Not losing his timing late in his career

I linked this video at the bottom of yesterday's smooth song. I want to revisit it today because I think it says something really important about real artistry.

This is pretty late in Sinatra's career and his voice is not what it was and yet it hardly matters for he can still turn out something as great as this. But the real surprise is that the actual techniques he uses to achieve this artistry aren't that difficult to do. He doesn't do anything here that lots of other singers can't do. The difference is how meticulous, careful and thoughtful he is about it.

The primary technique Sinatra uses here is called rubato. It means stealing time from some notes in order to linger on others.

So he lingers on the word "in" in the couplet:

Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air. 

There is a little jump to the music as written on the word "in" suggesting a trapeze artist letting go of one bar and jumping to another. Sinatra doesn't change that but he enhances it—he lingers on "in" and then hesitates just a moment and then rushes through "mid-air"—and we get that sense of watching the trapeze artist as she seems to hang in mid air and we all hold our breath wondering if she is going to catch the other bar or fall to her death.

That is really important because it is a Broadway song. On stage it has a specific context but sung as a standard that context is gone. Most interpretations of this song come across as a little narcissistic because we don't get any sense of any other person involved. With that almost-missed catch, Sinatra makes us feel that there really is some other person in this relationship; some other person worth caring for and worrying about.

He does it again on the couplet:

One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.

He really makes the melody move thought tearing around and then stops it on "can't'. Again, this is not rocket science and yet no one else does it quite so thoughtfully.

The accompaniment from Tony Mottola is also an amazing example of doing a lot with a little. The basic rule of accompaniment is that when there is a lot happening with the melody the accompaniment should be simple, when the melody gets simple, you make the accompaniment a little more busy.

Okay, but notice how at 2:33 when Frank has finished singing "don't bother they're here" and he is lingering on the last word Mottola slips some circus music under "here". It's moments like this that hammer home just how over-rated Charlie Parker is. There is nothing even remotely like showing off here.This is music performed for the benefit of the audience and not, as with Parker for the performer and a few insiders.

And then immediately after that Frank sings two questions. 

Isn't it rich?

Isn't it queer?

Mottola puts a rock solid chordal foundation under the first question and then pulls the rug out from under the next one. And, by doing so, he makes you rethink the whole meaning of the song. The protagonist is the one who keeps asking "Isn't it rich?" like someone wrapping themselves in a protective armor made of solid irony. But the "Isn't it queer?" is far more forlorn like someone who has lost all sense of what is or isn't normal.

And Mottola comes back to the question to finish the song as if to say, we're finished, now over to you.

It doesn't get any better than this.