The song Frank Sinatra abandoned after a few bars: “I’ll leave it to Nat Cole”
Music can be a real comfort blanket for people around the world, for both those who make it and those who listen.
It’s an interesting science, as when people listen to or make music, they are engaging with emotions that they otherwise might be reluctant to face. The world can be relatively isolated, as we spend so much time in our own heads, but when you interact with different creative points of view, you are engaging with those emotions a lot more effectively.
Sociologist Thomas J Scheff spoke about this in his book What’s Love Got to Do with It?: Emotions and Relationships in Popular Songs, where he talks about love specifically, and how people use music to tap into feelings of love that they might find difficult to vocalise.
“Popular love lyrics present a picture of an imagined social-emotional world, and modern societies tend to ignore this world,” he wrote, “Since modern societies are highly individualistic, the nature of relationships usually takes a backseat. Modern societies focus on the self-reliant individual.”
However, his thoughts apply to all emotions, whether they are happiness, anger or sadness, the last of which is a big emotion that people lean on music to explore. There are some tracks that remind people of a lost loved one or a difficult period, which they only need to hear the first few notes before they burst into tears and these tracks can also act as emotional crutches for listeners.
Nelson Riddle certainly used music to explore his sadness when he was working with Frank Sinatra on the album Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely. The record is one of the most doom-laden LPs that Sinatra ever released, with songs such as ‘Willow Weep for Me’, ‘I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry’ and ‘It’s a Lonesome Old Town’ filling the airwaves around the country as people tapped into their sorrowful feelings around the country.
Riddle helped arrange the album and harnessed his own sadness when putting the record together, given he was going through the loss of his six-month-old daughter, who had passed away from bronchial asthma, while his mother also died of cancer shortly after he started working with Sinatra. You can hear his despair bleed into the record, as the band plays in a way which provides the perfect backdrop for Sinatra’s saddened words.
On the other end, a different emotion which played a part throughout the making of the record was fear. Sinatra was at his most unapproachable when he started working on the album, going through various mood swings and quite frequently flipping on Riddle and everyone else he was working with for no apparent reason. Those feelings of fear also feature on the track, as sometimes it feels as though the arrangement is holding back, which was likely the result of Riddle being worried about taking his ideas to Sinatra.
“[Riddle] was frightened of Frank, not physically, but because he could be in one mood and turn around and be in a completely different mood,” explained trombone player George Roberts, “That scared him because when he arranged something, he wasn’t sure if Frank was going to like it.”
You can also hear Frank Sinatra’s mood swings on the record, not literally in what you listen to, but in what you don’t. One of the tracks which was supposed to appear on the LP was a cover of Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Lush Life’, but on the day of recording, the musician was having one of his mood swings and dismissed the song after only singing a few lines. He didn’t provide any explanation as to why he was refusing to sing the song, and instead, merely offered up the following: “I’ll leave it to Nat Cole”.
