 Axel Stordahl and Frank Sinatra discuss the knotty problem of how to present a top song on the Hit Parade.
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ELSEWHERE in this issue you have already read—if you preserve chronological order in your magazine perusal—what Frank Sinatra thinks is wrong with America's music and its music business. What Frank thinks is wrong with the music business is also wrong with his current radio show, Your Hit Parade.
While a few publishers have seen fit to quibble with Lucky Strike's weekly survey of the country's most popular songs, it is obvious that these are the songs the majority of the sheet music-and record-buying, juke box-poking, disc jockey-listening public likes, and that they make listening to the show difficult. There are other things wrong, of course, as George Simon enumerated in November. But the most tasteful singing, the most cleverly fashioned arrangements can't compensate for having to listen to those same grinding tunes, insipid and offending lyrics week after week. Maybe there's no place for such a program on the air any more, but there it is, and it will probably still be going strong when you're telling your grandchildren about what an amazing guy that Sinatra was way back in the forties. Maybe it was the constant repetition of this trite stuff, the struggle to make a fairly listenable program out of old, worn-out ingredients that led Frank to speak up so strongly. Actually I think Editor Simon was a little hard on the Parade, though everything he said was essentially true—things we've all been saying for years. Dull, pompous, raucous, and a combination thereof it certainly is. Dull because of the repetition of the same tiresome tunes, because the script, if it can thus be dignified, consists of the most uninteresting, uninterested introductions to those songs. Pompous because apparently nothing and no one will ever distract the advertising men from screaming about their product in the same corny terms and situations that have had both the trade and the listeners ridiculing them for years. Raucous because the speaking voice of only Frank himself is held below a shout and because the "extras" which are forced on Axel Stordahl are the same old George Washington Hill bounce arrangements of the worst of the show tunes and Tin Pan Alley hits of the twenties that have disgraced the program for years. |
Frank did sing without relaxation, early this season. But he was singing without relaxation on records and in personal appearances as well as on this show. Since his return to the Coast last month he seems to have gathered enough strength from the enforced rest accompanying his illness to sing like the old Sinatra, in tune, with ease, simplicity and feeling. As far as tempos go, one of the pleasant things about today's Sinatra is that he can sing any kind of song, in any tempo; constant tempo changes are the only way to escape a horrible boredom on this show. Beryl Davis, who replaced Doris Day, has actually benefited by her first few weeks. Forced to sing the up-tempo songs which drove Doris off the show, she has been rescued from the deep-freeze that left American audiences cold to her precise British singing; she has relaxed sufficiently to put a little humor, a little individuality, a little beat into her voice. The Stordahl scores, his backgrounds for Frank, Doris and Beryl, have seemed up to his usual sympathetic standards. Their quality was very apparent one Saturday night when Vic Damone substituted for Sinatra; the contrast between Vic's singing with Axel, even as a last-minute substitute, and an hour later on his own show, where he is backed by the 1924-styled Gus Haenschen orchestra, was marked.
It seems to me that the most grievous production mistake was that of cramming Sinatra right back into the old Parade mold, after his graduation therefrom into several shows of his own, in the course of which he learned to tailor a program to fit his expanding talents. Since the Parade is a well-established show and since Sinatra is now a firmly established name in show business, here was an opportunity to combine assets and produce a good show, one that was both commercial and musical. But as things stand, we have to content ourselves with Frank's good singing and the glimpses of Sinatra wit that are audible when one of his sotto voce remarks turns out to be more voce than sotto—by intent, we like to think. Lucky Strike is unyielding, it is prudent for Sinatra to stay in the public ear; hence Your Hit Parade, now and forever. -BARBARA HODGKINS. |
