Carry On Koby

I love so many singers, Mel Torme to name one of the special ones, but Frank is my number one. Why? Why/how do we fall in love? Scientists have answers but for me, not a scientist, it’s a G-dly thing, it’s part of our soul and we can’t understand how that works.

Frank isn’t just attached to his music, he IS his music, he is IN the music, the music is in his soul and I feel that when I listen to his music. I don’t just love Frank’s music, I’m IN LOVE with it. I listen to so many genres of music, to so many musicians but if I had to be stranded on Roy Plomley’s ‘Desert Island’, I’d take the complete works of Frank Sinatra.

So, ‘Autumn Leaves’, another of my favourite songs, a beautiful song right from the off….that what I call ‘multi-layered’ intro, the drama, it’s piecing, it draws the listener in…lyrics by the wonderful Johnny Mercer, friend, in his latter years, with Barry Manilow. The story goes that Mercer left a lot of unfinished lyrics which had not been put to music before he died and his widow asked Manilow to put some to music, most famously ‘When October Goes’ which I love.

I think Frank’s Autumn Leaves was born in 1957, might have been 1956, and I think we have Gordon Jenkins to thank for the arrangement. The arrangements of Frank’s songs are legendary, Billy May, Don Costa, Gordon Jenkins, Nelson Riddle…..so much a part of what makes the music, for me, the very finest ever recorded.

(Can someone confirm whether or not that ‘painting’ below is a Grimshaw?)