Sid was certainly a loyal soldier to Mr. S....I remember when Trilogy came out and he played You & Me, then immediately played it again.
I remember Sid saying how he'd just come back from a Latin show and amazingly, Frank looked at the audience and said "Any requests?" The song he sang: "Embraceable You." I bet the whole place just melted into a huge pile of goo.
Bob,thanks for adding your appreciation,especially since you were listening 5-6 years before I was. And,of course,Pica's and all things Philly. I printed out you SFF memory a while back and have it included in my Sinatra CD binders. It is that important.
One of my favorite cd's is a recording I made of the first and last hour of one of Sid's Sunday With Sinatra shows from the early 2000's (WWDB). Listen to it often.
When my brother was sent to Desert Storm,tapes of Sid's shows got him through the heat,horrors and boredom.
WWDB had the best "bleep-bleep" when another Philly nutjob was allowed to speak with Irv Homer and forgot how many Q-Tip haired ladies(including my Mom) were listening. Naughty,naughty.They could have given away a car for anyone pronouncing "ing" or an "r" for that matter and that car would still be unclaimed. WWDB was where Merrill Reese found a Philly audience before this year's Super Bowl. Often imitated,never equaled.
I cried when WHAT-FM changed its call letters to WWDB and dropped its jazz programming. (The “WDB” stands for former owners William and Dolly Banks.) P.S. We really need a separate Sid Mark thread.
I have to admit, I still know the Columbia and Capitol eras much better than the Reprise. It’s taken me three years to get here. That said, each Reprise album I acquire (Watertown, She Shot Me Down, Trilogy, the Jobim albums) well they all seem to be insanely great. My current fave, the compilation Everything Happens to Me. That “old” voice is every bit as wonderful as that “young” voice.
I love the “old” voice. People say Frank lost his voice but to me he didn’t lose it as much as it became a voice of a man who lived life and came out on top, well-worn. Case in point: “One For My Baby.” The original Capitol version sounds like a man who is heartbroken, his love just left. The Duets version sounds like a man looking back on his life, missing and wondering what ever became of her, he cannot after all these years and all this living ever shake her from his mind, especially at night. Even with new material that Frank did I still find something in his voice that just hits me just right.
The WWDB era,while jettisoning real jazz,was interesting,just a shame that both formats couldn't find a spot on the rediscovered FM dial. This was pre-smooth jazz,but they found both an interesting and at times frustrating format that had no definition. Print ads promised Ella,Peggy Lee,Gabor Szabo & Quincey(sic-that is how they printed Q's name)Jones-stars often capable of real jazz but on WWDB just the pop sides were showing. Keeping Frank as the center. Before WMMR went all-rock,they played Sinatra nightly,as well as a Sunday AM serving which might have been a way for WWDB to go. Often imitated,now imitating the imitator might have been the way to go. Gradually,they morphed into a MOR station,now in FM stereo,with acts like Dionne Warwick,Barbara Streisand and The Fifth Dimension(and notice an almost complete disappearance of instrumentals. On paper,it sounded like a good idea. New cars equipped with FM stereo. Bill & Dolly Banks were hoping for a hipper,richer and pretty much whiter audience. In true Philly fashion,it never happened. Suburb reception issues? Maybe. So Philly was always a talk radio phenom and crazy speech in stereo paid the bills. Sad.
I initially thought it was another dreaded "reverse" photo. However, upon further inspection, it's just a really bad chop job. Agreed. Never have seen before.
Sinatra's version of "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" was very popular in Japan. It appears on at least 4 Jap Reprise compilations. On the cover of one: "Many Moods of Sinatra" they superimposed his image over the Golden Gate Bridge. They were also fond of his Capitol rendition of "Everybody Loves Somebody" and Toshiba EMI issued a Capitol compilation titled after the song.
I don't know whether it was Ted Koehler or Rube Bloom that had fallen ill or on hard times. However, when Mr. S heard about it, with the twistin' craze taking over the nation by storm, he took their old song "Truckin'" (or "Everybody's Truckin") converted the words to "Twistin'" and had Hefti write a chart for it. All royalties went to the songwriting duo. Granted, the song tanked, but it was a great gesture from an old friend.
Nice story, thanks for sharing! Tanked or not it was still a very good idea to put the songwriting team into the spotlight by linking an old song from them with the Twist craze.
Rube Bloom....Sinatra loved his songs..."Day In Day Out", "Don't Worry About Me", "Fools Rush In", "Maybe You'll Be There" among many others.
“Everybody’s Twistin’” I’m sure Frank Junior has a little story about this song on his CD “As I Remember It” I could be wrong though
