The key word that comes to mind when discussing the arrangements that Axel Stordahl wrote for Frank Sinatra is "intimate." The ballads that Sinatra sang in the 1940s were usually quite slow in tempo and through this setting he routinely demonstrated his uncanny ability to sound strong and emotional even when singing at a near-whisper dynamic. Stordahl created a chamber music accompaniment style for him relying heavily on strings and often featured flute and clarinet solos. As Sinatra rose to fame he was a major contrast to superstar Bing Crosby, who rarely sounded romantic and was older as well. The musical accompaniments framed Sinatra’s voice in an intimate setting, ultimately sounding sexy to his young listeners. Even though Sinatra was married, young women were obsessed with him; the combination of the romantic sounds of his voice and, background music helped to create a frenzy as he became a pop music icon.

Axel Stordahl had been a trumpet player and group singer in Bert Bloch’s Orchestra when in 1936 Dorsey heard and hired him. He subsequently became a staff arranger with the Dorsey Orchestra. His introduction to Frank Sinatra came in the 1940s when the young singer, having just left the Harry James Orchestra, was hired by Dorsey. In 1942 Sinatra and Stordahl recorded four sides for RCA’s budget label Bluebird which became instant classics. When Sinatra left the Dorsey organization in 1942 Stordahl went with him to become his musical director.

By the mid-1940s, Sinatra had become a one-man music industry, with recordings, movies, radio shows, and live appearances in auditoriums, concert halls, and supper clubs. Representatives from music publishers swamped him with new songs, and he needed as many good ones as he could get. Sinatra even started his own publishing company run by his friends Ben Barton and Hank Sanicola (Barton Music). His taste was unerring; he knew what worked for him and what didn’t. As a result, most of Sinatra's output from his Columbia years is widely considered classic.

It is widely known that from 1943 to 1953 Axel Stordahl was Sinatra’s conductor and arranger. However, what hasn’t been widely understood is the extent to which he had assistance in the creation of arrangements. The concept of ‘ghost writing’ was commonplace at the time. The radio networks and television and movie studios had composers and arrangers on staff whose job it was to produce everything from film scores to incidental background music for announcer-read commercials. These on-staff arrangers were also available to help fill out a program of music needed for an upcoming performance. It’s no secret that as Sinatra became a major star in the 1940s he was performing on a near-daily basis. Due to the number of live dates Sinatra was involved in (concerts, radio, or television) it would have been very difficult for Stordahl to arrange new material to meet the demand. Hence, several ‘ghost writers’ were employed by the Sinatra organization to help quickly produce arrangements of popular songs of the day. Some of the people who contributed arrangements were Billy May, Bill Bunt, Neal Hefti, Earle Hagen, John Hicks, Lowell Martin, and George Siravo. In fact, there are at least two instances of arrangements that were begun by one arranger and finished by another. The two such arrangements are Don’t Fence Me In (Lowell Martin and Billy May) and The Brooklyn Bridge (Bill Bunt and Axel Stordahl). Until now it was widely believed that Stordahl had written most if not all of these arrangements. Now, due to the availability of materials from Sinatra’s library, we are able to determine the actual arrangers of this historic music.

While Stordahl more often than not arranged the ballads, he was not as comfortable with swing and jazzy songs. These arranging assignments were often farmed out to ghost writers. The most well-known of Sinatra's ghost writers was George Siravo, who played in Glenn Miller’s first and unsuccessful orchestra. During 1945, Siravo wrote for Charlie Barnet and contributed many arrangements of standard songs to Artie Shaw’s dance book. He would go on to arrange Sinatra’s one Columbia swing LP and an entire book of arrangements for club appearances in the early 1950s when Sinatra’s popularity had waned. To this day, all of Siravo's work for Sinatra in the 1940s is erroneously credited to Stordahl. Siravo continued to write for Sinatra into the early 1960s. Another arranger who wrote a great deal for Sinatra during the mid-1940s was Lowell Martin. Martin had previously played trombone and arranged for Tommy Dorsey and Woody Herman (“Las Chiapanecas”). He also arranged for Capitol’s artists such as The Pied Pipers and the Starlighters. He is often mistaken for Lloyd “Skip” Martin who also wrote and orchestrated for The Pied Pipers and worked for Sinatra in the early ‘60s.

Ken Lane wrote vocal arrangements and led choirs for Sinatra during this period. He is best known for being Dean Martin’s accompanist and was seen on Martin’s TV show every week. Lane had first worked with Martin at Paramount Pictures and is perhaps best known for having written the song Everybody Loves Somebody. This song was initially recorded by Sinatra but later became a bigger hit for Dean Martin in 1964.

Billy May re-located to the West Coast after leaving the Glenn Miller band in 1942, and joined Ozzie Nelson as a trumpet player/arranger. He was soon working for NBC radio and free-lancing. Years later, May spoke of writing for Sinatra during this period, but the breadth of his output remained unknown. Through our research of the music written for Sinatra during the Columbia years, we can finally attribute to him many of the arrangements he contributed. Of course, Frank and Billy would forge a strong musical bond at Capitol that lasted for many years.

Perhaps the biggest surprise (yet, a logical one) is discovering the name Earle Hagen among Sinatra’s arrangers during the 1940s. Hagen arranged and recorded with the Starlighters and Tony Martin for Mercury Records in 1946, and regularly worked for Alfred Newman at 20th Century-Fox, arranging and orchestrating musicals for several years. With his partner Herbert Spencer, he had a company during the 1950s called MSI that supplied music for television, with Hagen composing and Spencer orchestrating. They also made several now-rare albums with an ensemble of free-lance musicians that was called The Spencer-Hagen Orchestra. After dissolving their partnership, Hagen wrote themes and background scoring for The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, and many other TV shows. He was a respected teacher of film music, and his book Scoring for Films is still widely used. An excellent oral history of Hagen may be found at the Television Academy Foundation website at https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/earle-hagen#interview-clips

Sinatra’s story post-1950 is well-known. Listeners of pop music made novelty songs the hits of the day, and Sinatra had a harder time finding the kind of material that he was comfortable performing. Marital and voice problems plagued him, and his own TV show never really caught on, even though it was on for two years. A new producer at Columbia named Mitch Miller made things even worse by giving him terrible songs to record, and these records are the worst he ever made.

Capitol signed him to a contract when Columbia’s contract expired, and Sinatra brought Stordahl with him once again. The Capitol executives loved Axel’s music and signed him to his own contract, but thought that Sinatra should have a new musical direction. A recording session with Stordahl delivered nothing very new, so Sinatra was informed that Billy May would arrange the music for the next session. However, Billy May was unavailable at the time so Nelson Riddle was hired to ghost write. Riddle was well-known to Capitol Records as he had written several famous arrangements for Nat King Cole's recording sessions for the label including: Mona Lisa, Too Young, and Unforgettable. He contributed four arrangements: two in Billy May’s style and two in his own style. He also conducted the music at the recording session. The rest is show business history, as Riddle and Sinatra became an unbeatable combination and recorded several classic albums that have never been out of print.

Stordahl would become Eddie Fisher’s musical director, which did not sit well with Sinatra, and strained their once-close friendship. Stordahl had married June Hutton, lead singer of the Stardusters and the Pied Pipers, and made several recordings with her in subsequent years. Axel made one last album with Sinatra, ironically Sinatra’s last album for Capitol, Point of No Return. Stordahl would compose the theme for the TV show McHale’s Navy before he died of cancer in 1963.

Preparing for publication the arrangements written for Sinatra in the 1940s presents several challenges: often the music was cut or changed, copying errors in the parts were not always caught and corrected, and frequently introductions or endings were either re-written or created during the recording session. Many of these arrangements were written for Sinatra's radio appearances and were never officially recorded in the studio. Those that were later revisited in the recording studio frequently had music cut for time reasons or had other modifications made. We have opted to present the arrangements as-written with a narrative detailing any changes that were made to the original music. In addition, we indicate where a reference recording may be found; however, in some cases the only known performance comes from a radio broadcast not in commercial circulation.

While most Sinatra fans know and prefer the Capitol and Reprise albums, others have embraced his entire catalog, and know that the Columbia era established Frank Sinatra as a major star and one of the finest interpreters of popular songs who ever lived. We are proud to be able to publish the music written for Frank Sinatra during this time period, all from the original historic scores and parts.