ALBUM SPOTLIGHT

Is Frank Sinatra a jazz singer? Ask a dozen different critics, get a dozen different answers. If there is a consensus, it is that Sinatra has often sung with jazz musicians, that he has a jazz feel to his singing, but that in sum his work doesn’t quite meet the definition of jazz singing.

The tricky word in that last sentence, of course, is “definition.” Jazz singing, in fact, may be the most difficult of all musical expressions to pin down. Even the most inexperienced listener has little difficulty labeling an instrumentalist as a jazz performer. But singing is an entirely different issue. What, for example, are the common elements that allow for the unquestioned identification of, say, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan as jazz singers?

The answers aren’t easy, and they are clearly subject to varying degrees of interpretation. But one of the common elements would certainly seem to be an ability to phrase with a rhythmic articulation that can best be described as jazz-like in character. Holiday, Fitzgerald and Vaughan could all do that.

It’s a bit harder to define, but a second element vital to jazz singing has to be a capacity to move, alter and vary melodies in an improvisational fashion. And, finally, there is the most indefinable element of all: the skill, directly traceable to Louis Armstrong’s pioneering approach to jazz singing, to bring a rich interpretive quality to a song--an interpretive quality that can range across the spectrum of humor, pathos, romance and sentiment but that always makes something more, something improvisational, out of the basic notes, rhythms and harmonies of a song.

So, to get back to the original question, how does Sinatra’s singing fit into these areas?

This newly released album, recorded on March 31 and April 1, 1959, in Melbourne, Australia, provides a few interesting clues.

It was recorded when Sinatra, 43 at the time, was at the height of his skills, coming off the great Capitol albums of the early ‘50s and on the threshold of his ring-a-ding dates for Reprise in the ‘60s and beyond. He was working with the Red Norvo Quintet, which performed charts based on larger-ensemble arrangements by Billy May and Nelson Riddle. The setting, the singer and the songs obviously were all in sync.

“I don’t think that he ever sang better in his life,” Norvo says in the liner notes.

That point is arguable. But it’s unlikely that Sinatra ever came closer to defining himself as a jazz singer than he did in the immensely valuable, endlessly fascinating performances in this 19-song program.

The highlight is a powerful performance of “Night and Day,” which begins with Sinatra singing only with the Norvo ensemble and concludes with the addition of an Australian big band playing the Riddle arrangement from “A Swingin’ Affair.” Sinatra’s vocal is extraordinary, filled with subtle rhythmic lift in the first couple of choruses, expansive and driving in the big-band climax.

But the performance overflows with other musical riches: Sinatra’s bright swing and melodic variants on the opening “I Could Have Danced All Night”; loose, easygoing renderings of three Cole Porter classics--”Just One of Those Things,” “I Get a Kick Out of You” and “At Long Last Love,” in which Sinatra plays with the lyrics, the melody and the spirit of the song, all the while maintaining an irresistible forward drive; similarly new perspectives on such classics as “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (with a typically Sinatra-esque interjection in the opening lines) and “The Lady Is a Tramp”; and a lovely, romantic reading of “Moonlight in Vermont.”

Does the album answer the question, then? Is Sinatra a jazz singer? Yes and no. What is eminently clear is that Sinatra, at that point in his career, could indeed be a jazz singer, when that was what he wanted to do. And this time out, in an album that might have been subtitled “Frank Sinatra: Jazz Singer,” it was exactly what he wanted to do.

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