Watch Frank Sinatra Record “It Was a Very Good Year” in the Studio in 1965, and You’ll Know Why They Called Him “The Voice”

I’ll be hon­est, for a long time when I thought of Frank Sina­tra, I thought of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, rat­pack films, and the Olive Gar­den. That is, until I lived for a short time near The Bronx’s Arthur Avenue, the best Lit­tle Italy in New York. Sina­tra poured from the speak­ers of Ital­ian eater­ies and cig­ar and pas­try shops. It dra­mat­i­cal­ly increased the qual­i­ty of my pleas­ant asso­ci­a­tions with his music. Still, I rarely lis­tened very close­ly. I can’t entire­ly blame pop cul­ture for turn­ing him into back­ground music—it hap­pens to near­ly every major star. But overuse of his voice as accom­pa­ni­ment to olive oil, cig­ars, and mar­ti­nis has per­haps made us tune him out too often.

Treat­ing Sina­tra as mood music would not have sat well with some of the singers many of us grew up idol­iz­ing from a young age, like Paul McCart­ney and David Bowie, who both found his work for­ma­tive. McCart­ney thought so high­ly of it, he sent Sina­tra one of his ear­li­est com­po­si­tions, an off-kil­ter lounge croon­er called “Sui­cide” that he wrote at the age of 14. (Hear an unre­leased record­ing below.)

Bowie, in 1977, wrote what he express­ly intend­ed as a par­o­dy of Sinatra—“Life on Mars.” But the sto­ry is even stranger than that. He specif­i­cal­ly tried to “take the mick­ey” out of Sinatra’s “My Way,” a song cred­it­ed to Paul Anka that just hap­pens to have first been writ­ten, with dif­fer­ent lyrics, by Bowie, as “Even a Fool Learns to Love” in 1968 (hear Bowie sing it above). “Life on Mars,” one of the most beau­ti­ful­ly melod­ic songs in all of pop music, with one of Bowie’s best vocal per­for­mances, shows how much the Thin White Duke owed to Ole Blue Eyes.

These are just two of hun­dreds of male singers whose melodies have tak­en up immor­tal res­i­dence in our brains and who owe a tremen­dous debt to Frank Sina­tra. In addi­tion to his keen melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty, Sina­tra also set a high bar with his tech­nique. In the video at the top of the post from 1965, we see the con­sum­mate artist record “It Was a Very Good Year” in the stu­dio, while smok­ing a cig­a­rette and casu­al­ly sip­ping what may be cof­fee from a paper cup in his oth­er hand.

At one point, he stops and ban­ters with the engi­neer, ask­ing him to stop for any “P pop­ping,” the explo­sive sound result­ing from singers putting too much force into their “p” sounds and dis­tort­ing the micro­phone. Nowa­days every­one uses what’s called a “pop fil­ter” to catch these bursts of air, but Sina­tra doesn’t have one, or seem to need one. “I don’t thump,” he tells the record­ing engi­neer, “I’m a sneaky P pop­per.” Indeed. One com­menter on YouTube point­ed out Sinatra’s grace­ful mic tech­nique:

Notice how he turned his head when he sang “it poured sweet and clear” to avoid the spike on the P. In fact, he backed away from the mic just a bit for that whole last verse because he was singing much stronger for the last state­ment of the song. Think about it… this was a live stu­dio record­ing. One take. No over­dubs, No added tracks. Just pure tal­ent. The only thing the sound engi­neers had to do was adjust the eq lev­els a bit and that’s it. This is what you hear on the album. You’d be hard pressed to find ANYONE who could do that today.

Most vocal per­for­mances get record­ed in booths, and cer­tain­ly not in big open rooms with an orches­tra and no head­phones. Some singers learn to han­dle a micro­phone well. Many do not. Audio com­pres­sion sup­plies the dynam­ics, per­for­mances get processed dig­i­tal­ly and edit­ed togeth­er from sev­er­al takes. Young pro­duc­ers often won­der how peo­ple made great sound­ing records before improve­ments like pop fil­ters, iso­lat­ing mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems, or soft­ware that allow a near­ly infi­nite num­ber of cor­rec­tive tech­niques. The answer: per­haps many of these things aren’t always improve­ments, but props. As Sina­tra shows us in this footage, great sound in the stu­dio came from the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and atten­tive tech­nique of artists and engi­neers who got it right at the source.

Relat­ed Con­tent:       

Watch Sud­den­ly: Frank Sina­tra Stars in a 1954 Noir Film

Bob Dylan Releas­es a New Cov­er of Frank Sinatra’s “Full Moon and Emp­ty Arms”

“The Girl from Ipane­ma” Turns 50; Hear Its Bossa Nova Sound Cov­ered by Sina­tra, Krall, Methe­ny & Oth­ers

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness