Got the Music World on a String

There's no doubt that we're living in a time of unprecedented access to musicians and the works they create. Internet radio stations, television commercial deals, MP3 blogs, street teams, MySpace pages, promo disks given away with magazines, music-based video games, and so much more all thrust so much music nearly all day long. For an up-and-coming band, the exposure is great - the path from the studio to the consumer is easier to traverse than ever. It's a nice situation for up-and-coming artists hungry for attention, but for the average consumer, it can cause a whole host of woes. Near-limitless access means near-limitless crap to wade through before we can find anything worthwhile to listen to.

Jump back a few decades, and the rules were very different. For an artist to get their music any sort of widespread, national (let alone international) attention took years of carefully honing one's art - endless nights of small club gigs, hoping against massive odds that someone with connections to the music industry might happen to be in the audience, might happen to like what they heard, and might happen to take a risk on that newcomer to the scene. Each year, the number of aspiring artists that never got their shot at the big time rivaled the number of people today who call in to vote for the typical American Idol contestant. And when we consider how many of those had genuine talent worth hearing, things can get a little depressing.

Though the difficulty breaking into the recording industry decades ago kept a lot of artists out of the spotlight, it also ensured a certain degree of quality in the artists that did earn that widespread exposure, something that's far from guaranteed today. The years that it took to build up a respectable level of national fame (let alone international fame) meant that there were no flash in the pan, one hit wonders. Anyone who made it big already had the chops to impress listeners for generations to come.

And let's face it. No one back then hit it big and stayed big better than Frank Sinatra. The fifties were when everything fell into place for his career. He had made it through the long journeyman years as a singer for Harry James and for Tommy Dorsey, he had built up a teenybopper heartthrob, and he had even garnered acclaim outside of the music world with his Oscan win for From Here to Eternity. He had paid nearly two decades worth of dues, far more than most musicians topping today's charts, and with his move to the Capital Records label in 1953, he was set to bring a entirely new emotional depth to big band music and perform some of the best known standards - timeless tunes that still hold up more than half a century later.

During those years with Capital Records, Sinatra produced a string of hit records that still reign as classics today - In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin Lovers, Come Fly With Me, Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, to name a few. It's a back catalogue that's more than a little too imposing for the listener looking to explore all the high points of Sinatra's career. Fortunately, jumping in is made much easier with Classic Sinatra: His Greatest Performances 1953-1960

The twenty tracks featured on this collection showcase Sinatra's impressive range and versatility. We've got the high energy, big band Sinatra, belting out joyous songs that celebrate life with a wall of brazen horns and saxes swinging the beat behind him. Songs like I've Got the World on a String, You Make Me Feel So Young, Come Fly With Me, and Come Dance with Me are just a few of those that capture Sinatra's celebration of life.

More restrained but by no means less enjoyable is Sinatra the suave lover. Consider the songs such as They Can't Take That Away from Me, Someone to Watch Over Me All the Way, or Witchcraft. In place of the brazen horn fills that mark Sinatra's big swing numbers, the smooth, mellifluous strings take center stage in the music, and his vocals take on a much more tender, romantic tone that smoothes out the vivacious vocal punches of those earlier songs.

And rounding everything is Sinatra the lovelorn hopeless romantic. No one could capture that three-in-the-morning, last call torch song filled with the sorts of emotions that only come out after one too many cocktails quite like Sinatra. Listen to the quiet piano and strings that back up Sinatra on In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning, My Funny Valentine, or One for My Baby (and One More for the Road). The term "crooner" was around long before Sinatra, but with these songs, he claimed that word all for himself.

Classic Sinatra provides an awful lot of musical variety, but it's all linked together by Sinatra's incomparable voice. Ever the consummate tough guy with a heart of gold, Sinatra buffs every note to a lustrous shine with his velvety vocal chords. There's more rich, heartfelt emotion in each song than many bands muster up over their entire career these days.

All together, the track list reads as follows:

1. I've Got the World on a String
2. I Get a Kick Out of You
3. They Can't Take That Away From Me
4. My Funny Valentine
5. Young at Heart
6. Someone to Watch Over Me
7. In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning
8. I've Got You Under My Skin
9. You Make Me Feel So Young
10. It Happened in Monterey
11. Oh! Look at Me Now
12. Night and Day
13. Witchcraft
14. The Lady Is a Tramp
15. All the Way
16. Come Fly With Me
17. Put Your Dreams Away
18. One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)
19. Come Dance With Me
20. Nice 'n' Easy

There may at first seem to be a few glaring omissions here. After all, New York, New York and My Way are both signature songs for Sinatra, and are amongst the tunes that just about everybody immediately associates with the singer, but those were hits that came long after Sinatra left Capital to form Reprise Records. And frankly, when you compare those songs to the hits featured on Classic Sinatra, it's clear that by that later point in his career, Sinatra, while still great, was turning into an overblown Vegas parody of himself. Classic Sinatra represents the artist at the pinnacle of his recording career. Unless you're looking to collect his entire back catalogue, there's no need to look further than this album.

None of this is to say that Sinatra's earlier work isn't worthwhile. It's just that those first two decades of his career were, more than anything else, prologue to his greatness. Given today's music world, though, demanding massive hits right away, there's no way someone like Sinatra could have two decades to slowly build to such greatness. Fifty years from now, it's highly unlikely that anyone will remember today's biggest pop acts, no matter how easily accessible their songs may be right now. Sinatra's hits from the 1950's, though? There's no doubt that they'll still be cherished as timeless classics.