Friday, September 10, 2010

The Voice, or, The Story of My Life as Currently Lived, as Told By James Kaplan about Frank Sinatra


The Voice -- might as well start capitalizing it here -- was simply working its spooky subliminal magic. Did it help that the singer was clearly in need of a good meal, that his mouth was voluptuously beautiful, that his electric-blue eyes were attractively wide with fear and excitement, that he knowingly threw a little catch, a vulnerable vocal stutter, into his voice on the slow ballads? It helped. It whipped into a frenzy the visceral excitement that his sound had started. But the sound came first. There was simply nothing like it.

1 comment:

Don said...

He was really something, early on. Later too but we forget how otherworldly he was in the first years when with each breath he earned another gasping increment of fame.