny rhythmic sense, and his black references give his music a sensual suggestiveness that even Sinatra can’t touch. Davis is a one-man minimalist band, though he got plenty of help from Mort Stevens’ orchestra, James Leary’s bass and an unusual warmth from Clayton Cameron’s drums.

There’s still an overabundance of the old Davis gush. At the end of the night, when he came on with Sinatra to do a medley from “Guys and Dolls,” he took the line “Thank you, Lord” from “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” and turned it Sinatra’s way. What is it that’s kept Davis from realizing that he’s paid more dues than he owes to anyone, a long time ago and many times over?

Brian Monahan did the very good light design, Tim Kalliches was the sound mixer. Sinatra and Davis play the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles tonight and Saturday; Saturday’s performance is sold out.