Beaver County News
PITTSBURGH — When he was 51, when he was 68 and when he was 77 as his days were growing short, Frank Sinatra performed at the Civic Arena.
Pittsburgh must have been his kind of town. Ol’ Blue Eyes came back eight times between 1967 and 1993. What very good years they were.
This could also be a very good year.
The music Sinatra so fabulously sang is back, this time at the Pittsburgh CLO Cabaret downtown beginning Thursday evening.
“My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra” is a celebration of the music that Americans listened to for half a century as the scrappy, skinny kid from Hoboken, N.J. rose on stage and screen, fell and got up again and again.
Sinatra, critics and fans say, did it on his own terms, his own way until his death on May 14, 1998. He was 82.
“My Way” is a musical revue, a journey of Sinatra’s storied career that features 58 of the 1,400 songs he recorded and insight into what made the complicated man appealing.
‘He had an amazing career. He sang incredible music. He was this very genuine man. He was not without his flaws and not everything that he did was good. But, he had a very big heart. He was a good man and ultimately his life had an impact. He made a difference,” said David Grapes, the show’s co-creator and director.
The Parkersburg,
W.Va. native got the idea for “My Way” while watching retrospectives of Sinatra’s career aired on cable and network TV days after Sinatra’s death.
Grapes, who ran a small theater in upstate New York, was intrigued with a series of concerts that featured Sinatra performing with a small combo in London.
“You know there’s a musical in there,” he thought. Grapes, who’d discovered Sinatra as a college student in the late ’60s, delved deeper in Sinatra’s music and life, then teamed with former student Todd Olson. They wrote a play and Olson a book. Within a year, they staged the play at the theater.
A year later, they changed “My Way” from a play to the musical revue. The revue gives audiences the music and a sense of Sinatra’s style. It’s not a biography, Grapes explained.
It’s a journey of his music from the big band and swing selections of the ’40s to the darker songs of the ’50s, and to the signature songs of his later years such as “Strangers in the Night,” and “My Way.”
The songs are grouped by themes such as young love, love gone wrong, cities and towns. They include Sinatra standards such as “Young at Heart” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” show tunes such as “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady is a Tramp” and lesser known songs such “Dindi” and “Wave.”
Two males and two female characters perform the songs.
One male represents the young rail-thin singer as he worked his way to stardom, and the second male, the middle-aged suave Rat Pack crooner who defined “cool.”
The females are archetypal figures of the women Sinatra was attracted to: the sensuous, challenging bad girls types a la actress Ava Gardner and the other more less aggressive, less assertive blonds a la actress Mia Farrow.
The characters are not impersonators and don’t try to imitate Sinatra’s style, which Grapes said, can’t be done
His reasoning is simple.
The voice, a baritone that sounded like a tenor, was extraordinarily smooth and unique. Other singers simply don’t sound like Sinatra.
And through the years as he went from Rudy Vallee crooner to big band singer to a more mature sound, his voice deepened, Grapes said.
“He was a great interpreter of songs. He sang songs in a way that almost put him in a theatrical setting,” he said. Sinatra’s interpretation often went beyond the original intent of the songwriter.
An example, “Luck be a Lady” from the musical “Guys and Dolls” is about a man blowing on a pair of dice. Sinatra made it a song about a man’s relationship with a woman.
And Sinatra had a knack of finding the exactly the right song. “He had the ability to pick material that spoke to him and to his audience,” Grapes said.
Lucky for him, Sinatra could choose from a wealth of songs written by wonderful songwriters the likes of Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Sammy Cahn.
His musical talents and his personality attracted both the blue collar and the upper class, the street kids and theatergoers. Sinatra was a dichotomy and his appeal broad, the director said. “My Way’s” about Sinatra’s talents and humor, not politics or controversy.
He expects Sinatra fans, those who grew up listening or saw him in concert to see “My Way.” Grapes never did saw Sinatra perform live.
“It’s a great date to come with someone you’ve known for awhile,” he said.
And chances are that younger folks who come might recognize songs from commercials.
“We’ve had so much inundation in the last six months of everything that is wrong, going bad, getting worse, getting awful, and it’s a chance to come and have a happy evening,” Grapes said.
And it might just make 2009 a very good year.
Do you know which movie that still is from?
