Sinatra sings the words and music of Rod McKuen.
FRANK SINATRA
An Appreciation
Running
jumping
standing still,
Frank Sinatra is the tallest man I know.
Sitting down
his feet go dragging through the clouds,
and anyway we heard him one night singing
"Fly Me To The Moon" from the moon.
After that
even though you call him Frank
you wonder if you'll ever earn the right
to do so.
He's tall because he stoops to help
and bends to give,
and because while going down his own road
he's always had the time
to cut the underbrush
for those who came along behind him.
Sometimes in turning he falls down
and hardly anybody picks him up but him.
He gets up always
taller than he was a day ago.
Meeting him the first time out
you know that he could tear a wall down
with his eyes.
Later on you learn he's much too busy
building bridges to think about destruction.
Still you're wary.
Isn't this the man you've read about
who punches up the press
and chews up shadows
like a jackhammer biting into streets?
Be careful.
He smiles then.
I don't know like who.
Like nobody ever did or will.
You go away that first time thinking
maybe you don't want to write songs anymore
for anybody else but him.
Another time
you meet and talk of trains
and Alec Wilder.
You drink a lot.
In the early hours
he stays listening to Respighi
while you crawl home to bed.
He worries you because he has so much
(I don't mean jet airplanes)
and thinks he has so little.
What can you give a man
who's given several worlds of pleasure
to as many people?
The morning paper.
But wouldn't that deprive the doorman
of his daily honor?
How many Frank Sinatra's do I know?
Another every day.
The one whose gentleness to women
touches on the renaissance.
I honestly believe
he's never met a woman yet
he thought to be a tramp.
There's the family man
concerned about his children.
Helping never pushing.
(Good God, his son does not
make records for Reprise.)
He's the father
who waited till his eldest
made it on her own
to sing a song with her.
The only man
to make that laughing face
smile on consistently.
Tina's lost her luggage
on her way to Bangkok,
and so he spends all Independence Day
calling airports round the world.
The fighter?
Hmmm.
Christ the public can be mean!
One night while on the town
I saw him baited half a dozen times.
He smiled and signed his name.
Nobody got a bloody nose
or his picture in The Daily News.
But I for one
would hate to see his eyes turn orange,
even if it is his favorite color.
Still you get the feeling
that when in doubt
he beats up on himself.
Who else goes home to Hoboken
and makes it back to California
two days and twenty million later.
So he is a businessman.
(Remember that and you forget
his Oscars number two, not one.)
Guts should be his middle name,
not Albert.
Sometimes I think that he invented guts
inside and out.
Hearing him announce at fifty
"September's quite a time,"
you're well aware of generation gaps
he's pulled together with his hands.
Yet something
(maybe monkey glands)
has kept him more than young at heart.
His mind's as new as noon tomorrow.
I have it.
Jack Daniels must have pickled him
circa nineteen-forty-three.
But why does he sing better every day?
Why are there new humble cycles
and pride that boasts I did it My Way?
He did you know.
We have every one of us
doing it his way to prove it.
He invented singing,
and every time he sings
he's giving lessons.
It comes to this.
Whatever kind of man he is,
whoever made us
made just one of him.
You have to love him.
I leave the reasons up to you.
I've set down some of those I have
within the words and music here
and Frank Sinatra sings these songs with love.
Almost as though he owned them.
I guess he does now, dammit.
An any different drummer,
Sinatra is a man alone.
Sometimes I think he laughs
to keep from crying.
Forget it.
I'm no Sigmund Freud.
I know a few things only.
Today I know a man
hidden in the California hills
who's spoiled for good
because another man he loved
gave new dimensions to his children.
My children are my songs
and those within this album
all have brand new shoes.
ROD McKUEN
June, 1969
A Man Alone (1969)
Reprise 2-1030
A Man Alone
Night
I've Been To Town
From Promise To Promise
The Single Man
The Beautiful Strangers
Lonesome Cities
Love's Been Good To Me
Empty Is
Out Beyond The Window
Some Traveling Music
A Man Alone
Buy A
Man Alone from Amazon.co.uk.
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