The most exciting 1930s musician Frank Sinatra ever worked with: “He’d just make wonderful sounds”
Frank Sinatra‘s influence stretches far beyond the lounge bars and tuxedos with which he’s so often associated; just ask Alex Turner, Iggy Pop or Bob Dylan.
Now, Sinatra isn’t the first name you’d link with someone like Iggy Pop, the bare-chested, blood-spattered godfather of punk, and yet, Pop has long described ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ as his original musical muse, although it wasn’t his repertoire Pop wanted to emulate, but his distinctiveness of identity.
Growing up hearing Sinatra playing in the back of his father’s Cadillac, Pop realised he wanted to chase that same sense of individuality, and his central motivation became sounding different to everyone around him, as he told NPR, “It was very important what not to do. [Music] has to get up off the couch, walk around and be original”.
Bob Dylan perhaps put it best when he described Sinatra as “the mountain”, a figure looming in every musician’s mind when they set out to tackle a big song: the impossible benchmark. “When you start doing these songs, Frank’s got to be on your mind,” he told The Guardian during the 1960s, “Because he is the mountain. That’s the mountain you have to climb, even if you only get part of the way there.” But even mountains have mountains.
Frank Sinatra certainly has one of the most impressive collaborative discographies of any great musician, having stood tall alongside Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Aretha Franklin, Bono and Barbra Streisand. So it was going to take a lot to make ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ pupils widen with awe, and in this case, it was Count Basie.
In 1964, Sinatra joined forces with Basie and his orchestra to record It Might as Well Be Swing, with the sessions overseen by a young Quincy Jones, the first crossing of what would become a lengthy friendship in the booming technicolour world of jazz. Bringing together three masters at the height of their powers, the album became one of the defining big‑band records of the decade.
For Sinatra, it also became an experience unlike anything else in his career: “What I remember about it was that it was probably the most exciting engagement I have ever done in my life since I have been performing,” he later recalled, “The Basie orchestra, as you probably know, was like a juggernaut that came at you…you knew that you had to be a part of that, or you got lost.”
Listening back, it’s easy to understand why. The Basie Orchestra doesn’t simply accompany Sinatra, it sweeps him along with it, every arrangement surging with effortless momentum and forcing the singer to become another instrument within the ensemble rather than merely the star standing in front of it. Watching someone hone their craft to Basie’s degree, honing years and years of musicianship down to its rudimentary parts, was a masterclass in simplicity for Sinatra too.
“Basie, of course, really never conducted the orchestra,” he said, “He sat at the piano, and if you’ve ever seen him work, he would never use more than three or four keys. He’d just make wonderful sounds”, and Sinatra, for once, was the one in awe.
