Frank's World: The Bantamweight Years

Welcome back to Frank's World, where I get to bore complete strangers by waxing rhapsodic about the vast Sinatra universe.

When I was a kid, my first exposure to Sinatra probably came from old Warner Bros. cartoons like this one.

This chicken-crazed cartoon doesn't feature the real voices of Sinatra or Bing Crosby, but it shows you the effect they both had on the ladies (or, at least, the chickens). It also clues you in to their divergent swing-era styles -- Bing's short vocal lines were bubbly and upbeat while Sinatra was brooding, with longggggg, smooth phrases that held back languorously behind the beat.

People literally didn't know how Sinatra could hold notes the way that he did during this Swooner Crooner era. Musicians falsely assumed he found an Eastern swami who taught him the secret art of circular breathing. The truth is that the young, clean-living Sinatra was so dedicated to doing things differently than the reigning vocal star, Crosby, that he actively worked on building his lung capacity and breath control. During an era when exercise was literally considered freakish, the razor-thin Sinatra ran cross-country and swam laps while singing in his head between breaths.

While this isn't my favorite Sinatra period, it does feature the most flat-out beautiful singing of his career. People today often think of his string-laden ballads of this period as slick and "commercial," yet he and arranger Alex Stordahl created a revolutionary sound that nobody else had at the time; it's almost classical chamber music meets jazz. Sinatra also preferred to record older, quality songs by the greatest composers instead of the latest novelty numbers -- he was the first major star to curate what are now called "standards," or the Great American Songbook.

Ballads like "There's No You" helped define the World War II era by speaking of the pain of separation during this time. It is a truly haunting performance.

Unlike Crosby and even Louis Armstrong, Sinatra kept developing and refining his style and sound over the course of his career. The other artist who did this over a similar time frame was Miles Davis -- the two regarded each other's work with the utmost respect.

For more Crosby and bow-tied Sinatra from the razor-thin years, you can listen to my superlative Frank's World Rhapsody Radio Station, which now has "just-click" links for your Facebook and Twitter pages.