Search - Frank Sinatra :: No One Cares

"The nights are endless things...": Sinatra's Disque Noir

J. Nofer | Long Island | 03/25/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Sinatra used to refer, only half-jokingly, to_No One Cares_ as 'the suicide album,' adding that it should have been sold along with a .22 calibre revolver. No other album of his (or any other pop singer's, though Judy Garland's_Alone_ perhaps comes close) is as relentlessly, as obdurately gloomy as this one. Recorded at his commercial and artistic peak but pervaded by an awareness of loss and failure,No One Cares is not only a cry from the heart of one suffering the 'pangs of dispriz'd love' but a downbeat hymn to American urban despair.

It finds a man dwelling in his own measure of that despair, 'alone and parted far from joy and gladness' (and finding scant consolation in a half-empty whiskey glass) - but a man nevertheless intent on relating his tales of romantic anguish before he says his farewell to life. (The final track, "None but the Lonely Heart," with its line 'a burning fire devours me,' amounts, really, to Sinatra's Immolation Scene). The album might have been titled_Come Cry in Your Beer with Me_ or some such thing, except that it seems, ultimately, less an invitation to share in his misery than a warning to the rest of us, that we have yet a chance and hope of escaping his fate.

Sinatra renders the album's eleven songs (twelve, with the inclusion on CD of "The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else," from the same sessions) with the utmost sensitivity and technical refinement, intoning their lyrics so as to convince us he's lived every moment of them, and that every moment continues to be all but unbearable. If his interpretive genius consists above all in his way with a ballad - and I believe it does - then_No One Cares_ qualifies as one of the surest masterpieces in the Sinatra catalog. It went underappreciated for decades, but the tide has begun to turn at last, if the ratings for it posted so far to this site alone are any indication. I could (and perhaps should) just consider my job here done, and allow the album to speak for itself. Instead, I offer a few observations on each of its tracks, as follows:



"When No One Cares" The title track was composed for the album by Van Heusen and Cahn. It sets the album's tone, and is a pretty good song in its own right, though I'm not sure it's ever been recorded by another vocalist. No need for it to have been; Sinatra renders it definitively.



"A Cottage for Sale" Sinatra himself was quoted to the effect that this was the saddest song ever written, because it deals with the complete disintegration of a marriage, epitomized in the image of a neglected country dwelling. Sinatra mines all the poignancy inherent in the lyric - one that will probably (the divorce rate being what it is) hit especially close to home for a multitude of listeners.



"Stormy Weather" This title probably seemed like a natural for this album, but I rather wish Sinatra had opted for another, perhaps lesser-known, torch song. He and Jenkins subject this Arlen-Koehler classic to the slowest imaginable tempo, stretching the melody out of shape, while Jenkins's violins often threaten to smother the familiar tune. Perhaps even more damagingly, I can't really buy the conceit that Sinatra's been praying to 'the Lord above' or that he fears 'that ol' rockin' chair's bound to get' him. Ethel Waters and Lena Horne (among others, but these two women perhaps most memorably) both performed "Stormy Weather" more affectingly and believably than Sinatra does here.



"Where Do You Go?" The next cut on the album goes a long way toward making up for the previous one. It's probably the blackest piece of material Sinatra ever recorded (at least until "A Long Night" from_She Shot Me Down_), leaving its unanswerable questions ('Where do you go when it starts to rain...where will you sleep when the night time comes?') hanging in the desolate night air. Both singer and arranger rise to the occasion, Jenkins the more notably for his understatement.



"I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You" The words of this fine song constitute a moving admission of defeat, evidently made before the game ever really got started. Listen to the way Sinatra tellingly delays his delivery of the word_kiss_ in the line 'If you'd surrender, just for a tender kiss or two...' and you'll realize you're in the presence of a man who knows a thing or two about the intimate relationship between phrasing and emotional effect - and about intimate relationships.



"Here's That Rainy Day" Once again, a Van Heusen-Cahn number, perfect for Sinatra and perfect for the close of the first side of the original LP. Today, of course, we're compelled to press PAUSE on our CD remotes if we wish to pause and reflect after the first half...which is easier than getting up and flipping the LP over, but less_eventful_, somehow. (I do advise taking a breather after the first six tracks.) Anyway, this track really captures the feel of a gray, chill afternoon - just the kind to spend inside, sipping brandy and listening to_No One Cares_ over and over (or at least until your Scrabble buddies arrive).



"I Can't Get Started" This is a song about male impotency, really, but not the kind Viagra can do a damn thing about. Sinatra's performance of it makes Bunny Berigan's classic version seem rather lightweight - not to slight the latter, which possesses charms of its own, but Sinatra's version really comes from a different world. For many years I was convinced I was alone in my regarding this to be among his very greatest recordings, so I was gratified recently to read, in his excellent little volume on_The Manchurian Candidate_ (BFI Publishing), Greil Marcus's remarks about_No One Cares_ - which he considers the peak of the singer's work at Capitol - and in particular "I Can't Get Started," which Marcus calls 'bottomless' (a wonderfully apt adjective, it seems to me).



"Why Try to Change Me Now?" I confess I've never quite 'gotten' the lyrics to this song; they sound very urbane and smart, but quite unlike any I've come to expect from a torch song. In any case, Sinatra's reading is extremely heartfelt and moving, all but banishing, at least while I'm listening, any doubts I've entertained about its suitability for the album.



"Just Friends" This is one of the songs that Sinatra had to get to sooner or later, and_No One Cares_ was as good a place as any. His performance is essentially flawless (in fact, he even betters Alfalfa's warbling of it to Darla in "The Little Rascals"). Jenkins's writing for winds here is delicate and effective.



"I'll Never Smile Again" This title, of course, the singer had performed with the Pied Pipers and Tommy Dorsey's band, some seventeen or eighteen years earlier. All that can be said, really, by way of comparison of the two versions is that the 1959 is infinitely sadder and infinitely truer to the experience of loss.



"The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else" I've chosen, whenever I've played the CD, to program this 'bonus track' as eleventh in sequence. I can't say (can anyone?) what might have been its original intended place in the song order, but there's no reason to believe it would have occupied the final position. If anything, it should have replaced "Stormy Weather," so much more affecting and effective is this cut, which for years languished in relative obscurity. Its appearance on CD in the company of its original session mates is a blessing indeed.



"None but the Lonely Heart" A melody by Tchaikovsky, supplied with a lyric by a writer who, at least in the CD booklet, goes uncredited. It's a lyric Sinatra delivers with great feeling and conviction, in an interpretation of tremendous eloquence. Listen as many times as your heart can bear it.



And there you have them - twelve of the most emotionally draining, technically accomplished performances ever committed to wax by our finest interpreter of popular music. (I've chosen not to deal with the bonus tracks that originate from unrelated sessions; as far as I'm concerned, they're extraneous and don't belong here.) I rank_No One Cares_ with a mere handful of other Sinatra albums, including_Songs for Swingin' Lovers_,Where Are You,_Only the Lonely_ and_September of My Years_ (the fifth keeps changing, and that's fine by me), at the summit of the singer's art. To be sure, it isn't an album for everyone; indeed, it may be less purely_enjoyable_ than any of those with which it shares that summit. But for those prepared and willing to immerse themselves in its darkly romantic pessimism,No One Cares can be an experience at once devastating and transfiguring.

Just don't blame me if you blow your brains out afterwards. You can't say I didn't warn you.



_P.S._ Noted jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason, though he had some harsh things to say about Sinatra in his 'Ol' Blue Eyes' phase (things with which I don't necessarily disagree, and with which I'll deal in some future review), wrote with as keen an understanding of Sinatra's unique place among American vocalists as anyone before or since. His penetrating liner notes from the original album, reproduced here in full, shed much light upon Sinatra's artistry and especially upon what he was up to on_No One Cares_."