Frank Sinatra at 100
How the often imitated, but never duplicated ‘Sinatra Effect’ lives on today
Céline Dion appeared early during last Sunday’s Sinatra 100: An All-Star Grammy Concert, the two-hour CBS prelude special to Frank Sinatra’s Dec. 12 birthday. Dressed in full Vegas diva mode, the slit in her gown showing a half-mile of comely leg, she seemed to be signalling, “Here’s more Las Vegas business as usual, folks.” But then she sang. Oh, did she sing. And broke your heart.
Her song was “All The Way,” one of Sinatra’s own signature moments. But Dion made it entirely her own. She made it personal. And yet she was in drawing on Sinatra’s way of getting inside a song’s soul to make you feel you were hearing something deep and secret about him.
Call it the Sinatra Effect, this demand to go deep and reveal so much. It’s a challenge to singers to more than hit the right notes but to find the character in the songs and in themselves. Here are five often imitated, never duplicated facets of it.
1. The loner
Sinatra could seem supremely on his own even when surrounded by loudmouth pals, a great orchestra or a crowd. He made some 60 films with more than his share of great performances. But this naked aloneness was his greatest acting achievement.
2. The storyteller
Sinatra’s driving instinct to convey the truth of what he sang left the impression that he was speaking for the character of his songs. When Dion sang “All the Way,” she opened our imaginations into the lyric’s backstory, in this case about herself, her Las Vegas stardom, her ailing husband René Angélil and this being their last Christmas together.
3. The punk
Sinatra was a little guy, a Hollywood outcast in the ’50s before he took over the joint. Every Sinatra recording has a chip on its shoulder unless it’s been knocked off and he goes into one of his brooding saloon songs. Justin Bieber is Sinatra’s true successor in going from winner to whiner and back.
4. The cool guy
Sinatra’s cool is a very special American kind of cool, not the European existentialist kind. His cool is all about faults forgiven or revisited — too much Jack Daniels bourbon, too many late nights and women — but always enjoyed to the max. Sinatra could swing effortlessly — Adam Levine of Maroon 5 is loose the same way — because he carried around so little emotional baggage to cramp his style.
5. The survivor
Sinatra’s work in The Detective ( 1968) came out of a mean streak a mile wide. Rumours of his mob connections weren’t necessary to scare people. Dozen of friends and associates were chilled by the way he turned on them. But survival is the greatest Sinatra effect of them all.