Stop the Presses! New footage of FRANK SINATRA Live in 1966

A Bonus from THE FRANK TANK (as well as THE NAT PACK)

My great friend, that fine contemporary singer of jazz and standards based in Berlin, David Rose (not the composer!) shared this footage with me today. As of now, we don’t have any of the details - this concert performance, at this time, seems to be completely unknown in all of Sinatra lore. The gentleman who posted these to YouYube says “1967,” but Sinatra himself tells us “the record is three or four months old” (meaning the Strangers in the Night album, which contained both “Summer Wind” and “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby”) which would place this performance around September or October 1966. Also, Sinatra mangles the lyric slightly on “Yes Sir” and significantly and humorously on on “Summer Wind” - which might indicate that they’re fairly new to his concert “book.”

From David: “Somebody on Facebook wrote me that it was a charity event hosted by Milton Berle at Kiel Opera House. Other performers were Herb Alpert, Connie Francis and Dean Martin. but there is no confirmation on this.” (Herb and Connie are both still very much with us … maybe they’ll remember something? Sharing a concert with Sinatra isn’t something anyone would ever forget. Could this have been a closed circuit concert in the same manner as the the Kiel Opera House “Rat Pack” concert from Father’s Day, 1965. The visual quality is much better, indicating that it’s preserved on videotape, rather than a kinescope, like the famous 1965 show. )

For the first number, Sinatra gets the simple lyrics from this 1925 pop song mostly correct, except that he (we could argue deliberately) mostly sings it as, “Yes Sir, She’s My Baby.”

Now “Summer Wind” is an entirely different story. Here, Sinatra sings - at the end of the first chorus:

“Now And then,
I hear again,
The Song it sings to me (the subtitles get it even more wrong, as “the song it seems to me”)
That fickle wind,
The summer wind

Those lazy nights,
Those big fist fights (here, he interjects “my words!”)
They go flying by

Now that he’s clearly forgotten the lyrics, he walks up to the piano, and we can see the shine on Bill Miller’s glasses, and also Miller himself looking bemusedly - he grabs the piano part and starts to look for the words.

He looks very contented with himself, gives an irresistible smile, and finishes the first chorus more or less correctly. He, then comes back, waits for the key change, and starts the second chorus - which is only half a chorus - joyfully mangling the text again:

“Days and nights
All the fights
He goes on and on.

He looks again at the words on the piano part, and finishes the vocal, he gets a line or two correct, but then forgets the rest, says something unintelligible and then a very basic wordless phrase: “do do do do!”

More questions: some of the musicians’ faces are very much on camera, but I don’t recognize anybody: there’s a violinist (a short, pudgy guy with black hair and big glasses) behind Sinatra , but I don’t recognize him - it’s not anybody we know from Sinatra’s history, and likewise the guitarist (also big glasses but absolutely no hair - I tell you it isn’t me!) is not anybody we know, but they are on camera, so hopefully somebody might recognize them.

Sinatra’s disclaimer / apology at the end is priceless:

“You’ll have to forgive me, folks, I’m a winter singer - I don’t sing these kind of songs.”

His “This is All I Ask” is nearly perfect - even though I associate this great Gordon Jenkins song (sung by Sinatra on September of My Years, 1965) with Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett more than Sinatra - the only lyric he changes, deliberately or otherwise, is “shimmering rainbows” instead of “wandering rainbows.”

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1537574319705113/permalink/9737312516397878/?app=fbl

As of now I don’t have any specifics - maybe I’ll return to these if and when more specific details emerge (hopefully more numbers will emerge as well), but for now I just wanted to share them pronto with Substackers.

More updates to come! File this post under the category of “Breaking News.”
(Yes! “When news breaks, we fix it!”)

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(Very special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer & Dan Fortune for their expert proofing, hey!)

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