The Chris Moeller Archives

Posting #300: Even when I'm old and grey... the greatest live album of all time

Forty years ago this month, Frank Sinatra teamed with the Count Basie Orchestra for a series of shows in Las Vegas, the last week of which were recorded, edited, and packaged into the jumpingest, swingingest live album of all-time-- Sinatra At The Sands. As 32-year-old trumpeter-turned-arranger Quincy Jones conducted the band and luminaries like Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood leaned in from behind clinking drinking glasses, Sinatra bounced through 15 thrilling standards and soon-to-be standards, three Basie interludes, and a pair of timely monologues. The two record set helped establish both Sinatra as Undisputed King of Entertainment and Vegas as America's Undisputed Playground. It won the Grammy for Stan Cornyn's liner notes, which appear in part below...


During the wailing of the Basie band, those jammed, perched, squoze to the sides of the room can see an anxious figure peering out at the band from the stage wings. Catching the mood of the crowd, Frank Sinatra. Looking not unlike a young man calculating his audience for his first talent night appearance. The suave is dropped. The performer is getting himself up for one swinging night's sing. Again the amplified voice lets them all know. "And now... a Man and His Music!"

The band ups to the occasion. And he walks on. Doesn't gallop on, doesn't wave or jump or hoopla. Just he walks on. His pocket handkerchief folded in there nice. A bit of a vest peeking out from under his tux coat. He pulls the hand mike out of the stand, glances up at the light booth where a thousand pounds of spotlight bear down on him. His shoulders hunch once, like they're absorbing the beat of Basie. He turns back to Quincy, Count & Co., smiling, extending the vamp. Go. Sonny Payne whacks his drums to stir up more groove.

Then Sinatra turns back and sings. It looks effortless, the way he lazily loops the mike cable through his relaxed hands. But his face shows he's singing. Eyes closed, head tilted, lips carefully phrasing and elocuting. And Sinatra runs through his best. The songs are Sinatra's, like "Come Fly" and "Crush" and "Fly Me to the Moon." Hip, up-tempo, wailing things.

And then he'll change the pace on the audience. While his excitement-sated audience of people who've been everywhere are just happy to be there, while everyone is forgetting who's sitting in the next chair, or that down front there's a row of celebrities running from Roz Russell to Yul Brynner, from Mike Romanoff to Judy Garland, while all this is being gone and forgot because the man on stage is more than will fill one's attention, while all of these sounds and sights and impressions are piling up against the pounding beat of Basie, Sinatra switches.

Count Basie walks off stage. A thin, grey-haired man, who looks as if he hides under mushrooms to avoid the sun's rays, walks to the piano. This is Bill Miller, Sinatra's piano player. Sinatra turns to the audience and tells them he's going to sing a saloon song. And silently you can almost hear the perfumed ladies think "Yeah" and the waiters stop in the doorways and think "Yeah." And with just a piano behind him, Sinatra turns actor. The man whose broad's left him with some other guy and all of the loot. And he sings-- and acts-- his "Angel Eyes" and his "One for My Baby." And there is silence all about, for this audience is watching a man become that last lucked-out guy at the bar, the last one, with nowhere to go except sympathy city.

Then more Sinatra-Basie, songs ranging from the subtle ("Very Good Year") to the sizzle ("My Kind of Town.") And all the while, Quincy's at one side, setting the beat, Count's on the other making the beat, and Sinatra's center, demonstrating how wide and high the heart of a singing man can range.

And after an almost dozen songs, Sinatra pauses. He pulls forward a stool and a music stand. He takes his tea. Cup and saucer in hand, he says his words. Ten, fifteen minutes worth of greeting. His status report on The Arts and The Sands. Commentary ranging from the autobiographical to world affairs, all delivered with the same casual emphasis that marks his singing style. The audience is shifting in its chairs, knowing it has only 90 minutes maybe with Sinatra, loving him talking to them, hoping he won't stop, and hoping he's going to sing all night that night.

Then, with a napkin tap at the corners of his mouth, he retires the props. He's getting no younger, says he, and he'd best sing. And he does. More of the better: "Don't Worry 'Bout Me," "Where or When," the audience increasingly with it, knowing they've never heard anything better, amazed at the number of songs Sinatra's really associated with. Finally, "My Kind of Town," starting deceptively with some talk about a nice city, then building choruses of mounting, modulating, upwards excitement.

And then he leaves. Walks right off that stage, just like he was finished. But does the crowd want that? They say no. They yell no and more, one more, ten more, hell a lifetime more, they've got nowhere to go, dammit they want more of him. Mr. Sinatra comes back and bows, not too low, but appreciatively. He makes "the dullest speech you'll ever have to listen to," thanking them, not for this one hour, but for a lifetime of applause. He reprises "My Kind of Town." He does it all with authority. Nobody follows that kind of finish, not even Frank Sinatra.

The waiters know it, and start hurriedly distributing saucers with the tabs. The houselights force back up. It's like dawn, and you don't turn the sun back. Still, they keep applauding till the feeling gets hopeless. By now, Sinatra's probably got a towel around his neck and his toes curled up on his dressing table.

So, the audience files slowly out into the smoke-choked casino, meeting once more the hardluck din of reality around the half-empty crap tables. Those huddled masses outside look into the faces of the excited crowds, looking for signs that it was really sumpin'.

And what they see is mostly blinking eyes; women adjusting their coats to the onrushing night air, to the silent walk down the concrete paths to an enchanted evening's leftovers; men sitting down at the blackjack tables, where the waxen dealers take time during a deal to look up at their faces and ask, "You see the show?"

And the men answer, "Yeah. That Sinatra... he really puts on a show."

Which may not be the best sum up in the world, but then you can't expect much more from someone who's just been through 90 minutes with the best singing man in town."

posted by CM @ 8:52 PM