Album Review: Sinatra Reprise - The Very Good Years

                             The Avachives Department of Musical Preservation

Professor Nigel Smudgeworth Reviews

Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years

There are albums one listens to, and there are albums one studies. Reprise: The Very Good Years belongs firmly in the latter category, although the student is advised not to take notes while drinking anything hot.

Sinatra's achievement here is not merely vocal. It is architectural. He does not simply sing a song; he occupies it. The arrangements surround him, the orchestra moves around him, and Sinatra remains at the center like a man who has arrived early, inspected the furniture, and decided which chair belongs to him.

The title The Very Good Years is itself a remarkably confident declaration. Lesser singers might have called the collection Some Pretty Good Years or A Selection of Earlier Material. Sinatra apparently saw no reason to apologize.

What makes these recordings particularly fascinating is the relationship between control and looseness. Sinatra can phrase a line with extraordinary precision and then make it sound as though he has just thought of it. This is the musical equivalent of what I have previously termed "structured spontaneity"—a concept that took me eleven years to invent and Sinatra approximately three seconds to demonstrate.

There is also an important emotional economy at work. Sinatra rarely wastes a note. A pause can become as significant as a lyric, while a slight alteration in phrasing can completely change the emotional temperature of a song. He understands that singing is not simply about hitting the correct notes. It is about making the listener believe that the note had to be sung that way.

From a Rumpeltonian perspective, this is highly significant.

Ralph Rumpelton's principle of "presence, not likeness" applies surprisingly well. Sinatra does not merely reproduce the printed melody. He leaves his presence on it. The song may have been written by somebody else, arranged by somebody else, and recorded with a large orchestra, but once Sinatra enters, the territory becomes unmistakably his.

This is why these recordings have endured.

There is no attempt to hide the human being behind the performance. Sinatra's voice carries age, confidence, weariness, humor, romance and the occasional suggestion that he has heard enough nonsense for one lifetime. The imperfections are not obstacles to the performance; they are part of its identity.

I would therefore classify Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years as Auditory Rumpeltized Formalism, a rare condition in which technical excellence and personality coexist without either one becoming subordinate to the other.

One final observation.

Modern listeners sometimes search for perfection in recordings. Sinatra offers something more interesting: authority. He sounds like a man who knows exactly where the song is going and is willing to let you discover it along with him.

That, in my professional opinion, is a very good year indeed.

— Professor Nigel Smudgeworth
Chair Emeritus of Applied Chromatic Studies
St. Bartholomew's Institute for Unconventional Visual Inquiry

Editor's note: Professor Smudgeworth was not asked whether he actually owns the album. He replied, "I own the concept of the album," and left the room.