Frank Sinatra - My Heart Stood Still

Atlantic City, 1988

[MarkBlackburnWPG]

This is where I came in . . .
It was on a January day in 1993 that I returned home from work to hear words from my wife that I'd been aching to hear: "You got a letter from Frank Sinatra."

I remember taking off my winter coat and boots, and stumbling into another room where I could be alone, making sure my hands were clean, and getting a bright reading light, and carefully opening the envelope and reading the note and re-reading it (ten times? twenty times?).

I remember being overcome with emotion, saying to myself, "Do you realize what an honor you've just received? This is from someone who, early in his career, received letters like mine numbering 3, 000 a week! Do you appreciate that he took the time---perhaps ten minutes of his life, to read your two-page letter, and then compose this signed response you hold in your hands? Do you realize what this is? The greatest musical entertainer of the Twentieth Century is telling you personally: "I greatly appreciate your interest in my music" and "it was so nice of you to take the time to write."

With an extra decade of immersing myself in Frank Sinatra's greatness, I'd have to say that only a "religious experience" --- and a glimpse of Eternity---could ever surpass what I feel in my heart, the sheer exhilarating joy I experience, when I listen for example, to "My Heart Stood Still" (my favorite of these). There is the high plateau where the singer and his great collaborator Nelson Riddle have their true, "shining hour." At that defining moment in 1963, the arranger conducts his finest orchestrations, with the largest symphony orchestra ever assembled in Hollywood---as the singer on a mountain peak of vocal greatness, performs his favorite songs by his (and my) favorite composer. For me personally that is the `coming-together-of-a-lifetime, ' ----all the peak emotions of memory, a lifetime's worth of emotion, bringing me tears of joy each time I hear it. (These days, the experience is rationed to perhaps once a month, and then just a cut or two at a time, so as to preserve the experience----I want to `spread it out' over the rest of my life, if I can.)

----

In the final paragraph of my letter I told Frank Sinatra how I'd "discovered your enduring greatness somewhat late in life. But perhaps that's why I appreciate you the more now.

"Thanks then, for being you, is all I want to say. The world would be a poorer place if you'd never passed this way. And I think, after six decades of your work, without anyone surpassing your greatness, I guess it's safe to say `We'll never know your like again.' Best wishes for a long and healthy life.

Sincerely,

Mark Blackburn
Winnipeg Canada

[saintcruzin]

He sounds great here and not young. Great song, now live, from one of Frank’s best LP’s The Concert Sinatra...