Frank Sinatra: Lost & Found | The Radio Years

Dorsey‘s trombone. It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombonist or violin—not sounding like them, but “playing” the voice like those instruments.

Few singers have impacted American music as profoundly as Frank Sinatra. In a career that spanned six decades and more than 1,200 songs, the charming singer from Hoboken perfected an intimate croon that generations of musicians have since tried to emulate. What most of them don’t know is this: You probably can’t sing like Sinatra. But you can train like him. While Sinatra was blessed with a rich baritone voice, his real talent was in understanding that singing was a full body experience, not just mastering a tilt of the voice or slip of the vowel, but bringing the emotion behind every word to life. In this way, Sinatra—even in his later years—was a voracious student. In 1936, he began studying under John Quinlan: an operatic tenor and vocal coach with whom he would later publish Tips on Popular Singing—one of the rarest and most sought-after pieces of Sinatra memorabilia of all time. The

thirty-two-page booklet (released in 1941) offers sound advice for any singer, with chapters on how to care for the throat, the art of breathing, and Sinatra’s favorite vocal exercises. Scattered between them are tips.

Extended phrases, then, became a hallmark of Sinatra’s style. He claimed that he practiced underwater lap swimming to build his lung capacity to hold longer notes. He also developed crystalline diction, a very slight Hoboken accent softening “r” sounds, and learned—in service of the lyrics—how to draw out the four semi-vowels that can be sustained in song: M, N, L and R.

Sinatra’s choice of arrangers also put him at the head of the class. He worked with Axel Stordahl, Billy May, Johnny Mandel, Don Costa, Claus Ogerman and—most famously—the brilliant Nelson Riddle. Sinatra selected his repertoire with great care, and the tunes he chose possessed high quality. But, it was his interpretations of those songs that helped make them durable. He also pioneered the collation of songs by theme— love, loss, dancing—and these “concept albums” became an essential part of his recording career and legacy.

One of Sinatra’s favorites: Sing a seven-note arpeggio—to the words, “Let us wander by the bay”—through all twelve keys, something he did himself throughout his career. Another: Listen closely to as many different singers as possible to find phrasing and diction worth emulating, as he had with his own early boss, Tommy Dorsey. The thing that influenced Sinatra the most, he wrote, was the way that Dorsey played his trombone:

In later years, Sinatra credited Quinlan with teaching him something else that is nowhere mentioned in Tips on Popular Singing: “You can’t sing what you don’t understand.” Sinatra learned that to achieve the emotional and dramatic potential of his material, he had to understand—truly comprehend—the songwriter’s lyrics: both their emotional intent, and their dramatic potential.

“For a time, a very long time, Frank Sinatra turned the singing of the American song into an art form,” lyricist and critic Gene Lees once wrote. “His collected output must be considered a national treasure.” At the Smithsonian, where I have worked for thirty years, we specialize in interpreting and protecting those enduring treasures. And, as we celebrate his 100th anniversary, there’s no doubt that the singer known simply as “The Voice” has earned his spot among them.

He would take a musical phrase and play it all the way through without breathing, for eight, ten, maybe sixteen bars. How in the hell did he do it? Why couldn’t a singer do that, too? Fascinated, I began to listen to other soloists. I bought every Jascha Heifetz record I could find, and listened to him play the violin hour after hour. His constant bowing, where you never heard a break, carried the melody line straight on through, just like

“Every song he sings is understandable and, most of all, believable, which is the ultimate in theater,” Duke Ellington once said of the singer. Sinatra’s convincing delivery, his personal, instantly identifiable sound and his mastery of the microphone—you never felt as if he was singing to a mass audience, but instead, as though he was singing intimately and directly to you—allowed him to instantly connect with audiences.

John Edward Hasse is the long-time curator of American music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he founded Jazz Appreciation Month. His books include Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, Jazz: The First Century, and Discover Jazz.