The Pop Story

Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours (1955)

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It always seemed odd to me that the Method as an acting technique took until the late ’50s to take hold in Hollywood, when pop consumers had been embracing the communication of realistic emotions for years through what we now call the Great American Songbook. Hollywood has always been many steps behind the general mood of the times; the best pop music, on the other hand, is always right there on the pulse. In the prewar years, and then again in the ’50s, it was catering to a grown-up audience in a way it arguably never would again once the teen became the pre-eminent cultural arbiter. And that audience was savvy - way savvier than MGM or Disney were willing (or able, thanks to the Hays Code) to admit.

Sinatra’s ‘In The Wee Small Hours’ represents probably the last - and greatest - product of the age of the Great American Songbook, before rock’n’roll swept it to the margins of popular culture. While Brando was bringing ‘reality’ to the silver screen, Frank Sinatra was with this album drawing on years of experience singing the great sophisticated standards of Arlen, Berlin, Mercer et al, (as well as drawing on his own heartbreak after splitting from Ava Gardner) to bring his adult audience performances of unmatched maturity and insight.

Listen to the controlled intensity of Sinatra’s performance of ‘I Get Along Without You Very Well’ and consider how far ahead of every other artform pop music was back then. Whether they knew it or not, the next generation of pop stars, from Elvis to the Beatles, was able to innovate freely because they had this foundation beneath their feet.

In the Wee Small Hours on Spotify