Frank Sinatra Jr. Speaks with Sid Mark in Philadelphia

experience class I've got you it's deeply ordinary and let the music play with big mark and Frank Sinatra my Sunday with Sinatra Sunday mornings 9 to 1 only in Philadelphia and only on talk radio 1210 WP HT and again welcome to a Sunday with Sinatra not just any Sunday with Sinatra both are very special guests and one that I'm always delighted to have in the studio because he's been so important to me and to the program that would be Frank Sinatra jr. [Music] that's Frank Sinatra jr. and softly is in the morning sunrise from the CD of that face and of all the sides that are on there Franken that's I think it's a marvelous CD that one has the most to my ear what's left of it uh the Sinatra isms in it in other words it was as if the chart were written for Frank Sinatra as opposed to Frank Sinatra jr. the arrangements it was actually written for me and was part of my nightclub act and one night Sinatra came in with a show he said yeah yeah yeah he was enjoying it and I said you know what let's put it in your album so I tailored it to his instructions whatever it was that he wanted and we have we altered the orchestration and he never got around to recording it unfortunately because he would have done wonders with that arrangement and per his instruction SID the album we were contemplating at that time had to be composed of all songs he had never sung before he told me that I said oh is that all there's no easy test and I brought him songs it amazes me Easy Street great tunes that he had never sung before that was one of them and regrettably he did not record that and years later I said let's use that arrangement and we did it in this album mine now in your frame of reference you were saying you know that Sinatra came in and the last time you were here I'm grateful for every time you come here and you do whenever you're in the area we finally made the differentiation on the air that for you not for the average listener but for you there were really two different people there was Sinatra there was the professional man known to the world as Sinatra and I treated him as that because at one point as you know so well I had become his employee when I was his conductor for the last seven years that he was giving concerts now at home that was father at something different and he said to me gee I like that arrangement and I said alright boss let me put it on the list and let's put it in the record I think foolish art would resist the session the foolish art came out of we did four songs that night his instructions to me is SID and this goes back to 1988 his instructions were I want to make an album of ballads that swing I want to hire the finest soloists in the business and they all have to be songs I've never done before mm-hmm so on that night we had a swing a light swing valid arrangement of my foolish shard the song from Camelot if ever I would leave you wonderful Robert Goulet son which he had never sung and that was a beautiful recording then we did another song he had never done the Arthur Hamilton tune cry me a river and Billy May wrote a dirty arrangement of that that's on the same that face album of mine and then we did softly as in a morning sunrise we're good regrettably excuse me he never got around to recording that night he did my foolish art and he said you know I can't I'm not doing good tonight I got no voice tonight there's another great to know I said great because I'd like it and the people liked it and I have to play it all the time but I'm so glad you got to was I was a fool to let you go the Barry Manilow songs did he loved that and Manilow was the biggest Sinatra fan who ever lived Barry Manilow still loves Sinatra when my father now it's my father said when he died in 1998 Manilow brought out an album and he wrote a title song which the lyric of which was I found very touching and now some of it was predictable the first line was one man in the spotlight one man standing alone and when it came to singing about love he taught us all great wonderful tribute but it was the next lyric Sid that Manilow said very reflect in the song he said was there ever a time that he wasn't there until now well and that's Barry Manilow who was a very very sensitive man right so that's our music that's on his Sinatra true that's on his sits the tidal song he wrote it just for the album and he was the N is the biggest Sinatra fan of all of them and this was absolutely wonderful to me but when he said was there ever a time he wasn't there until now well I know that in my young current adult life whenever there was old there were two people who were always there as long as I can remember growing up Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Frank Sinatra seem like they would be there forever before we continue with Frank jr. let's queue up and to get in I was a fool to let you go Frank Sinatra world on a string and it was the first time that he and Nelson Riddle got together at Capitol there was somewhat of an unusual marriage and I think mr. Sinatra wasn't necessarily thrilled in working with someone other than his choice of an arranger the Capitol said try it and for trying it this was the result and I remember Frank telling me that Frank Sinatra jr. telling me that you recognize it was a new color of the label no longer the red Columbia no yes they're gone they had gone to the purple Capitol label in those days that was during the time when Capitol was still capitols and before they sold out to electronic musical industries of England EMI yeah what happened was Capitol had a lot of people in the artists and repertoire day in our department today they call them producers right and they were all musicians dick Jones the piano player would Tommy Dorsey when Frank Sinatra sang with Tommy Dorsey great musician Big Dave Cavanaugh bandleader Lee Jillette who produced quote quote the Nat King Cole records Lee Jillette former drummer and they all said we want to get Sinatra away from the crooning the crooning is in the 40s were now in the 50s we want to put him with Billy May who works with us and at the time they received the message back from him he said I can't leave axel store all they made one section one session rather with axel nothing happened finally they talked him into doing a couple of sides with Nelson Riddle conducting the band quote quote Billy May wrote the orchestrations Billy May did not write the orchestrations as Nelson said in his memoirs Sid many years later he and here's an exact quote he said Billy had a brief rush of blood to the head that he wanted to go on the road with his own big band and he did Billy was not in Los Angeles and they wanted Billy to do I love you and south-of-the-border Billy wasn't there Nelson Riddle who had been a ghostwriter for everyone les Baxter John Scott Trotter you name it everyone in the past Nelson wrote the famous south-of-the-border arrangement paraphrasing Billy Mays writing so they made the - Billy May charts at night Billy may in substance charts and Sinatra said alright now what and they said well try this one which you just played and he listened to that he said Wow who wrote that and they said well this man here on the podium and at that moment Sinatra looked at me said I know I know you he looked at him and he said you're Nelson Riddle you're the man who wrote Mona Lisa fanat Cole you're the man who wrote unforgettable for NAT Cole Nelson was surprised he said yeah that's me well that was it from that point on it started the biggest example Sid came just a few months later in 1953 with a song called young and heart Nelson Riddle written by Johnny Richards Johnny Richards the orchestrators excellent musician for Stan Kenton as variety his hand at songwriting Sid he hated that song he had it on his piano he crinkled it up like you'd throw a piece of paper you hate it in the wastebasket apparently there was a window open the wind blew this paper on to the floor the housekeeper came in and found this piece of paper actually under a corner of the rug she thought it had inadvertently been blown off the piano she put it back on and sent it to Sinatra Johnny Rich's wanted to tear up young and hard he didn't like it which brings me to your show which if you've not yet seen it you're really missing out because I think you reference world on a string in the show if I'm not I'm not not really sure I've seen I saw the show when they were here Memorial Day weekend at the Valley Forge Convention Center and for those of you who have not yet seen that this is not your show called Sinatra singing Sinatra this is the celebratory a program where you really warts-and-all tell the story of Frank Sinatra with these two huge television screens and watch tell the folks some of the things they'll say on screamed that they wouldn't well and even the philosophy of the show which I spent two years writing now we are now in when we play at Borgata coming up we will be show 15 and 16 I've watched this show five or six hundred times in my mind when I was writing it I believe that the people who come to hear the music are very familiar with the music they've loved it for years many cases for decades and they are loyal Frank Sinatra admirers when it came to his music the legends they have heard we have heard the legends are sometimes true sometimes false sometimes embellishments augmentations exaggerations anything to make a story that people might want to tell someone else all of this is a given SID but now that it's a hundred years the time is knowing the music and knowing the legends now it's time to learn about the man and nobody interprets the music better than Frank Sinatra jr. with Frank Sinatra and zillion musicians recorded the MGM sound studios on stage I guess the store no studio is large enough to hold that orchestra Frank now said it was the Goldwyn not MGM was the Samuel Goldwyn scoring stage at the golden studios and there were many problems that necessitated making that the source point and where was he during this recording standing in front of the organic right there just look at the cover of the disc and you'll see he was right and what it was was that the recording studio first of all would not handle like 96 musicians 96 right it was a symphony and in those days the biggest studio tape recorder had the capability of three channels in making a record album what had happened was here's where that came from Syd all those years at Capitol the management upstairs in the executive office said Frank why don't you make an album of the symphony now at that time Syd my father had this attitude that one day he was going to have his own record label so he kept tabeling the idea of making the symphonic album yes he wanted to make one but he wanted to do it for his own record label which he did in 1963 the technology of the stereophonic part of the recording industry those days was still rather archaic and rather than record on magnetic tape they recorded on magnetic film which they call Magnus striped the sprockets it had the perforations on the film a line of magnetic film had three discreet tape channels in the middle held in absolute registration by the perforations and since the registration was so locked in they could sink one Magnus drive machine mechanically to another one with three channels now suddenly we had six then they synced the two machines to a third machine mechanically they recorded that album in 1963 with nine channels of studio stereo which was unheard of the thing that I I wish I could have been there just to see it and hear it but what was it like for you at 19 years of age to be present at something so magnificent Syd when he was singing those songs I was standing about four feet from him behind him watching prior to that point in time as a young boy I used to go to the dates to visit my father hmm now I was a sophomore in music school and I was taking a lesson [Music]

Channel: jerod100

Views: 193,367

Keywords: Sinatra, sid mark, 1210 wpht, sunday with sinatra, frank sinatra jr, 58 years, philadelphia

Id: gnYH9Y2No6o

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2015