The Chris Moeller Archives

The singer describes his art

As part of an ongoing feature in which the writers at AV Club are invited by their editor to answer questions about their personal entertainment tastes, the participants were asked this week to share their “go-to” karaoke songs. It’s an interesting read if you’re in “the life” like I am. (Many of them are not.) It’s a terribly interesting concept. There are favorite songs in life that are not necessarily favorite songs to sing. Some don’t fit. Some aren’t in your vocal range or are too difficult to sing. The Club critic who suggested that karaoke is more of a theatrical performance than a vocal one is absolutely correct. I couldn’t help but want to contribute an outline of my own experience, albeit with more than just one paragraph of text. There are rumors to the effect that there will be a post-Moeller TV Fest karaoke opportunity in Cedar Rapids Saturday night, and the timing seems right then to broach the topic.

For years, I have been a Sinatra guy on stage, first and foremost. In fact, I did FS tunes almost exclusively for a long while. The Chairman is a baritone, like me, and it’s my opinion that those American standards that comprise the Sinatra songbook are the most elastic, versatile tunes there are. They’re not overly-produced, and the Sinatra songbook can also double as the Ella Fitzgerald songbook, and the Tony Bennett songbook, and the Steve Lawrence songbook, and the Michael Buble songbook, and on and on. The standards have already been recorded in dozens of distinguishable styles so when you’ve become a little familiar with many of them, it’s easy to “borrow” some affectations of each during such a “performance of persona.” By and large, mine is a Sinatra tribute act though. I perform to the arrangements of Sinatra collaborators Nelson Riddle, Billy May, Don Costa, and Count Basie. It’s at least one full part impersonation, and when the mouth mannerisms are on during a given evening, I would refer to it as a sort of “bizarro-Superman” rendition, eerily similar to Frank Jr.’s contribution to “My Kind of Town” on the “Duets II” album when FS the Younger delivered all of the hereditary vocal similarities of his pop but less of the polish and with less of that old “lots of bourbon under the bridge” sort of quality. I have ingrained at least a dozen Sinatra versions of an old chestnut like, say, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” so when I’m “ring-a-ding-dinging” my way through one, swinging it up there with those stars, I can bounce it and wail it a little differently each time. That's what jazzbos like me do.

When you attempt a Sinatra tune, though, and especially when you watch others attempt, you notice quickly how potentially hazardous it can be-- how susceptible the interpretations are-- to degradation into a harsh and dismal “lounge lizard” routine. The pitfalls I’m describing were made famous for all to see by Bill Murray with his “Nick” character on "Saturday Night Live" during the late ‘70s. Fortunately, this has never been a big stumbling block for me. To avoid this, you have to know the Sinatra recordings frontwards and back, and you have to never stop channeling the “From Here to Eternity”-to-Sands Hotel decade of the mid-‘50s to mid-‘60s, when FS was riding a Basie wave and had a Freddie Green rhythm section stampeding up from behind him. You’ll drown if you swim in the still-water pacings of the geriatric/arena concert tours of the '80s and '90s.

It’s a delicate thing to pull off, but you can’t argue with the results. I was once quietly informed that a friend of a friend had been performing Sinatra songs almost exclusively also, then stopped entirely after hearing me drop “Luck Be a Lady” and “One For My Baby” back-to-back one summer evening at a local watering hole. (Why would I make that up?) Years ago, before an office holiday party, my boss came to me nervous that nobody would participate in his scheduled karaoke proceedings for the evening. I agreed to kick off the entertainment portion of the festivities, but provided only that I be allowed to open, not with a song, but with a set. I did the first four tunes in the machine that night. It was the same night I began a lifetime practice of incorporating the Sinatra style of always crediting the songwriters and arrangers with each delivery. Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Hoagy Carmichael, Kander & Ebb—it’s important that the young people know who these cats were.

In recent years, I’ve been branching out into newer music, and by newer music, I mean only 30 to 40 years old. The natural evolution for me was into that genre of silky R&B. We know from Sinatra’s last album of new songs in 1984 (the Quincy Jones-produced “L.A. is My Lady”) that FS was moving in this direction also. As Sean “Puffy” Combs has often pointed out in interviews, Sinatra was a significant figure in creating the concept of “urban” music in the United States. He would certainly never abandon the brass instruments that mark the jazz-tinged cul-de-sac of the pop music world, and he would never say goodbye to music that makes the ladies swoon. The new go-to guys for me became Luther Vandross and especially James Ingram, a soulful baritone popular in the early and mid-‘80s who, thankfully for me, is now greatly forgotten. He laid claim to a couple enduring tunes that nobody else out there is now singing, and I never have to worry about somebody jumping up from table six and urinating on my showstoppers.

I thoroughly enjoy dueting with Aaron, the twin, who goes out singing 10 evenings for every one time that I do. We had an immediate hit recently performing a Hall & Oates tune, one that begged for future “Rock and Soul” offerings. As the “Oates” of the pairing, I simply play air guitar and join in on the refrains. It’s a winning act. Aaron’s a big, big talent in his own right. We’ve just seen a small tip of what he’s going to accomplish in this game before he’s finished. He and I could bring the house crashing down with a duet rendition of “Me and My Shadow” (the Sinatra/Sammy Davis Jr.-slightly-racially-insensitive version), but he refuses to commit the time to independently learning the source recording. He’s like a first-round draft choice athletic talent that just has to be willing to put in the work.

Having the audience support what you do is imperative. After all, at the end of the day, we do what we do for the fans, yet unlike many of the AV Club’s amateur crooners, I happen to dread sing-alongs. I’m like Benny Goodman in that way. That giant of swing used to say that when his band played, he didn’t even want to see people up dancing. He wanted them to sit and listen and pay close attention. Listen close. Now we're swingin'.

posted by CM @ 7:45 PM