The One for My Baby Variations
Over in the Forum thread on my post saluting Frank Sinatra this morning is this gem from Michigan State University English Professor James Seaton:
Among the many who enjoy both Scott Johnson’s typically thoughtful post on Frank Sinatra and the accompanying video of Sinatra singing “One for My Baby,” there might be a few who are familiar with academic “cultural studies.” Some in this small group might be interested in my essay “Criticism and Cultural Studies in the Light of Frank Sinatra” (Academic Questions, 13.1 [Winter 1999-2000], 39-46), which discusses three different Sinatra performances of “On for My Baby” and his introductions before three live audiences in Australia, Paris and Las Vegas. Here’s an excerpt from the article:Thanks to Professor Seaton for his kind words and for excerpting his thoughtful essay. For more reading of interest on Sinatra, Anthony Szulc writes to remind us of Gay Talese's classic Esquire article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold."Cultural studies can discourse at length about Frank Sinatra’s attitude about drinking and his relations with women, but it cannot say anything meaningful about Sinatra’s creative achievement. It could, for example, take account of Sinatra’s introductions to “One for my Baby (and One More for the Road),” but it cannot do justice to Sinatra’s performances of the song itself.
In his introductions to “One for my Baby” Sinatra often humorously emphasized the inebriation of the song’s protagonist. At Melbourne with Red Norvo in 1959 he informed the audience the main character has been drinking since one in the afternoon. Sinatra told a Parisian audience in 1962 that the main character is “fractured, stoned, he’s fairly mulled--drunk.” Appearing with Count Basie in Las Vegas in 1965, he introduced the ballad by telling the audience “This is the part of the program when we sing a drunk song.”
. . . The attitudes expressed in Sinatra’s introductions of “One for My Baby” provide data for the sociologist; what his singing expresses can be grasped only if one responds to his performances as art rather than as research material. Sinatra’s language in his introductions . . . leads one to think that he is about to sing a song that exhibits human nature at its lowest common denominator.
In his singing, Sinatra avoids entirely the vulgarity of the introductions. Although his commentaries emphasize that the “I” of the song is drunk, no hint of drunkenness appears in Sinatra’s singing. There is no comedy or sentimentality gained by slurring words or otherwise mimicking the speech of a drunk. On the contrary, Sinatra’s enunciation is flawless. In his renditions, the protagonist seems a romantic lover who refuses to allow his despair to turn love to bitterness.
Despite his own introductions, it is clear that Sinatra the singer does not conceive of the protagonist as a drunk or as a sexual low-life but instead as a gentleman. Sinatra’s introductions would not be valuable to the researcher because of the uniqueness of the attitudes they express but rather because of their representativeness. Cultural studies is interested in what can be classified, not in what is beyond categorization. The attitudes expressed in Sinatra’s introductions of “One for My Baby” provide data for the sociologist; what his singing expresses can be grasped only if one responds to his performances as art rather than as research material. Sinatra’s language in his introductions . . . leads one to think that he is about to sing a song that exhibits human nature at its lowest common denominator.
In his singing, Sinatra avoids entirely the vulgarity of the introductions. Although his commentaries emphasize that the “I” of the song is drunk, no hint of drunkenness appears in Sinatra’s singing. There is no comedy or sentimentality gained by slurring words or otherwise mimicking the speech of a drunk. On the contrary, Sinatra’s enunciation is flawless. In his renditions, the protagonist seems a romantic lover who refuses to allow his despair to turn love to bitterness.
According to Mercer’s lyrics, the protagonist decides not to tell his story to the bartender for two reasons: because it’s late ("I know you’re anxious to close") and, more importantly, because “you’ve got to be true to your code.” . . . When Sinatra sings “But you’ve got to be true to your code,” the listener is stirred at the ability of the disappointed lover, seemingly aware of nothing but his own pain, to nevertheless stop to consider the situation of the bartender. The lonely lover realizes that there are other people in the world besides himself, and other commitments besides love. He restrains himself from telling all because he does not want to put the bartender in a situation where he might violate his “code.” This seems to be the dramatic situation intimated by Mercer’s words, and it says a great deal about Sinatra’s singing that he makes such refinement of emotion believable.
Sinatra’s occasional interpolation of a different version of the “code” phrase is not only interesting in itself, but it reveals much about the spirit in which Sinatra sings the song, whether he uses Mercer’s line or his own variation. . . . In Mercer’s version, the “code” belongs to the bartender; in Sinatra’s variation, the “gentleman’s code” belongs to the protagonist. . . . His claim to the title is not based on money or status but rather on adherence to “a gentleman’s code.” He won’t “tell . . . a lot” because gentleman don’t spread that sort of story, even though the protagonist feels as though he “might explode” unless the story is “talked away.” Thus, a “brief episode” that might be a tawdry one-night stand becomes instead an instance of romantic love. . . . Sinatra the raconteur evokes a milieu in which human nature is reduced to its lowest common denominator . . . Sinatra the singer takes his listeners to another realm . . . where respect remains even when hope is gone. The former provides data for the glorified sociology that is cultural studies, the latter creates art that can be appreciated only by those who respond to it with something of the same seriousness with which it is created.
