Frank

by James Kaplan

  He was a middling professional trombone player, skillful enough to play for the Charlie Spivak and Tommy Dorsey big bands at a young age (he joined Dorsey at twenty-three, in 1944, and held the third chair in the trombone section), but more valued for his skills as an arranger. When Nelson Riddle set pencil to paper, magic happened.

  It is extraordinarily difficult, in the post–rock ’n’ roll, post-singer-songwriter, digitized world of modern popular music, to convey just how important a figure the arranger used to be. Of course orchestration was always essential to classical music, but in the early twentieth century jazz and jazz-based popular music began in improvisation. Yet as the Jazz Age turned into the Swing Era, as the bands got bigger and the dance numbers got more elaborate, arrangements became ever more essential. And writing the tempi and harmonies and counterpoints in such a way as to match—or even deepen—the heart-quickening rush of improvised jazz was an art few men could master. Many of the early white big bands—like Paul Whiteman’s—were tootling, anodyne versions of more dynamic and artistically complex black organizations such as Duke Ellington’s and Jimmie Lunceford’s. This had less to do with the players—there was no shortage of great white instrumentalists—than with the men who were writing the charts. Tommy Dorsey’s band got a rocket boost in 1939 when Dorsey stole Lunceford’s great arranger Sy Oliver. And Oliver was still writing for Dorsey when Nelson Riddle joined Dorsey’s band five years later.

  Riddle had great ears—classically trained ears—and he paid close attention. According to Peter J. Levinson, “He couldn’t help but notice the inherent charm in Oliver’s writing—his strong sense of the beat, the basic swinging effects, staccato phrases with an element of humor; a brilliant sense of continuity and climax—which was combined with his superlative use of dynamics. (As Oliver once told Dorsey’s close friend Eddie Collins, ‘Dynamics, that’s the secret.’)”

  Nelson Riddle had all kinds of secrets. While the other players in Dorsey’s band were staying up to all hours, getting pie-eyed, chasing skirts, snoring through the morning, then staggering blearily to the next gig, Riddle was listening to his records of Debussy and Ravel and Delius. He too loved liquor and women and the pounding beat of great jazz. He loved Sy Oliver’s arrangement of Lunceford’s “Stomp It Off”—and he loved Jacques Ibert’s “Ports of Call.” His writing flowered in the territory between.

  Riddle spent a year in the Army at the end of the war, then, fatefully, decided against returning to being a cog in Dorsey’s trombone section. He wanted to write. As the big-band era gave way to the age of the singer in the mid-and late 1940s, he found himself in Los Angeles, arranging for anyone who would hire him. Up to the time when he first met Sinatra, Riddle’s strongest suit had been ghostwriting. He was so musically adept—and so naturally self-effacing—that he could arrange in anybody’s style. He also frequently subcontracted: he first connected with Nat “King” Cole when an overtaxed arranger named Les Baxter threw Riddle a couple of tunes to orchestrate for a Cole recording date. One of the songs was 1950’s “Mona Lisa.” It turned into a monster hit.

  By late 1951, Riddle had become Nat Cole’s musical director, a job that led to freelance arranging gigs for a wide variety of singers: Billy Eckstine, Kate Smith, and Mel Tormé, among others. Yet, according to Will Friedwald, “Riddle was still considered a newcomer when [Alan] Livingston and [Voyle] Gilmore brought him to the attention of Frank Sinatra in 1953.”

  Hence all Alan Dell’s prefatory disclaimers about Billy May at the April 30 session—and hence Riddle’s extreme seriousness. The state of Sinatra’s career didn’t matter a hill of beans to Nelson Riddle: he knew a fellow genius when he heard one. And he wanted very badly to work with Frank Sinatra—as himself. His grave demeanor on the podium hid the fact that he was quaking inside.

  He was able to show what he had on the first two numbers, “I’ve Got the World on a String,” then “Don’t Worry ’Bout Me.” Then he waxed chameleonic. “Now we have to make like Billy May,” he announced, in businesslike tones, as he led Frank and the band into “I Love You” and “South of the Border.” The arrangements sounded exactly like May, and the players swung precisely as they would have under his baton. Fifty years later, Ted Nash, a sax player on the session who’d also worked with May, declared, “ ‘South of the Border’—I thought that was Billy’s arrangement—it’s so typically Billy. I can’t picture that Nelson would have done that in Billy’s style—Nelson was so ultra-serious! All Billy’s arrangements were written out for us. Billy was known for his special slides and slurps. There would be special coding on the paper, so the notes to slide on were known. We all knew how he worked and the sounds to aim for.”

  Frank recording at Capitol Studio C, West Hollywood, April 1953. (photo credit 34.2)

  Riddle had written every slide and slurp. And not only the latter two May-esque cuts, but the first two also, would be released under the label “Frank Sinatra with Billy May and His Orchestra.”

  Frank loved Billy May; he would do important work with him in the years to come. But as Sinatra listened to the gloriously exuberant playback of “I’ve Got the World on a String” late that Thursday night, he knew that something very new, and very big, was up, something rich and strange and quite extraordinary. It was as if he had awakened from a long winter into a spring unlike any he had ever imagined. And more: the words of the song had come true at last.

  “Jesus Christ,” he breathed, almost prayerfully, his eyes wide and blazing. “I’m back! I’m back, baby, I’m back!”

  35

  Frank and Ava in Italy, May 1953. He knew he was back, but the world would take a while to find out. His European tour went from bad to worse. (photo credit 35.1)

  Yet the rest of 1953 was to be a period of hard work and only momentary triumphs, of dazzling new artistic landscapes glimpsed teasingly, then fogged in. The day after Frank recorded “I’ve Got the World on a String,” he had another session at Capitol, with the same players as the day before, a tight jazz ensemble—reeds, brass, rhythm, no strings. Riddle was once again on the podium. This time it was his session, with his arrangements exclusively, and it went terribly wrong on the first run-through. The first number was Koehler, Barris, and Moll’s “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams.” “Sinatra was at his lead sheet—I don’t think we’d even made a take yet,” the trombonist Milt Bernhart recalled.

  He was running the song over, and suddenly stopped—cold. And the band stopped. Frank said, “Give them a break.” He crooked his finger at Nelson, and they walked out of the studio. I recognized that the arrangement hadn’t gone over at all. Most of the guys began to play poker; I don’t know why, but I followed [Sinatra and Riddle], and watched them in the smaller studio, from the hallway.

  Bernhart could see the singer and the arranger behind the soundproof glass, but couldn’t hear what they were saying. “Nelson was standing frozen, and Frank was doing all the talking,” Bernhart said.

  His hands were moving, but he was not angry … he seemed to be telling [Riddle] something of great importance. He was gesticulating, his hands going up and down and sideways. He was describing music, and singing! When we came back, the date was over. And I was positive that I knew what Frank was telling him—it was about the arrangement! I could tell it was very busy. Too busy. There was no room for the singer. If they had taken away the singer, it would have made a great instrumental … At that point, Nelson had a lot of technique as an arranger, but he had to be told to take it easy when writing for a singer. And he was told! Frank was giving him a lesson: a lesson in writing for a singer. A lesson in writing for Frank Sinatra …

  Sinatra could have dumped him. Other singers would have said, “Well, get another guy,” if they were as important as Frank Sinatra. But he didn’t. Which means that he recognized something in Nelson that a lot of people wouldn’t. Namely, that Nelson was brilliant, and he was trying too hard. He had already passed the audition. Sinatra addressed him as one craftsman to another, and with a note
of gentle respect. Frank chose four new numbers, Riddle worked feverishly through the night, then they reconvened the next day, this time with a full orchestra and strings, for a rare Saturday session.

  Frank and Nelson shelved “Dreams” and tried four ballads: “Anytime, Anywhere,” “My One and Only Love,” “I Can Read Between the Lines,” and, of all things, the theme to From Here to Eternity, onto which lyrics had hastily been slapped to capitalize on the film’s summer release. Sinatra was in wonderful, mature voice that Saturday, but the material was mainly unremarkable, with the mixed exception of Robert Mellin and Guy Wood’s “My One and Only Love.” It’s a beautiful melody, but Frank can’t quite find his way into the stilted lyric—and to make a song great, he always needed to live inside the words. (Oddly enough, two versions of the tune that have held up better are the glorious Johnny Hartman–John Coltrane collaboration and Chet Baker’s cracked and whispery rendition: in each of these cases, however, the singer is more instrument than interpreter.)

  What’s most notable about the four tracks Sinatra and Riddle laid down is that they worked. The recordings weren’t ecstatic, but the strings supported Sinatra’s voice warmly and solidly—and never (as Stordahl’s strings always threatened) soporifically. At times Riddle’s fiddles lilted ever so slyly, giving promise of glories to come. The session was a noble effort and a good place holder. Nelson had labored heroically to make it simple and beautiful, but for the time being, simple and pretty would have to do.

  Crooner Frank Sinatra arrived at London airport today and greeted his wife, Ava Gardner, in the privacy of the customs hall [the Associated Press reported on Monday, May 4]. “It is two months since we have seen each other—much too long,” Sinatra said.

  They will leave this week end for Milan, where Sinatra will begin a three months’ singing tour of the continent and Britain.

  It sounded romantic and glamorous: Frank had told Ava it could be their second honeymoon, but the tour was also desperately practical. Working for over two months on From Here to Eternity for a sum total variously reported as $10,000, $8,000, or $5,000 (he didn’t get a dime for the weeks of preparation and rehearsal) had put him in deeper hock than ever. His first Capitol single, “I’m Walking Behind You,” with “Lean Baby” on the flip side, had come out on April 27; a week later it had reached the nether regions of the Billboard chart—but troublingly, RCA Victor had released Eddie Fisher’s version of “Walking” just a few days after Sinatra’s, and by the time Frank left the country, Fisher’s record was already starting to pull ahead.

  Lacking a radio or television show, domestic bookings, or any record royalties from Capitol, Sinatra was trying to drum up whatever cash he could. That spring, quietly, he had put his beloved Palm Springs house on the market. A wealthy widow, one Mrs. George Machris, scooped it up at a fire-sale price of $85,000—just a bit more than half of what it had cost Frank. The proceeds went straight to Nancy, who was still hanging on in the Holmby Hills house. The place was too big, too expensive to maintain, she worried; she and the children really should move someplace smaller (but this didn’t happen until Nancy junior and Frankie left home, years later).

  In the meantime, Nancy entertained regularly, giving her best impression of a merry divorcée. On slow news days, the columns liked linking her to one suitor or another. “Nancy Sinatra’s steadfast date is Tom Drake … Barbara Stanwyck’s is George Nader,” wrote Winchell. In fact, it was Stanwyck—whose marriage to Robert Taylor had been broken up by Ava Gardner—who was Nancy’s steadfast companion. “Sob sisters,” the two women sometimes liked to joke, clinking their cocktail glasses. The truth was that finding another man was the last thing on Nancy’s mind. Between the children, the church, the Barbatos, and her various causes, she had more than enough to occupy her. According to Frank’s longtime valet, George Jacobs, “There was no way she would ever get remarried, or even go on a date.” Nancy had her own explanation for this. “When you’ve been married to Frank Sinatra …,” she liked to say in later years. You stay married to him. She even kept some of her wandering ex-husband’s clothes in the closet and welcomed, in a complicated way, his periodic visits.1

  At Heathrow, Ava fondled her husband’s cheek, amazed all over again at his face. She was amazed, too, at how much she wanted him. She hadn’t been especially good over the long weeks since she’d last seen him, but then, she hadn’t been too bad, either. They stayed in each other’s arms in the back of the big car that took them to her flat in Regent’s Park; they stayed in bed for three days, until it was time to leave for Italy. And then, since the dreadful piece of trash in which she was currently acting wasn’t in need of her services for a couple of weeks (Metro had tried but failed to argue her into taking horseback-riding lessons so she could more convincingly portray Guinevere), she and Frank—along with many pieces of luggage—got back in the car and headed for Heathrow.

  The car blew a tire on the way to the airport (Frank gritted his teeth and drummed his fingers while the liveried chauffeur, apologizing constantly, put on the spare). When they finally arrived, their plane was taxiing out to the runway. A BEA gate agent patiently explained, as the couple goggled at him in disbelief, that Mr. and Mrs. Sinatra were simply too late.

  Frank’s face was dangerously flushed. “Too late?”

  Ava looked over the top of her sunglasses. “What?”

  The agent explained that the next flight to Milan wasn’t leaving until tomorrow, but there was a flight to Rome leaving very shortly, if the lady and gentleman were willing to alter their plans.

  Frank stared at the mild-mannered young man until he had to look away. Then he put his hands to his mouth; his big voice echoed through the waiting room. “This is the last time I’ll ever fly BEA!” he called.

  “I’d rather swim the Channel!” Ava shouted.

  They and their seventeen bags got on the flight to Rome.

  The term “paparazzo” wouldn’t exist until Federico Fellini gave the name to a character in La Dolce Vita years later, but Rome was Rome, and the photographers were all over the famous couple as they walked across the tarmac. One in particular wouldn’t let up, kept demanding Frank and Ava kiss for the camera. Just like that, Frank hauled off and socked the guy in the face. The photographer shook it off and went straight back at Frank. The carabinieri swiftly intervened. But the tone of the tour had been set.

  The concert halls were only part full. England would always have a soft spot for him after the war, but his appeal hadn’t completely translated to the rest of Europe. Ava Gardner, though, was another matter. Ava was a goddess, her dark beauty making perfect sense to Continental tastes, and Europe couldn’t get enough of her. At the next stop, Naples, the promoter put Ava’s name right on the bill with Frank’s. This, of course, was a terrible mistake. Frank Sinatra had no intention of sharing the stage with anyone else, even his wife, and Ava had no intention of stepping out on a stage with Frank. She’d come close to trying that just once, for charity in London, and wisely changed her mind.

  But when Sinatra got up onstage for a matinee in Naples without that gorgeous wife of his, the spotlight picked her out in the crowd, who booed and whistled and threw seat cushions. They had paid up to 3,000 to 4,500 lire each—the equivalent of $5 to $7, a fortune in postwar Italy—to see this goddess. They chanted her name—“Ah-va! Ah-va! Ah-va!”—and Frank stomped off the stage. Ava fled.

  The crowd threatened to riot. The carabinieri cleared the theater. For the evening show the house was half-full. Ava had stayed at the hotel. Sinatra sang one number, looked at the empty seats, then shook his head and walked off once more. The audience began to stamp the floor. After much fevered back-and-forth between Frank, the promoter, and the chief of the Naples riot police, who had fifteen officers waiting in the hall, Sinatra understood he had two choices: he could go on with the evening show and collect two-thirds of his $2,400 fee ($800 had been slotted for Ava), or he could walk and get nothing. He went on with the show.

  The wor
se Frank felt, the worse he sang. The concerts didn’t improve. Naturally, he hadn’t been able to afford to fly a full complement of musicians over from the States, so he’d brought Bill Miller along as an accompanist and musical director. They hired pickup bands for each leg of the tour, but the quality varied from fair to poor. Sometimes Frank thought bitterly, longingly, of Studio C at Capitol on the night of April 30. The combination of Sinatra, a Dutch band called the Skyliners, and an English conductor named Harold Collins was a disaster in Scandinavia. “Sinatra has been a flop in Denmark and Sweden,” said the New Musical Express, the English counterpart of Billboard. On May 31 the Associated Press wrote that Frank had drawn boos during two concerts in southern Sweden. “Agence France Presse reported that Sinatra received an unenthusiastic reception from small audiences in Malmoe and Helsingborg,” the dispatch continued.

  AFP said the manager of the Helsingborg theater refused to pay Sinatra, claiming the singer spent more time backstage checking his boat schedule than entertaining the public.

  The manager also charged that Sinatra stopped his program after 32 minutes when the agreement called for 50 minutes.

  Frank was looking for the exit. From performing, from Ava, from everything. Then he pulled the plug.