I was playing "Fly me to the Moon" on guitar today. I am not a Sinatra fan but his version of "Fly me to the Moon" with the Count Basie Orchestra is a timeless masterpiece of art. I play a version that is not technically difficult to pull off but still captures all the jazzy sophistication of the song with it's mix of Major 7th and Dominant 7th chords.
The music of my formative years was country, rock and pop music. Sinatra and big band jazz had never been things that I was able to appreciate; Opera is still a problem for me in the same sort of way. However, circumstance caused me to listen to this particular version of "Fly me to the Moon" dozens of times until it had possessed my unconsciousness and I began to love the song.
For three months in the mid' '90's I worked the night shift in a commercial radio station whose main demographic was the retiree set and thus focused on the moldy oldies. One of the tracks in heavy rotation on this AM frequency fossil was "Fly me to the Moon". I was eventually fired for screwing up a syndicated religious program aired on Sunday mornings but not before I had started to listen to that song with an open ear/mind and begin to appreciate it's beauty and succinct perfection. (I would note that the same thing happened to me with Herb Alpert's Orchestral version of "This Guy in Love" but that's another blog.)
A year or so later I began my career as a wedding DJ and guess what song the oldies loved to slow dance to......you guessed it, "Fly me to the Moon". So for a two years, until I grew tired of bride's and their mothers and their special fucking day, I played that song several times each weekend as part of my oldies slow set before the traditional garter toss and the real drunkeness took over the reception hall. I still remember, third song on side two of cassette number 134.
Herein we have artistic perfection that will age like tree sap into amber for all time. In under three minutes Sinatra, Basie and company and Quincy Jones created an understated piece big band vocal beauty. I realize now how good Sinatra could be; how he wore the melody like a glove and never strayed or added notes. The modern R&B style of vocalism is the horrible antithesis to the archaic Sinatra style of shout.
Basie's band is like a tight rope for Frank to walk, the brass jumping out to punctuate and push the man along.
You can feel Sinatra's joie de vivre as he dances among the stars. When I play and sing the song I can feel his spirit in me and feel the human tragedy of our aging and passing. Why can't we sing for ever more? Why cannot we see what spring is like on other worlds? Sometimes I think Christianity's obsession with life after death is silly and childish but when I play "Fly me to the Moon", I begin to understand and I hope Sinatra is up there somewhere dancing and singing among the stars.
