‘That’s Life’ : Sinatra’s daughter...

A funny thing happens to Nancy Sinatra during her 336-page chronological journey through her father’s stunning musical and humanitarian accomplishments: She runs out of pictures. Oh, yes, there are many wonderfully personal, never-before-seen photos of this truly amazing American icon. But most of them, be they of him at work or with his family, very definitely depict the early Frank Sinatra.

I imagine a now-middle-aged Nancy in her basement, if she has one, unpacking cartons, sifting through photo albums and then ring-a-ding-dinging up her brother, Frank, sister, Tina, and mother, Nancy, and asking whether it’d be all right if she rummaged through their personal files too.

It’s around her father’s Ava Gardner period that readers will begin to notice a subtle thinning out of Nancy’s exclusive and often candid photographic collection and how it is suddenly overtaken by a graphic look that relies far more heavily on stock shots, black-and-white press photos and album artwork. Do I assume that either Nancy didn’t ask her father for permission to go through his vaults, or she asked and that permission was denied?

It is not a well-kept secret within the Sinatra circle that for many years Frank has regarded his eldest daughter as a minor source of embarrassment. She can talk all she wants about how he nodded his approval when she sought his blessings over her now-famous eight-page nude photo spread in the May ’95 issue of Playboy. I’m fairly sure he was not the least bit happy about it. Nor, I am told, is he thrilled with this book.

But thankfully, Nancy doesn’t use this $45 coffee table book ($60 in Canada) to go into much detail about herself. “Frank Sinatra: An American Legend” is definitely all about him, Nancy’s tribute to him, and because she’s taken the high road, there really isn’t much in here that pop should feel unhappy about. Which, for a gossip columnist, is the book’s ultimate failing. Dishy it ain’t.

I would rather read Nancy’s take on Ava Gardner than Nancy’s use of Gardner’s book to recall Gardner’s recollections of Frank. Where are Nancy’s recollections of Gardner? Or Frank’s recollections of Gardner, as quoted by Nancy? Or, how the entire Sinatra family felt when Gardner came along, to use a recent expression of Princess Di’s, and crowded Frank’s relationship with Nancy’s mother? There is certainly a story there, one that book publishers would no doubt pay huge sums of money to capture, but Nancy, quite obviously, was not going to be the one to write it.

In truth, the author was in a no-win, damned-if-she-does, damned-if-she-doesn’t, situation. Just the mere fact that Nancy devotes a portion of the text to the numerous misconceptions surrounding her father’s acquaintances from the world of organized crime dignifies the very misconceptions that her father has worked years to, you’ll excuse the expression, shoot down. In trying to set the record straight, and probably going about it earnestly, Nancy disappoints not only her father, but readers who desperately want to believe that back in the docile 1950s Frank Sinatra and Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana might have exchanged more than simple high-fives in saloons across America.

On the other hand, “Sinatra! The Song Is You,” by Will Friedwald, leaves little open to the imagination because unlike Nancy Sinatra, Friedwald keeps his book focused narrowly on the music and purposely away from anything remotely personal. But like Nancy, Friedwald has an abiding respect for Frank Sinatra’s enormous musical contribution to 20th-century popular culture. They both think Sinatra is the greatest pop singer of all time. I think the same thing. Friedwald sounds like a man who could easily wile away the day listening to each and every Sinatra version of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” since 1942 and never be bored. Me too. Friedwald calls Sinatra’s 21-album association with arranger Nelson Riddle the zenith of each man’s career, going so far as to brand two of those collaborative efforts--”Songs for Swing-in’ Lovers” (a landmark collection of tunes celebrating the finger-snapping rush of new love) and its heartbreaking counterpart, “Only the Lonely”--as the definitive and best Sinatra albums ever. And I quite agree.

Deifying the Sinatra style to the virtual exclusion of everything that’s followed him, the conceit on which “Sinatra! The Song Is You” has been based, is definitely where Friedwald and I, and perhaps Nancy too (see “These Boots Are Made for Walking”), part company. Friedwald states right near the beginning of the book that the idea that pop music could have substance as well as mass-marketability “reached a climax during World War II and slowly fizzled out during the Vietnam War of the 1960s.” Gee, if that were the case, would our Main Man have deigned to record a version of “Something,” by George Harrison, a Vietnam-era artist and songwriter if there ever was one? I’ve never asked Harrison if he fancies the cover, but I highly doubt the royalty checks he’s received from it over the years ever remained uncashed for very long.

And, yes, as Friedwald points out, Sinatra has routinely “tinkered” with some of his more classic interpretations, re-recording ballads up-tempo and vice-versa as a way of staying fresh, vital and enthusiastic about the music. But didn’t Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, artists Friedwald might place at the tail end of pop’s fizzle, come along and for similar reasons do some major tinkering on their material? It’s no accident that Dylan and Springsteen were each asked to perform at Sinatra’s recent 80th birthday tribute. Maybe if it had been up to Friedwald, Dylan and Springsteen would have been given the hook in favor of Al Martino and Jerry Vale.

That said, “Sinatra! The Song Is You” has more Sinatra recording minutiae per page than perhaps any Sinatra book ever written. This is not a tome one reads during an afternoon at the beach--a page-turner it’s not. But if you want to know how the Sinatra sound changed from his boy-singer days with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey to his salad days with arrangers Axel Stordahl, Nelson Riddle, Billy May and Gordon Jenkins, and all of it in striking, heavily researched detail, then “Sinatra! The Song Is You” is a worthy addition to any Frankophile’s collection of printed matter.

Of course, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Friedwald was unable to obtain an interview with Sinatra. His own daughter, after all, didn’t get one either. But still, this is no cut-and-paste job by Friedwald. It’s an exhaustive look at a man whose musical gift has already been looked at exhaustively.

How the Sinatra recording career got from Point A to Point B is a tale I wish he would tell himself. But he has never seemed inclined to do that, leaving us ultimately with the music, which is probably how it should be. In the end, all any Sinatra fan, Will Friedwald and Nancy Sinatra included, ever needs to know about this man’s remarkable staying power can be found not in books but in the South Bronx at the conclusion of all New York Yankees home games. Win or lose, no matter what, when the last out is recorded, “New York, New York” comes blasting out of the Stadium speakers. And not once in my memory has a ballpark official there ever dared to play Liza Minnelli’s original version before the one by Sinatra.