MUSIC REVIEW : Sinatra Covers Wear of the Years With Style, Charm

As Frank Sinatra passed from dapper middle age into stately maturity, respectful critics began comparing his voice to fine wine, to imply that what was being lost in youthful snap was being gained in richness and depth. Now that he’s 75, one might expect to hear in Sinatra’s voice more the creak of the cask than the glow of the flow. But Friday night’s concert before a nearly filled San Diego Sports Arena (set in a theater-in-the-round configuration) proved that the man still wields considerable power over a song and an audience. The concert was the latest installment of Sinatra’s yearlong “Diamond Jubilee Tour.”

What was surprising about Sinatra’s hourlong performance was not that he worked well within the vocal limitations imposed by advancing years, but his frequent and mostly successful defiance of those limitations. The singer set the stakes on the very first number, “You Make Me Feel So Young,” during which both the hazards of post-prime vocalizing and the Chairman’s assertive response to them were evidenced.

Under the baton of Frank Sinatra Jr., the large orchestra bounced into the opening notes of the Nelson Riddle arrangement, only to have Ol’ Blue Eyes begin unsteadily, as though he were uncertain of the key signature. After a couple of shaky lines, Sinatra looked at the musicians, who were gathered on the floor to one side of the large stage. “Keep goin’, I’ll find it,” he joked.

Once he had pinpointed the melody, Sinatra carried it into the upper regions of a vocal range that was supposed to have been compacted by time and bad habits. The singer not only twice hit the elevated last note of the line, “a wonderful fling to be flung,” he hammered it and held it with the lung capacity of someone half his age.

Two songs later, Sinatra would flex similar muscle on a forceful reading of “Come Rain or Come Shine.” In contrast to his early, bluesy renditions of this Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer chestnut, Sinatra now barks the lyrics in a swaying, swaggering arrangement that is characteristic both of his own temperament and of the way he has re-interpreted many of the warhorses in his repertoire.

In one of his few concessions to seniority, Sinatra now jabs his way through some songs, compensating for the pliant inflection no longer available to him by employing a sharp, trumpet-like attack on certain notes. This worked well Friday night on appropriately punched-up arrangements of such songs as “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” “The Best Is Yet to Come,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” and an emotionally potent performance of Rodgers and Hart’s “Where or When.”

But sometimes that approach backfires. Sinatra’s usually unerring sense of interpretive propriety failed him on a finger-snapping run-through of “What Now My Love” that trampled the song’s delicate meaning.

It would be one of only a couple of stumbles in the program, another being a drawn-out and overwrought version of “Soliloquy,” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Carousel.” On his early-’60s album, “The Concert Sinatra,” and again on the recent compact disc compilation “Frank Sinatra: The Reprise Collection,” the song provides both a welcome example of the Chairman’s willingness to experiment and testimony to his ability to handle larger, more dramatic forms of music. But plopped in the middle of a 60-minute show, the stop-and-go, 10-minute segment grew baggy and drained momentum.

Nevertheless, it was evident from the crowd’s approval that Sinatra could do little wrong on this night. Trim, fit and rod upright, the silver-haired star resembles a septuagenarian Caesar in whom sage authority has supplanted youthful vigor, and he commands a similar respect.

Fans followed every movement as Sinatra ambled around the stage like a retired prizefighter surveying all he had conquered. Sinatra himself made that last reference apt when, in mid-concert, he stopped to lead the audience in a tribute to the troops in the Persian Gulf.

“I’d give anything in the world,” he spat, “if they could make this stage into a boxing arena for me and Saddam Hussein. That creep.”

Sinatra played to the throng in other ways, as well. Lively romps through “Theme From ‘New York, New York’ ” and “Mack the Knife,” and a slightly subdued and therefore psychologically more complex “My Way” brought sustained ovations. At one point, Sinatra even toasted those in attendance. “To you, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” he said, hoisting a glass of Chivas Regal (the tour’s sponsor). “May you have a long life, and the best of life, and may the last voice you hear be mine.”

But for true Frank-ophiles, the most memorable moments came when Sinatra reached beyond his long list of hit singles to delve into the saloon style that is his trademark. Especially poignant was a performance of the Sammy Cahn-Jule Styne tune “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,” for which Sinatra prepared by lighting a mood-setting cigarette. “Don’t boo me when I do this,” he beseeched.

After closing his portion of the show with a version of “America the Beautiful” that predictably drew the Navy-town crowd to its feet, Sinatra brought back the opening act, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme. The three shticked their way through a long medley of songs associated with Sinatra’s career, and while the crowd seemed to enjoy this light-hearted finish, I found it goofy and anticlimactic.

In their warm-up segment, Lawrence and Gorme had acquitted themselves with enough cornball pizazz to please the easily entertained, but their reappearance was ill-advised. I’ve always felt that Gorme produces a harsh, unmusical tone and an exaggerated vibrato that test tolerance. In concert, the singer’s hamminess renders the combination insufferable. For someone whom her husband proudly proclaimed “the best lady singer in the business,” Gorme had a helluva time hitting any but the safest, mid-range notes. Invariably, she covered frequently winceable intonation with that smoke-alarm vibrato.

Sharing his tour with the duo is a generous gesture on Sinatra’s part, but if he ever returns to San Diego, I hope he acts on the words in his audience toast and lets the last voice we hear be his.