December 19, 2006

SINATRA AT 91

        Horsefeathers recalls a time, long ago, when popular song was the realm of sophisticated lyricists, when those lyrics were enunciated with clarity as if the listener possessed intelligence as well as "feelings". For those who still remember, and those who never knew, we strongly recommend Sinatra in Vegas. What more is there to say about Sinatra? Well there's this: he was an American patriot (listen to his prescient ad libs about the moral hypocrite, Jimmy Carter). We of a certain age, grew up with him and he's the background soundtrack of our lives. Still, the DVD of his performance at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas in 1978 is remarkable. He's a seasoned 63 year old who knows how to get down and dirty with his aging audience, as he jokes and sips bourbon between songs, always with a sense of yearning for an erotic past, just gone and forever unrecoverable. Once he begins vocalizing, especially Harold Arlen lyrics, we're in the presence of tragic genius. Those Jewish lyricists--Gershwin, Berlin, Arlen--and the Italian boy from Hoboken were a match made in heaven. His only lapse is his effort to make something of a maudlin Beatles song. The uneducated scrapper from Hoboken was an American genius, up there with Fitzgerald and Faulkner, destined to be listened to as long as America lasts. He had the rare creative power to transform a maudlin lyric about love and loss into classic tragedy. Saloon songs, in Sinatra's hands, become the equals of Aeschylus. Fittingly, he closes the concert with an unforgettable version of America The Beautiful.