An Artist Grows Into His Talent: Revisiting Sinatra's Radio Years

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Nancy Sinatra says some of her best childhood memories are listening to her father on the radio. Frank Sinatra wasn't around much, traveling with various bands, singing in clubs and ballrooms. So his radio shows in the 1930s through the '50s brought him home. Nancy wanted to hug the voice on the radio. Now, for Sinatra's 100th birthday next month, NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg says those radio appearances are out in a box set.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Has anybody got a match? Thanks. Now I can light an Old Gold and listen to Frank Sinatra.

FRANK SINATRA: (Singing) Night and day.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE: How important was radio to Frank Sinatra's 60-year career?

CHUCK GRANATA: Radio made Frank Sinatra.

STAMBERG: Chuck Granata produced the four-CD set. Radio, he says, is how the most people heard Sinatra. Yes, in the 1940s and '50s he made records and movies and nightclub dates, but it was radio that made him a star.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: This is the Red Network of the National Broadcasting Company.

STAMBERG: Here's his very first radio appearance in 1935, the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour."

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "MAJOR BOWES AMATEUR HOUR")

EDWARD BOWES: All right. Thank you and good evening friends.

STAMBERG: Sinatra, age 20, appeared with the Hoboken Four.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHINE")

HOBOKEN FOUR: (Singing) Shine and play a bluesy. Why don't you shine? Start with your shoesies.

STAMBERG: No buttercream voice, no screaming teenagers yet, but getting closer when trumpeter Harry James signed him in 1939.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MOON LOVE")

SINATRA: (Singing) Will this be moon love, nothing but moon love? Will you be gone when the dawn comes stealing through?

STAMBERG: The voice is so sweet and pure here. It's not hip. There's no drama to it yet.

GRANATA: It's these fresh vocal cords that haven't been abused yet, haven't been broken in yet.

STAMBERG: At 24 now, Sinatra's not inhabiting songs as he would later, but you hear the operatic bel canto tradition that he loved. He listened to Puccini in Palm Springs.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

STAMBERG: Sinatra went from Harry James to Tommy Dorsey's big band - NBC again, in 1941, six years after his radio debut.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "FRENESI")

SINATRA: (Singing) It was fiesta down in Mexico, and so I stopped to see the show. I knew that frenesi meant please love me. And I could say frenesi.

GRANATA: All of the things that he learned as a singer and as a performer really came from those three years he spent with Dorsey. He was able to hone his vocal technique and his approach singing with the greatest musicians of the era.

STAMBERG: He perfected his stage presence. He learned to breathe.

GRANATA: Dorsey had a smooth, elongated way of holding notes on his trombone. It really just sounded like he never stopped for air.

STAMBERG: Sinatra saw Dorsey take small breaths out of the corner of his mouth - circular breathing. The singer built up his lungs, swam underwater laps at the nearest pool so he could make those long notes, too. By 1945, Sinatra was a major star. Screaming teenagers, hit parade hits, and on the "Songs By Sinatra" radio show, he starts to swing.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'M AN OLD COWHAND")

SINATRA: (Singing) I'm an old cowhand from the Rio Grande. But my legs ain't bowed, and my cheeks ain't tan.

GRANATA: He's swinging such an unhip song.

STAMBERG: And in this, you hear that he is really on his way to becoming a ring-a-ding swinger singer.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'M AN OLD COWHAND")

SINATRA: (Singing) Yippie yi yo kayah (ph). Yippie yi yo kayah.

STAMBERG: 1953, NBC - he's become the full Frank.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I'VE GOT MY LOVE TO KEEP ME WARM")

SINATRA: (Singing) The snow is snowing. The wind is blowing. But I can weather the storm. What do I care how much it may storm? I've got my love to keep me warm.

GRANATA: I hear a very, very cool, confident, hip swinger there. And it's right on the cusp of his second breakthrough as an artist, the time that he began to work with Nelson Riddle and Billy May and Gordon Jenkins and became this ultra-successful, ultra-sophisticated swinger.

STAMBERG: The four-CD Sinatra set includes songs that never made it to record albums. He only sang them on the radio. This ballad from 1955...

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TENDERLY")

SINATRA: (Singing) The evening breeze caressed the trees tenderly. The trembling trees embraced the breeze tenderly. Then you and I came wandering by and lost in a sigh were we.

STAMBERG: The collection of radio appearances in "Frank Sinatra: A Voice On Air" traces the development of the popular singer of his time. Chuck Granata produced it and included the song that was Sinatra's close theme for so many years.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SINATRA: Well, sir, it's time to leave you at your door, neighbors, and say that we hope you'll sit in with us next week again on an Old Gold night for a treat instead of a treatment. Until then, the best of everything and...

(Singing) Put your dreams away for another day. And I will take their place in your heart.

STAMBERG: I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SINATRA: Good night, junior. Pleasant dreams, moonbeam. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Goodnight. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.