He was very fond of the popular big band jazz style that was all the rage in the s and 30s. He was given a ukulele for his 15th birthday and quickly took to performing for his family and friends.
Sinatra began to live and breathe music through his teenage years. After leaving high school, Sinatra spent his days singing for money in many clubs in New York. He also would sing for free on-location radio stations. Sinatra would continue to sing in his 20s and joined a local singing group called the 3 Flashes, performing the baritone parts of music.
The group would later be renamed the Hoboken Four and Sinatra would become the lead singer. From there, Sinatra would find steady work singing at clubhouses and for local radio stations. It was the first sizable moment of adolescent pop-culture fervor that America would see, and it became immediate news around the country. The big-band era was effectively finished, and a new era of pop-vocal heroes was fast on its way.
That shift would have a tremendous impact that lingers to this day — and nobody made that transition more possible, or would imbue it with as much artistic potential, as Frank Sinatra. T he s were an era full of big hopes and bigger perils. The nation had recovered from the long, devastating Depression of the s, but it was now enmeshed in a high-stakes world war in Europe and Asia.
In the midst of these years of risk — in this time of possible ruin or rebirth — America found its favorite voice in a fragile-looking romantic balladeer. No doubt part of what Frank Sinatra offered to his audience was the allure of a pleasant diversion during dark nights of uncertainty. Sinatra was a sign that America had a promising outlook: There were still great songs and exhilarating nights to come, and the last dance was a long way off.
In , Sinatra was a guest at President Franklin D. In part the decline simply had to do with shifting musical tastes: In the elation of the postwar period, a new audience wanted more verve than the light-voiced Sinatra now seemed capable of. In addition, Sinatra alienated many of his remaining supporters in a matter of personal conduct.
In , Sinatra had married his longtime girlfriend, Nancy Barbato, and the couple would have three children: Nancy, Frank Jr. But Sinatra had an eager eye, and there were rumors that he saw numerous women during his roadshows.
When Sinatra began a steamy public affair with actress Ava Gardner, the press was outraged, and so were many of his fans. Sinatra divorced Nancy and, in , married Gardner.
After that, no record companies would take a chance on Sinatra. He was back to the club circuit, trying to recapture the voice, confidence and following that had once come so readily. In , Capitol Records agreed to a one-year contract with Sinatra — if the artist was willing to pay his own studio costs. With his first few sessions for the label, Sinatra surprised both critics and former fans by flaunting a new voice, which seemed to carry more depth, more worldly insight and rhythmic invention, than the half-fragile tone he had brandished in the s.
In addition, Sinatra became one of the first pop artists to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the new format of long-playing records. LPs could hold more than forty-five minutes of music in near-continuous play, which meant that a performer could dwell on a mood until it might give up no other revelations.
Or, if the artist chose, he might even use the extended format to construct a character study or share an ongoing story. He took supremely mellifluous material, like the title track, and sang it as if it were a hushed yet vital communication: a mournful confession shared with an understanding friend over a late-night shot of whiskey or, more likely, a painful rumination that the singer needed to proclaim to himself in order to work his way free of a bitter memory.
It was Ava who did that, who taught him how to sing a torch song, Nelson Riddle later told biographer Kitty Kelley. She was the greatest love of his life, and he lost her. During the next ten years, he would record twenty-plus top-selling LPs for the label alternating between sexy, uptempo, big-band-style dance affairs and regretful musings on romantic despair and sexual betrayal — and he would also become one of the most consistently popular Top Forty singles artists of the s.
It was among the richest and most successful growth periods that any pop artist has ever managed. F rank Sinatra was back on top and in better form than ever before. In the late s, when his career was on the skids, Sinatra insulted several high-placed columnists whom he believed had been unfair in their coverage of him.
He was particularly incensed by the writers who had made loud news about a misguided trip he made to Havana in to visit organized-crime figure Lucky Luciano. Sinatra railed at several columnists, calling them whores; made veiled threats against others; and even sent one of the most influential gossip writers of the time a tombstone with her name engraved on it. In one infamous episode, Sinatra punched a male columnist alongside the head for printing innuendo that the singer was a Communist.
Sinatra might have attributed some of this notorious behavior to the fury of youth or to the injury he felt as he watched his career plummet in the early s and as he went through his wrenching relationship with Ava Gardner. Sinatra, Nancy said, drove the woman to the hospital and covered her medical bills. It was as if Sinatra, despite the grace of his artistry and the brilliance of his commercial resurgence, felt he had to fight anew for every inch of his own domain — and that domain was wherever the singer allowed himself or his desires to roam.
In the late s, Sinatra began to hold sway over a court of friends, singers and actors who shared his views and humor, and who respected his luster. Traditional popular music is generally known as music written and produced after the big band or jazz era and somewhat before or during the rock and roll genre era. At that point in time, songs were written by professional songwriters, who often have their original lyrics sung and performed by a professional vocalist or vocalist of their choice who is always grouped with an orchestra or small combo.
Initially, jazz had originated from Ragtime, a kind of music popular in the African-American communities in the early 2oth century.
Ragtime evolved into Swing music, which then evolved into jazz. Later into the s, crying and emotional singers became the pioneers of what was then known as the genre of popular music, and is now dubbed as traditional pop music. In the s, artists like Elvis Presley , Frank Sinatra, and Peggy Lee became renowned among the younger generation, paving the way for later artists in the same genre.
Eventually, younger generations became the target market for much more recent music, such as the Beatles and the Beach Boys in the s, the realization of pop-rock music in the s credits to artists like Elton John and the Jackson 5, and the quick rise of disco music and dance-pop artists like Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna in the s.
The rapid evolution of technology helped with the formation of pop music as well, as the younger generation found it more convenient to listen to popular music with their portable radios and boomboxes, to eventually having digital music available to listen to dance-pop tunes.
In a way, traditional pop music is similar to modern pop music in the way that it utilizes the song to convey certain messages, depending on its target market.
Traditional pop music used to sing about love, loss, and emotions, but was also able to evolve by singing about specific and general problems, like individual struggles and world peace in a poetic manner.
Traditional pop music artists like Frank Sinatra, were able to sing songs that his target market was easily able to relate to, such as champagne, parties, and even love affairs.
The two genres were vaudeville and ragtime. Vaudeville is the music genre that was popularly used in burlesque shows. Ragtime is a ragged and choppy style of music that laid the groundwork for future genres like jazz and blues. It was during this time period that musicians in these genres were not concerned with standing out, instead, they tried to make as much music as they could to fit the tastes of their consumers. Then with the boom of the roaring twenties and the groundwork for the popular music we know today laid, the beginning of modern pop music showed up.
That was because radio broadcasting was invented. With the radio came the opportunity for music to be played to an even larger audience and in the term pop music was coined to describe music that had popular appeal. When Sinatra made it big, he saw the appeal in getting air time on the radio as it helped with his record sales so he made deals with stations.
0コメント