Thanks , Alex for that. Nevertheless I am surprised that Sinatra was accepted as a conductor, purely for musical reasons (although if , as seems likely, he provided financial backing I'm not surprised). I was reading a book "I paid the piper" written by a concert agent where he tells of a top-class British orchestra refusing to play under the conductorship of Louis Kentner - a first-rate pianist, musician and a composer - because he was not known in that role. I mentioned Danny Kaye whose balletic grace allowed him to stand in front of an orchestra and wave his arms about impressively and get reasonable results in popular pieces. The fact that he didn't really know what was required of him exists in a recording of his conducting of the Trepak from the Nutcracker in a public performance (Stockholm Philharmonic I think) which almost ends in a complete pile-up because Kaye just beats faster and faster without any notion of control.
Getting good, sensitive results from an orchestra isn't always ensured by having a professional conductor in charge as numerous cd issues testify.
I'm wondering if the parts of the arrangements of Riddle were so extensively marked and the orchestra so familiar with his style - not to mention the possibility of extensive rehearsals prior to the recordings - that the orchestra played largely on auto-pilot giving Sinatra (who they'd probably often worked with as an accompanying band) the impression that it was he who was achieving such fine results. The purely orchestral disc intrigues me....I shall have to try to find it.
In her autobiography, Peggy Lee is full of praise for Sinatra’s role in this recording. She describes him as a “marvellously sensitive conductor”, and says that the concept of the album was his. The fact that Sinatra and Lee were great friends may contribute to the effusiveness of her praise. But given the musicality of Sinatra’s singing and the force of his personality, I do not find it all that surprising that he could take on the role of conductor.
I have a vinyl album, "The Man I Love"..."Peggy Lee sings, Frank Sinatra conducts, the arrangements are by Nelson Riddle" where the sleeve note states "In his album 'Tone poems of Color' he (Sinatra) displayed impressive skill as the conductor of purely instrumental music." Well, some of us older ones will remember Danny Kaye gesticulating wildly in front of various top-rank orchestras without appearing to know exactly what he was doing....but Sinatra ? The accompaniments on the album are quite sensitively handled and I began to wonder what particular accomplishments Sinatra had to achieve such results. Was Nelson Riddle the "eminence grise" in the recording studio that the musicians were actually following ?
Perhaps some of the experts in the field of lighter music who post here occasionally might know the answer.
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