Frank: The Voice by James Kaplan

Author:James Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Frank, Entertainment & Performing Arts, General, United States, Sinatra, Singers, Singers - United States, Composers & Musicians, Biography
ISBN: 9780385518048
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2010-11-02T04:26:02+00:00

The next day, he sat down and typed yet another letter of complaint to Sacks. He began by giving his old friend the benefit of the doubt: Maybe Manie didn’t know about it, Frank wrote, but other Columbia artists were recording the same songs he was. The charge was more serious than it sounds. Sinatra pointed out that he had put in many hours poring over standards to find the best songs to record. It was part of his genius to know which numbers worked for him, which tunes he could move into and make his own. And when his own label let its other singers record songs like “That Old Feeling” and “You Go to My Head” after he had already put his stamp on them, it hit Frank where it hurt the most: the pocketbook. He wanted to hear from Manie, he wrote, with stiff, furious formality, “advising me why you permit this policy and if you intend to pursue it in the future.” This time he signed not with love but best regards.

The letter, typed on Sinatra’s stationery (“FRANK SINATRA” and “BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA” embossed across the top), is signed assertively in blue fountain pen, with the singer’s first and last names. Sacks annotated it in pencil. “Check this,” he wrote, next to “You Go to My Head.” And then, underneath, “Doris Day’s album.”

It was treacherous, and it was true: Day, whose name Sinatra hadn’t been able to bring himself to mention, had recorded both songs. The late-summer correspondence between Frank and Manie reflects a growing tension between the two, a tension that in some ways was symptomatic of the singer’s troubles at Columbia. On September 20, Manie fessed up:

Dear Frank:

I must admit that recording with another vocalist standards you have already recorded should not be done. Frankly, I must also accept the blame in this instance because, without enough thought, I selected the songs, and not until I received your letter and checked the list did I realize you had recorded the same songs.

In the future, I assure you I’ll pay closer attention so that it won’t happen again. I am the guilty culprit and I’m sorry.

Kindest regards. Sincerely, Manie

The tone of this exchange is markedly different from the Sinatra-Sacks letters of 1945. In those days, the two men had closed their missives with “Love”—even “Love and kisses.” Now it was “Best regards” from Frank, and from Manie—who apparently didn’t want to be outdone in the coolness department—“Kindest regards,” immediately followed, with sublime passive aggressiveness, by “Sincerely.”

Sacks also sent his reply to Sinatra’s office and not to his home address, as he had done previously. Maybe this was just a bureaucratic detail; more likely, it meant Manie’s friendship with Frank was slipping.

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