The Summer Wind Frank Sinatra
He was brash, brusque, brazen, and a classic male chauvinist. He certainly didn’t suffer fools gladly. And he had an ego bigger than his favourite city, New York. As well as all that, he remains the all-time unpolitically correct man—in any field. But I love the man. He’s my favourite singer ever. Every time I play one of his songs it brings me joy. The only child of Italian migrants from New Jersey, he was brought up a Roman Catholic, but that didn’t count for much—Frank never had much time for God.
Sinatra was born in 1915 (the same year as my mother). In 1939, at the age of 24, he signed up with the hot Tommy Dorsey band. This was his big break. By 1941 he was the top-selling male singer on Billboard. He became the first true pop star, exemplified by the hysteria accompanying his opening show at the Paramount Theatre in New York. Jack Benny later said, ‘I thought the goddamned building was going to cave in. I never heard such a commotion… All this for a fellow I never heard of.’ Frank had the rare gift of putting his signature on a song, i.e. making it his own. Just think of a popular song in the past fify years, and if Frank covered it then most times it will be his version that’s the definitive one. Does anyone know any artist who has covered ‘Summer Wind’? Who would bother after Frankie had made it his own!
Sinatra was a regular visitor to Oz. He first toured here way back in ’55, and returned in ’59 and ’61. Then he came back for a short, successful series of concerts ’59. (Why couldn’t I be there? Two is old enough to appreciate Frank!) Not so his next trip to Oz in ’74. His bodyguards interposed when journalists crowded him entering the stadium in Melbourne. Sinatra branded them ‘fags, pimps and whores’. He reviled the women journos as ‘hookers worth a buck and a half at best’. It was only a last minute intervention by ACTU President Bob Hawke (Bob must have been a Sinatra fan) that salvaged the rest of the tour, much to the chagrin of the unions.
Then there’s the song. The playground organ is a feature. Frank eats up the lyric with his usual, consummate skill. And the song fades in and out, just like the summer wind itself: here a sax phrase, there a touch of the strings: such a delicate arrangement—great job Nelson (Riddle). The lyrics were penned by the copious Johnny Mercer. Frank applies a slow crescendo to the song; then when the love song all but over, he fades away, heartbroken.
This song is especially for my Sydney mate, Rich Maegraith. I can hear him playin’ along on his tenor even now. All the best, mate.
Ralph's World of Music 