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Rating: 1955. Bill Haley has just recorded "Rock around the clock," Chuch Berry invents the hit "Johnny B. Goode" and Elvis Presley is about to become famous thanks to Sun Records. It is the era of stars and stripes rock'n roll, the domination of music over words, the birth of a genre.
Despite this incredible musical upheaval, a second album by a young actor (already an Oscar winner) named Frank Sinatra is released in America (and later in Europe), a great crooner and enormous prophet of anti-rock'n roll, able, with just a few vocalizations, to hit the heart and disarm any listener (he will be called "The Voice" and no epithet was ever more fitting!). The album is aptly titled "The Voice" and is perhaps, despite the great commercial success of the mid-Sixties, the most beautiful record (certainly the most exciting) among all those recorded by Uncle Frank.
It is a sublime, sweet work, never shouted: Frank sings gracefully, in an almost persuasive manner, and articulates each letter and syllable with seriousness and precision. It is an exceptional concentrate of music and words, a crooner capable of shifting, with extreme ease, from blues to swing, from pop to jazz. Effective and charismatic, Sinatra manages to capture a good chunk of an audience that perhaps, given the popular love rock'n roll is receiving, would never have wanted to listen to such a light and elegant album. Remarkable, besides Frank's voice, is also the entire musical ensemble (drums, brass, piano) which seems to provide a background to powerful and beautiful songs, but which instead is a dominant part of this perfect (and, alas, very rare) union between music and words, syllables and melody, lightness and elegance. "The Voice" is a fabulous record which is now out of print (except for unlikely reissues), that should nonetheless be recovered from the cellars and depths of memory.
Exceptionally light pieces alternate with complex, dissectible compositions: "I don't know why," "Paradise," "Laura," "Fools rush in," "That old black magic." Also excellent is "Lover," brilliantly arranged by George Siravo (an Italian-American close friend of Frank Sinatra). Above all, however, stands the famous "Over the rainbow," a deadly swinging masterpiece, fully entering music history (it boasts an infinite number of quotes and imitations). It is perhaps the only track where Sinatra improvises as a singer, and he does it very well (it would perhaps be fair to describe Frank Sinatra as a crooner rather than a singer, at least in his typical sense). It's worth remembering that all the tracks present in "The Voice" are in reality compositions predating 1955. "Over the rainbow," for example, dates back to 1945, while "(I got a woman crazy for me) She's funny that way" is a very old track dated 1944, revitalized by Sinatra himself a few years later. At the time of "The Voice" Sinatra was a perfection maniac: a sublime curator of any composition and any musical score, Sinatra was for many years the emblem of musical perfection. "The Voice" is a perfect record, practically magnificent, with no smudges or banalities. Perfection and precision that Sinatra, unfortunately, will dismantle starting from the very early Sixties when, thanks to not impeccable hits like "Stranger in the night" and the pompous "My Way," he risks inevitably collapsing his own myth and, at the same time, his own monument.
For now, Sinatra is just a bit of a grown-up bad boy, clean and decent, tangled up with the mafia (no point in denying it) but with a fundamental and remarkable merit: knowing how to sing even without truly being a singer one hundred percent. And this is also how champions are recognized.
Tracklist and Lyrics
04 I've Got a Crush on You (03:18)
How glad the many millions of Annabelles and Lillians
Would be to capture me
But you had such persistence, you wore down my resistance
I fell and it was swell
I'm your big and brave and handsome Romeo
How I won you I shall never never know
It's not that you're attractive
But, oh, my heart grew active
When you came into view
I've got a crush on you, sweetie pie
All the day and night-time give me sigh
I never had the least notion that
I could fall with so much emotion
Could you coo, could you care
For a cunning cottage we could share
The world will pardon my mush
'Cause I have got a crush on you
Could you coo, could you care
For a cunning cottage
That we could share
The world will pardon my mush
'Cause I have got a crush, my baby, on you
08 Time After Time (03:15)
What good are words I say to you?
They can't convey to you what's in my heart
If you could hear instead
The things I've left unsaid
Time after time
I tell myself that I'm
So lucky to be loving you
So lucky to be
The one you run to see
In the evening, when the day is through
I only know what I know
The passing years will show
You've kept my love so young, so new
And time after time
You'll hear me say that I'm
So lucky to be loving you
09 That Old Black Magic (02:35)
That old black magic has me in its spell,
that old black magic that you weave so well.
Those icy fingers up and down my spine,
That same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.
The same old tingle that I feel inside,
and then that elevator starts its ride,
And down and down I go,
round and round I go,
like a leaf that's caught in the tide.
I should stay away,
but what can I do?
I hear your name and I'm aflame,
Aflame with such a burning desire that only your kiss can put out the fire.
For you're the lover I have waited for,
the mate that fate had me created for.
And every time your lips meet mine, darling,
down and down I go, round and round I go,
In a spin, loving the spin I'm in,
under that old black magic called love.
14 Dolores (02:57)
How I love the kisses of Dolores
Aye-aye-aye Dolores
Not Marie or Emily or Doris
Only my Dolores
From a balcony above me
She whispers "Love me" and throws a rose
Ah but she is twice as lovely
As the rose she throws
I would die to be with my Dolores
Aye-aye-aye Dolores
I was made to serenade Dolores
Chorus after chorus
Just imagine eyes like moonrise
A voice like music, lips like wine
What a break if I could make Dolores
Mine all mine.
<musical interlude>
I would die to be with my Dolores
Aye-aye-aye Dolores
I was made to serenade Dolores
Chorus after chorus
Just imagine eyes like moonrise
A voice like music, lips like wine
What a break if I could make Dolores
Mine all mine
15 All or Nothing at All (02:57)
All or nothing at all
Half a love, never appealed to me
If your heart, never could yield to me
Then I'd rather (rather) have nothing at all
All or nothing at all
If it's love, there is no in between
Why begin then cry, for something that might have been
No I'd rather (rather) have nothing at all
But please don't bring your lips so close to my cheek
Don't smile or I'll be lost beyond recall
The kiss in your eyes, the touch of your hand makes me weak
And my heart may go dizzy and fall
And if I fell (I fell) under the spell of your call
I would be, caught in the undertow
So you see, I've got to say no, no
All or nothing at all
16 I'll Never Smile Again (03:13)
I'll never smile again
Until I smile at you
I'll never laugh again
What good would it do
For tears would fill my eyes
My heart would realize
That our romance is through
I'll never love again
I'm so in love with you
I'll never thrill again
To somebody new
Within my heart
I know I will never start
To smile again
Until I smile at you
Within my heart
I know I will never start
To smile again
Until I smile at you
17 I'll Be Seeing You (03:07)
I'll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through
In that small cafe
The park across the way
The children's carousel
And The chestnut trees
The wishing well
And I'll be seeing you
In every lovely summer's day
And everything that's bright and gay
I'll always think of you that way
I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I'll be looking at the moon
But I'll be seeing you
I'll be seeing you
In every lovely summer's day
In everything that's bright and gay
I'll always think of you that way
I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new
I'll be looking at the moon
But I'll be seeing you
19 Stormy Weather (04:15)
Don't know why
Theres no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Since my gal and I
Ain't together
Keeps raining all the time
Life is bare
Gloom and misery everywhere
Stormy weather
Just can't get my poor old self together
I'm weary all the time
The time
So weary all the time
When she went away
The blues walked in and they met
If she stays away that old rocking chair's gonna get me
All I do is pray the Lord above is gonna let me
Walk in the sun once more
Can't go on
Everything I have is gone
Stormy weather
Since my gal and I
Ain't together
Keeps raining all the time
Keeps raining all the time
Backing singers:
When she went away
The blues walked in and met me
If he stays away that old rocking chair will get me
All I do is pray the Lord above will let me
Walk in the sun once more
Can't go on
Everything I have is gone
Stormy weather
Since my gal and I
Ain't together
Keeps raining all the time
The time
Keeps raining all the time
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