Frank Sinatra And Nelson Riddle: How It Happened

When considering the greatness of Frank Sinatra–both as an individual and in the music he created–it is important to place his achievements within the context of the man’s life. It is easy to forget that there was a time when he wasn’t ‘The Chairman of the Board’ and when he wasn’t regarded as the greatest male popular vocalist in history. There was a time when he was just another washed up teen idol trying to figure out a way to jump start his career and continue collecting a paycheck for being a singer. And then there were his personal problems–the love of his life, Ava Gardner had left him, his vocal chords were shredded from overuse, and he was on the skids financially as well as no longer in demand professionally. Frank recalled this time in his life by saying “It was all Mondays.”

To make matters worse, the impresarios at Columbia Records were abusing his talent in an effort to revive his album sales. His pairing with producer Mitch Miller was particularly disastrous. The nadir of this unholy alliance was probably the recording of “Mama Will Bark”, where the greatest voice of the 20th century shared the microphone with a buxom actress named Dagmar (sort of a Rhonda Shear of her day) and some other ‘vocalist’ howling and barking like a dog in the background. Not surprisingly, Sinatra’s recordings with Mitch Miller were not a resounding commercial success and in 1952 he was dropped by Columbia.

In 1953, June Hutton and Jo Stafford brought him to the attention of Capitol Records A&R man Dave Dexter, Jr. This led to a deal with the label, which began an era that many ‘Sinatra-philes’ consider his best work. Frank worked with Axel Stordahl (June Hutton’s husband, with whom he had worked at Columbia) and these sessions produced some decent recordings, including “I’m Walking Behind You” and “Lean Baby”, but nothing incredibly significant. Dexter wanted Frank to try something different, and with Stordahl leaving to accept a job with Eddie Fisher in New York, he agreed reluctantly to a pairing with Nelson Riddle.

To say that the first Sinatra/Riddle session was a success is an understatement, and “I’ve Got The World On The String” is somewhat of a ‘shot heard round the world’ for Sinatra’s career and popular music in general. The Ted Kohler/Harold Arlen song is given new vibrancy with Riddle’s buoyant arrangement and Sinatra’s new found vocal maturity. The song was a modest commercial success at the time, reaching #14 on the single charts, but became a classic. It was also a favorite of Sinatra himself, and he continued to perform the song live, frequently as a show opener, for the rest of his life.

When examined in a modern context, Sinatra’s career ‘reinvention’ is almost mind boggling. It’s difficult to envision a star of today popular with the teenage set–like The Jonas Brothers for example–becoming accepted as a serious vocalist for adults. Sinatra not only became a critical and popular sensation, but would go down in history as arguably the most important entertainer ever in American popular culture. None of this would have happened were it not for the magical pairing of Sinatra with Nelson Riddle.