His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [128]
Embarrassed, Livingston went into Dexter’s office to tell him what had happened. Dexter was furious. “Here’s a guy who is dead on his ass,” he said. “He’s been deserted by all but a few of his friends, he’s without a job, and he’s brushed off every day by the record companies, the picture studios, and the radio and television networks. But I believe in his basic talent just as the Stordahls do, and I’m the only guy in the world who’s willing to risk my job in spending $100,000 or more of my company’s money trying to bring the son of a bitch back—and he fluffs me. Next time you talk to him, Alan, tell him to shove it. The feeling is mutual.”
Livingston reassigned Frank to a more placid Voyle Gil-more, who chose Nelson Riddle to be his arranger. Axel Stordahl and June Hutton were dropped by Capitol a few months later.
“Handling Sinatra is like defusing a ticking bomb,” said Dave Dexter in 1976. “I look back now and I’m grateful that the job went to someone else.”
It was Voyle Gilmore’s patience combined with Nelson Riddle’s swinging arrangements that would carry Frank to the top of the music world again, restoring him as the country’s number one pop singer.
The collaboration with the quiet, aloof arranger who had once worked with Tommy Dorsey provided a fine showcase for Frank’s rich voice and emerging new style. The driving basses and swinging reeds of Nelson Riddle supplanted the fluffy lush strings and slow tempi of Axel Stordahl, creating some of the best popular music of the era. Riddle bestowed on Frank a swinging ballad style coupled with a jazz-influenced, finger-snapping spontaneity that characterized his music and came to be known to Sinatra fans as the Capitol Years (1953–1961).
“Working with Frank was always a challenge,” said Riddle. “And there were times when the going got rough. Never a relaxed man, as Nat Cole was, for example, he was a perfectionist who drove himself and everybody around him relentlessly. You always approached him with a feeling of uneasiness, not only because he was demanding and unpredictable, but because his reactions were so violent. But all of these tensions disappeared if you came through for him.
“I suppose, over our eight years of partnership, he threw out an average of about one arrangement a year—not bad going. But there’d never be any anger—after the first time through he’d just say, ‘Let’s skip that one,’ and go straight on to the next. He’d never give out any compliments either. If he said nothing, I’d know he was pleased. He just isn’t built to give out compliments, and I never expected them. He expects your best—just that.
“Frank is an instinctive musician. After a steady partnership, I worked for him off and on until 1978 for a total of twenty-five years. Then there wasn’t much for me to do anymore. I never really had an argument with him, but then I don’t argue. I hold my temper too long, but that’s why I could work with Frank, I guess. He’s very tough on people. For example, if I wasn’t conducting the orchestra to his liking, he’d shove me out of the way and take over. If he asked for diminuendo from the orchestra and didn’t get it immediately, he’d take things into his own hands, and you can believe that they damn well played softer for him than they did for me. When he’d take over conducting like that, I’d feel awful, but I didn’t do it fast enough for him, and I guess I’d have to say I’m in total accordance with that kind of behavior. He showed me how to insist on certain things from an orchestra, so I guess you could say I learned from Frank like he learned from me. But we always did things his way. He knows what’s good for him and for the music.”
The emergence of the long-playing record (LP) in the 1950s was important to a singer like Sinatra, who preferred to build a mood with his music and sustain it with songs that followed one general theme, as he did in albums like Come Fly with Me, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, and Only the Lonely. The single recording he made with Nelson Riddle of “Young at Heart” became