Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: Frank Sinatra: 100 Years of Great Music

Frank Sinatra did it all: a singer, an actor, a political figure and a changer of culture.

He inspired many others, including Bob Dylan.

He won an Oscar for his role in "From Here To Eternity".

And another for his humanitarian work.

Picture credit first Oscar here.

He was also a painter.

I really loved the Cole Porter songs he sang in "Can Can".
This album is almost impossible to get now but the movie is available on DVD.

1. He made the popular song immortal. Before Sinatra, notes Will Friedwald, author of Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer's Art, "pop music was predicated on the idea of turnover. Nobody thought about going back to old songs by Gershwin or Jerome Kern," or Cole Porter, whose Night and Day and I've Got You Under My Skin had been introduced by other artists. Through the years, Sinatra would revisit these songs and others he had recorded before, asserting their place in the pop canon and finding new depths and nuances. Listen to his 1946 studio reading of Rodgers and Hammerstein's epic Soliloquy, and then check out his more robust, world-wise 1963 recording of it with Nelson Riddle's sinewy, exhilarating arrangement. Or consider the various live and studio versions of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer's One For My Baby (And One More For the Road), with their different shades of alienation and melancholy — qualities Sinatra conveyed as powerfully as any singer has or could.

2. He made songwriters stars. As a radio star in the 1940s, Sinatra delivered segments celebrating particular songwriters, including architects of what would become known as the Great American Songbook. As a live performer, he made a point, throughout his long career, to acknowledge composers and lyricists — some of whom, like Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, became integral in his progress by crafting songs for him. Sinatra also championed new creative talents who emerged during his long career, from Stephen Sondheim to Jimmy Webb and George Harrison. Charles L. Granata, who wrote the essay "Frank Sinatra & the Magical Mystery of Radio" for the new box set Frank Sinatra: A Voice On Air (1935-1955), notes, "Every songwriter I've ever spoken with who had one of their songs sung by Sinatra said it was the greatest compliment."

3. He was rock 'n' roll before there was rock 'n' roll. Though Sinatra once famously described it as "sung, played and written for the most part by cretinous goons," it's hard to imagine rock 'n' roll, or contemporary pop stardom, without his example. His raw sexual energy and knowing — evident in his phrasing, even early on — spawned the bobby soxers who prefigured those girls and women screaming for Elvis, The Beatles and all the rest. Sinatra also carried his swagger and irreverence offstage: The various accounts of his womanizing, physical and verbal confrontations and run-ins or near-run-ins with the law rival those attached to anyone from Jerry Lee Lewis to Justin Bieber.

4. He pioneered the concept album. Some critics consider the 1946 debut The Voice of Frank Sinatra the first concept album. Biographer James Kaplan notes in his new book, Sinatra: The Chairman, that "the term wouldn't be coined until much later, but Sinatra invented the idea, and (Nelson) Riddle helped him perfect it" on later work. By all accounts, Sinatra played a key role in shaping the musical and emotional direction of his albums with Riddle and other arrangers, playing a more active role than singers had before him. "More than any artist of his time, he delineated what he wanted to hear," Granata says. "And he adored great musicianship."

5. He created the celebrity squad. Long before Taylor Swift started dragging her buddies on stage, there was the posse known (by outsiders) as the Rat Pack. Its original incarnation was helmed by Humphrey Bogart, but it was under Sinatra's leadership that the group — with Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop — gained wider attention and ruled Las Vegas. Its Dionysian adventures and frat-boy antics, on stage and off, became show-biz legend. In The Chairman, Kaplan observes that Rat Pack "was an idea, even more than it was a reality," formed at a time when "20th-century ideals of manhood hadn't yet been subverted by the androgynous aesthetic of rock & roll." Kaplan adds that Sinatra "always hated the name ... the word 'rat' having negative connotations where he came from."

6. He made Las Vegas cool (for a while). Forget, or at least try to put aside, the Rat Pack's politically incorrect jokes and whatever Mafia connections existed, however glaringly. During Sinatra's reign in Vegas — particularly before his short-lived "retirement" in the early '70s — he made the city swing, drawing crowds of glitterati from all over, with Hollywood well-represented. And in the process, he made some extraordinary music, evidenced by the 1966 live album Sinatra at the Sands, recorded at the hotel and casino with the Count Basie Orchestra.

7. He took on the record labels. When Sinatra left Capitol Records — the second company, after Columbia, to release his albums — to form his own label, Reprise, in 1960, "it sent shock waves through the industry," recalls traditional pop star and archivist Michael Feinstein. Despite bringing on board such glittering names as Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, Reprise suffered in sales as "Frank found himself in the odd position of having to create hits" — in that era, mostly, rock music. The label was sold to Warner Brothers, where it became home to popular acts from Fleetwood Mac from Green Day. More significantly, Sinatra provided an example for artists seeking greater professional autonomy, among them latter-day icons such as Madonna and Jay Z.

8. He helped elect a president or two. Raised by a mother active in Democratic politics, Sinatra found himself drawn in the 1950s to a young senator named John F. Kennedy. In his book Sinatra: The Artist and The Man, John Lahr writes, "The 1960 presidential election, which Kennedy won by only 118,500 out of over 68 million votes, was swung by the Mob-controlled West Side of Chicago, whose support was mobilized through Sinatra's efforts." Other accounts have gone into more detail, most of them portraying Kennedy's friendship with the fascinated pop star as opportunistic and fickle. Sinatra would later support a Republican, Ronald Reagan, in his campaigns for governor and then president.

9. He helped integrate American music. A civil rights advocate from early on, Sinatra used his influence to promote African-American musicians. Wynton Marsalis notes that his mentor, trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison, worked frequently with Sinatra. "Sweets said that during a time when America was segregated, Frank Sinatra made sure (black) musicians were paid well and treated with respect." Quincy Jones remembers that when he and Basie's orchestra joined Sinatra in Vegas in 1966, the town "was still segregated. And I mean very segregated. Frank assigned a very imposing bodyguard to every member of the band and gave them orders to break anyone's nose that looked at us funny."

10. He made the singer matter. There were many great singers before Sinatra, and he learned a lot from some, such as Crosby and Mabel Mercer, as well as his contemporary Billie Holiday. But Sinatra, in gaining the stature that he did, cemented the notion of the interpretive singer as an autonomous musician — in service to the song but also owning it, at least for the duration of a performance. In our post-Simon Cowell era, when pop singers are often treated as vessels for producers and valued for their ability to perform tricks and project attitude, Sinatra's music reminds us of the power of vocal craft and honest expression — and that the two are not mutually exclusive.

By Elysa Gardner

With many thanks to USA Today

Picture Credits: NRO, The Guardian,and The Projection Room

With former wife Ava Gardner: The Daily Express
With Kim Novak and Rita Hayworth from "Pal Joey": Cineplex