In The Wee Small Hours

WHAT NYMITH SAYS

So things weren't going well for Frank Sinatra. His relationship with Ava Gardner broke up, no more hits, felt his time had passed... From this wreckage came a conceptual album: the theme of lost love and loneliness explored through a collection of sad songs. This had not been done before. Someone like Julie London could have REALLY benefited from this thematic vibe, and I am staggered that only Sinatra had the vision.

He had the vision but he in no way had the voice. I will admit here that I have never understood Sinatra or the public adoration of his voice. His didn't have a good range. His voice wasn't particularly powerful. And worst of all, he didn't make up for it with expressivity - he sang everything very carefully, as if making a blueprint for posterity rather than "performing" or "interpreting" a living, breathing song. He's less-mannered than your random post-Crosby crooner but still remote. I listen to Sinatra and am nonplussed. In every comparison, Tony Bennett (to name just one) is far superior.

However, just because I don't care much for Sinatra's voice on average doesn't say anything. It's pleasant by itself. Here is where the problem really starts: Personnel. Here we have Nelson Riddle (arranger, conductor). Sounds ominous. In addition we've got eight violins, eight celli, four flutes, four French horns and one harp. I hear a celesta. And people call this JAZZ? Piano, bass, drums and a 7-string guitar - that could be jazz, and four players represent those four instruments on In the Wee Small Hours, but they live to be unobtrusive. They don't say anything. In fairness, neither does the string ensemble. Everything joins in together as a respectful backdrop to The Voice. If this is jazz, it's smooth jazz. Popular entertainment. Corn syrup. AllMusic claims the strings are only added "once in a while" but when you put all that gingerbread I listed together the ensemble impinges on almost every song. This in turn dulls the impact when the strings actually have something to offer: they are remarkably expressive on 'What is This Thing Called Love?' but they're too often around when they don't need to be. And this is 1955! The only new idea on this album is the basic concept.

For me there is ONE song. 'Can't We Be Friends?' shifts the mood from melancholy to bitterness and drops the gingerbread. The shock of it lasts only for the introduction, then it returns to being soft and gentle and nothing else on the album goes anywhere near that sort of darkness again but thank God for that one spark of hurt. And there's the rub. In the Wee Small Hours isn't a breakup album in a real, emotional sense. There's no anger, no resentment, no raving pain. Only the saintly, sympathetic qualities of lost love are here: retirement from the world, loneliness, sorrow, reminiscence, devotion, etc. Without the other half it feels flat. Call me heartless if you wish.

I don't have any problem with restrained singing but here it conveys nothing for me. When Leonard Cohen sang 'Famous Blue Raincoat' in his oh-so-limited vocal range it conveyed a world of hurt and it wasn't the lyric that did that (I've never heard a cover version I liked), it was his tone. And this is purely a personal matter. Reviews make it clear that many, many people feel for Sinatra's performance on this album everything that I am not. I'm hearing arrangements that were deeply antiquated even at the time and smooth, highly controlled singing that veils the passion it should be bringing forth. At 50 minutes (it was a 12"), it's the longest album I've yet encountered in my chronological journey and, though not the worst (that "honour" belongs to Bill Haley), definitely the most overrated.

WHAT TICHARU SAYS

What I was saying about singers, you either like the sound of their voice or you don't, in the case of Frank Sinatra's voice I'm afraid my reaction to it has always been one of aversion and repulsion. Hard to say why. It sounds terribly flat to me. Flat like a flat tire and flat as in not quite hitting the notes, none of which would ordinarily irritate me but in this case I just reach for the off button. There are a couple, maybe two... at least one song by Frank Sinatra I can listen to most of the way through but they aren't on this album.

"But Ticharu, how can you review an album you haven't heard all the way to the end?"

Oh well, maybe I missed all the great songs, I turned it off almost right away! Sinatra... like moldy bread.