soundcloud - my music - Wee Small Hours

It seems that the internet has destroyed music -- well seriously impaired the be ability of musicians to make money. Or at least hurt the ability of the people who used to make money off musicians to make money. Barnes and Noble in Boulder used to have a half-way decent CD section, but now that they've moved and even though they have maybe 50% more space, their selection so small as to be useless. Music in the age of mechanical reproduction, and especially digitally stored music, becomes worthless because it can be perfectly copied almost no cost.


At least once a year, I dream about Frank Sinatra, which is odd because I don't especially like Frank Sinatra. The whole rat pack, booze and mafia, tough guy business gives me the creeps. The depressed Sinatra, post Ava Gardner break-up, I understand and appreciate. I can do without ring-a-ding-ding and the Chairman of Board shtick. 


Reading the Gay Talese piece I was struck by Sinatra's childhood in Sicilian ghetto of northern New Jersey. For some reason I couldn't help but think about Jay Z. There's something similar about them: not in their musical aesthetic, but in the posture of aggrieved male narcissism and the threat of violence, and in the image or corporate wealth and dominance.  A very substantial achievement on the part of both, no doubt about it: masters of their own fate, when so many of their artistic contemporaries and peers were swallowed whole.  But for me, give me Duke Ellington or Quincey Jones.


Of course, as a saloon pianist, I can't escape the Sinatra. I don't think he wrote a note himself, but Julie Styne and Jimmy van Heusen and Michelle Legrand wrote masterpieces with him in mind.


Note: Maybe I have a problem because I was a Protestant proto-geek growing up on Jersey in the '50s in a family that was prejudiced against the Italians. We'd drive up to Red Bank to look at their Christmas lights. My mother always pointed out that "they" drove fancy cars, but used fruit crates for furniture.  "Pizzeria, diarrhea" we'd say in our smug Midwestern transplant way.


So here's "In the Wee Small Hours."


Regards


Small Hours  by  user1620611