Frank Sinatra's Big Apple Box Set Tastes Sweet, Despite a Few Worms

No Frank Sinatra box set should contain two versions of him singing "Bad Bad Leroy Brown."

I needed to get that out of the way before addressing the rest of this profoundly flawed but worthwhile new 4 CD/1 DVD collection. Sinatra: New York consists entirely of unreleased live performances from Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Carnegie Hall and other venues in the Big Apple, recorded over a 35-year span. It's a follow-up of sorts to Sinatra's 2006 Vegas box, which followed essentially the same pattern with his Las Vegas performances.

New York City looms large in Sinatra's legend, perhaps as much so as Las Vegas. He cut his musical teeth as the "boy singer" in Harry James' band at the Roseland Ballroom on 52nd St. and then in Tommy Dorsey's band at the Paramount Theater on West 43rd. In 1942, he exploded into stardom with a series of solo shows at the Paramount that made him a teen idol almost overnight.

Frankie played all over the city, from a benefit concert in Central Park to the swanky Copacabana nightclub to the high-end Wedgewood Room in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel -- and later, of course, to bigger rooms like The Garden and Radio City. He moved to the West Coast in the '40s, but kept an apartment in Manhattan, and whenever he was recording or performing in town, he'd make the scene at nightspots like PJ Clarke's and Patsy's Italian Restaurant right up until the last few years of his life.

Sadly, few if any of Sinatra's history-making '40s concerts seem to have been recorded, so New York kicks off in 1955, with a short three-song reunion with Tommy Dorsey at the Manhattan Center. It's followed by a 1963 performance at the United Nations offices to commemorate U.N. Staff Day. Accompanied only by the piano of the great Skitch Henderson, Sinatra's in fine form, and it's especially nice to hear bare-bones versions of "I Have Dreamed" and "My Heart Stood Still," from the richly orchestrated album The Concert Sinatra, his current LP at the time. These two sets take up the first disc, which runs a skimpy 34 minutes and change. But hey, at least it's Sinatra in his prime and in unusual settings.

Disc 2 is a Carnegie Hall performance from April, 1974 that was recorded for a planned live album. Why it never came out is obvious from the first three songs. He blows lyrics on "Come Fly With Me," gets completely lost on "I Get A Kick Out Of You" (at one point he even says "Where the hell am I?"), and then croaks and wheezes his way through a miserable "Don't Worry 'Bout Me." Sinatra had recently come off a 2 1/2-year layoff, and the rust in his pipes is all too evident.

Ol' Blue Eyes still sounds creaky on an ambitious 11-minute "saloon song" medley, but he recovers somewhat as the show progresses, especially on a killer version of the lesser-known "There Used To Be A Ballpark." Sadly, we also have to contend with covers of Bread's soft-rock hit "If" and, yes, "Bad Bad Leroy Brown." The '70s were a weird time for the old stalwarts who were trying to stay with-it, and not even Sinatra escaped completely.

With the kibosh placed on the Carnegie Hall set, Frankie planned big, scheduling a live TV broadcast of an October concert from Madison Square Garden, with an accompanying LP of the show in stores in time for Christmas '74. Disc 3 of the box set is the "dress rehearsal" for what would be known as Sinatra: The Main Event.

Recorded the day before the broadcast, the Chairman Of The Board is in much better voice than at Carnegie Hall -- I particularly like a rare live performance of the gorgeous ballad "What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?" -- and in high spirits between songs. In fact, according to legend, this show went so well that he celebrated into the wee hours, which is why he sounded so much worse on the show that was broadcast the next night. Savvy engineers wound up having to splice in a bunch of segments from other concerts just to salvage the Main Event live album. This document is far superior.

Sinatra could still make magic onstage even at the end of his career, and New York City, particularly Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall, seemed to inspire him. Which is why it drives me batty that Disc 4 presents severely truncated snippets from two great concerts, one at Carnegie Hall in June 1984 and the other from Radio City in June 1990. These are some of the finest performances on the box -- check out his high-octane "Mack The Knife" from '90, or what may be the greatest "Luck Be A Lady" I've ever heard, from '84.

Why these two stellar concerts are allotted less than 54 minutes between them is a mystery. And to make matters worse, one of the highlights of the 1990 shows, the very rarely performed "How About You" (which opens with the line "I like New York in June, how about you?") isn't included. Rumor has it that it was excised because Sinatra altered a line to mention his wife, Barbara -- who's despised by the Sinatra daughters, Nancy and Tina. I have the performance on a bootleg tape, and I can tell you that it wasn't excluded for lack of kicking ass.

And then there's the DVD, the unquestioned highlight of the whole box. Sinatra did multi-night stands at Carnegie Hall every year for much of the '80s, and among fans they're the most legendary concerts of his career. Whether it was the acoustics, the adoring crowds, or the ghosts of performers past that inspired him, he always seemed to have a little extra something every time he played the place.

The Carnegie Hall DVD was recorded on June 25, 1980. Sinatra was on the charts with a hit single ("New York, New York") and album (Trilogy) for the first time in years, and his confident, loose demeanor reflects it. His pipes are in tremendous shape, and the band, led by conductor Vincent Falcone, is cookin', especially on a jazzy, small-group take on "I Can't Get Started" and a stunning medley of "The Gal That Got Away" and "It Never Entered My Mind," which he laid down in the studio the following year for his album She Shot Me Down. If you're a fan, you'll have to pick your jaw up off the floor after checking out this stellar performance. If you're not a fan, you may very well be converted by the time it's done. The DVD alone is worth the price of admission and then some.

Alas, the "powers that be" couldn't resist tampering even with this glorious set. A couple of instrumental tunes, including one which Sinatra himself conducts, were removed for no good reason. And while the audio is brilliantly remixed and remastered, the video isn't much improved from the bootleg that's been floating around the collector's market for years.

And while I'm kvetching, I should mention that the handsome booklet goes on for several pages about how Sinatra loved Patsy's Italian Restaurant on West 56th St., while mentioning virtually nothing about the circumstances surrounding any of the music on the set. Why was Sinatra singing with Tommy Dorsey 13 years after he'd left to go solo? What on earth was Frank doing at the United Nations? Promoting "Peace Through Ring-A-Ding Ding"? You won't find out here.

In the end, Sinatra: New York is worth your time and your money. Even with the savagely edited later performances. Even though it has two concerts from 1974 instead of, say, the Uris Theatre '75 with Ella and Basie, or Radio City '78 where he premiered "New York, New York," or the Sloan-Kettering benefit concert from '82, to name just a few. Despite leaving empty space on CDs that could have been filled with tracks from Carnegie Hall '63 or the Italian-American benefit concert at Madison Square Garden in '69 or some of his wonderful Jerry Lewis telethon performances from '75.

Despite all the missteps and bad choices that went into making it, you should buy this box. Why? Because Frank Sinatra was the greatest singer of the 20th century, and he could also teach the singers of the 21st century a thing or two. Because you've never heard these performances before. Because they're all touched with the magic that only Frank Sinatra could bring to a song. Even when the song is "Bad Bad Leroy Brown." That's why.

 

Follow Tony Sachs on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RetroManNYC

Comments

[calamari]

Sinatra the best or not, this box set has one major flaw that should start a recall.

The tolerance is off on the cd spindle of the jewel case. 3 out of 4 cds will crack or make it impossible to get the cd out, without damaging the jewel case also.

At a list price of $79.99, where is the quality control?.

The return starts today and I know Best Buy will give me a hard time..

[ask0]

So what is the difference between singer and crooner


did Sinatra he have singing ability and voice quality of Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo, Mario Frangoulis, Grobin?


Fank is enjoyable but certainly not the best singer or finest voice. And to throw in the word century makes you look just plain silly.

[3fingerbrown]

No singer was a better actor, and no actor was a better singer. That's what made Sinatra the greatest. The "It Never Entered My Mind/Gal That Got Away" medley Tony mentions perfectly illustrates how he could inhabit songs and live the lyric instead of just singing it. His pally Dean Martin mocked his pretensions, but Sinatra self-consciously approached pop singing as art--and even if he didn't have the pipes of an opera singer, he was no less committed to what he was singing and the people he was singing to. That's why other musicians (including Pavarotti and Domingo) held him, and still hold him, in such awe.

Even Bing Crosby, Sinatra's boyhood idol, once lamented, "A singer like Sinatra comes along once in a lifetime, but why did it have to be MY lifetime?"

[frankie11]

Pavarotti and Domingo are opera singers and also did "crossover" stuff - standards, Broadway show tunes, Italian popular songs. Obviously, Frank didn't have that kind of training or vocal quality, so we can't make that comparison or put him in that category. However, he was gifted with an exceptional voice and other things - ability to interpret beautifully, incredible sense of phrasing/timing, and wonderful vocal technique. Plus he was able to get into each song so deeply and make it live to its fullest. And Frank was always able to sustain an absolutely gorgeous bel canto line. The gifts that Frank had are incredibly rare, and he was so highly revered by many singers. They were in awe of him! In fact, Vic Damone stated that Frank "had the very best set of pipes in the business." Sure there are other singers with extremely beautiful voices - Vic Damone, Jack Jones, etc. Vic Damone's rendition of "An Affair To Remember" is one of the best examples. It's drop-dead gorgeous! But when it comes to Frank, he was in a class by himself, and the other singers looked up to him. Not only did Frank have vocal gifts that others wished they had, but he had other ingredients that are essential to being an exceptional performer, such as a magnetic stage presence, plus his standards were the very highest, and he insisted on absolute perfection with not just some things, but everything. In short, he was and is the very best!!!

[Tony Sachs - Huffpost Blogger]

Ask, I don't think being the greatest singer means having the prettiest voice, or the most powerful set of lungs, any more than being the greatest writer means having the most degrees in English or the largest vocabulary. When it comes to sheer artistry, I'll put Ol' Blue Eyes up against anyone you've got in your opera collection. And yes, that includes any singer in the 20th century.

[Steamboater]

Sinatra the greatest singer of the 20th century? Maybe you meant the greatest male singer etc. I loved Sinatra's songs but not Sinatra all the time. I could take him or leave him however as for male singers, Mel Torme was a just as good or better and then there's Tony Bennett and Vic Damone when all were in their prime. As to thge greatest 2oth century male or female, I'd have to go with Garland or Striesand but Garland takes the lead as Streisand sounded a bit too strident when she first recorded her first few albums and her rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again" on that first massively successful recording had her screeching all over the place at the end. Her voice got better as she aged and sounded much more full with better resonance. Garland faileld a few tmes as all these singers did but but mainly near the end of her life.

[calamari]

I worked at the manhattan center for many years and the Tommy Dorsey acetates were hidden among the crumbling edifice. Many people forget that buried way,way down below West 34th street was the Opera house.


The discovery of one of many copies of these acetates, didn't strike a responsive chord with them.

However, I knew at that moment ,that it was a rare find. At that time I was a tifoso di Sinatra for over twenty years. Word quickly spread to the defenders of the faith in N.Y.C.

Bootlegg copies soon appeared and almost twenty years later so did Reprise.

Sinatra was not appearing there, despite earlier reports. It was a stopby on the way to other saloons.

Yet, this is what makes it so special. Tommy Dorsey was trying his best to fit into T.V. during the 50's. Stage shows with Elvis, also the Elvis duet with Tommy backing show the Big Band era was over.

Jimmy Dorsey's So Rare hit was the end..

Back to this box set. There are so many recorded concerts around , that choosing is difficult.

I was at these concerts The audience saw Sinatra get his fourth wind from 1980-92. To most people this is the only Sinatra they know and when they listen to his recordings from the 40s and 50s, they don't recognize the voice.

This set has flaws, but an old Ferrari is always better than a new Ford Focus.

[frankie11]

Tony,

None of my Sinatra pallies are giving this box a rave review. That's not to say that they're not happy with it. They are, but it is the usual story. Rumor has it that the previously unreleased tracks are ones that have been floating around on boots for years. So I've got a right to kvetch too! When will the day come when we will see some tracks that are unreleased and not on any boot? That's what I'm waiting for. The "powers that be" will never stop playing their crafty little game that tends to annoy many fans and collectors. They omit the stuff that collectors would love and they delight in tampering with tracks. Of course, I love anything and everything that Frank does. I can't help it because I'm crazy about the guy! I guess for those who are not fortunate enough to have boots, this boxset probably would entrance them. Even with the flaws and shortcomings of this set, I still look forward to owning it. And let's hope the next one will be better!

[Tony Sachs - Huffpost Blogger]

Frankie11, I understand your complaint but I don't sympathize with it. I don't think anyone going through the Sinatra vaults should worry about whether bootleggers have been there first. For every obsessive fan who's part of the small bootleg buying and trading community, there are dozens who had no idea the material on this box set even existed.

I own plenty of bootleg tapes, records and CDs, and I think they can be a valuable tool in helping to protect and promote an artist's legacy. But let's not forget that it's still stealing from the artist. What you're essentially saying, Frankie11, is that the Sinatra estate does not deserve to profit from these recordings because thieves got there before them. I think that the estate should take ALL the best bootlegs that have been floating around for years or decades and make them widely available to the Wal-Mart shopping masses. Projects like this are a step in the right direction, even if the estate and the record label could have done better.

[frankie11]

Tony,

Yes, there are many people who don't have the boots. For them, this boxset would be a wonderful treat, and they will say "wow" when they buy it. Those of us who already have the boots look at the set and say "okay," and we buy it, but for us, it's a little repetitive and not a glowing jewel in our collection. I agree that the boots are valuable when it comes to Frank's legacy. All of the outtakes and live concerts and studio sessions provide fascinating insight into Frank the singer, Frank the musician, Frank the man, etc. Deeply devoted fans/collectors like myself go crazy over this sort of thing! I am truly grateful that I have so many boots. The boots were done because the "powers that be" have kept such a tight lid on the stuff that collectors really craved. Now, they have come out with this box (and some other releases) of the previously released (but available on boots) tracks. I totally agree that the estate should take all of the best boots and let everyone enjoy them. Will they do this? I fear that it may only be a dream that will never come to pass. You know the way the estate operates.