James Kaplan > Quotes

“I’m a Fool” may not be a great song, but Sinatra’s shattering performance of it transcends the material. His emotion is so naked that we’re at once embarrassed and compelled: we literally feel for him.”
― James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice

“In December, Angela Lansbury had been signed to play Raymond’s mother, the arch-villainess Eleanor Shaw Iselin. Apparently, Sinatra originally wanted Lucille Ball for the role, a fascinating casting notion, as Tom Santopietro points out: “As Ball aged, she grew into an increasingly hardened performer, losing all traces of the vulnerability that so informed her brilliant multiyear run on television’s I Love Lucy. The resulting quality of toughness would have suited the role of [Eleanor] very well, although it is anyone’s guess whether or not Ball would have felt comfortable delving into the dark recesses of [her] warped character.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“By all accounts, John Frankenheimer was singularly obsessed with The Manchurian Candidate, a film that, according to Daniel O’Brien, the director regarded “as his first truly personal project, feeling that the story made an all too valid point regarding the political manipulation and conditioning of American society.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“One cool morning—a rainstorm had swept through the night before; now the City of Angels sparkled like Eden itself—he was walking between soundstages in Culver City, carrying a cardboard cup of coffee, nodding to this glorious creature (dressed as a harem girl), then that glorious creature (a cowgirl), then that glorious creature (a secretary?)—they all smiled at him—when he ran into, of all people, an old pal of his from the Major Bowes days, a red-haired pianist who’d bounced around the Midwest in the 1930s, Lyle Henderson (Crosby would soon nickname him Skitch). Henderson was strolling with a creature much more glorious, if possible, than the three Sinatra had just encountered. She was tall, dark haired, with sleepy green eyes, killer cheekbones, and absurdly lush lips, lips he couldn’t stop staring at. Frankie! Henderson said, as they shook hands. His old chum was doing all right these days. Sinatra smiled, not at Henderson. The glorious creature smiled back bashfully, but with a teasing hint of directness in her dark eyes. The pianist—he was doing rehearsal duty at the studio—then got to say the six words that someone had to say, sometime, but that he and he alone got to say for the first time in history on this sparkling morning: Frank Sinatra, this is Ava Gardner.”
― James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice

“Sinatra once said that the only two people he was ever afraid of were his mother and Tommy Dorsey—a flip comment but also a sincere and deeply significant one.”
― James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice

“I’m for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Then Frank said, ‘Have you ever heard that when five o’clock comes, it’s martini time? We could be right in the middle of a scene, but it’s over for me, because it’s martini time. Did you ever hear that?”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“In the car going home, I said, “We should have stayed.” Bogie said, “No, we shouldn’t. You must always remember we have a life of our own that has nothing to do with Frank. He chose to live the way he’s living—alone. It’s too bad if he’s lonely, but that’s his choice. We have our own road to travel, never forget that—we can’t live his life.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“to be all the way across the country. “Dad was on the air in the middle of a radio show broadcast live from Hollywood”
― James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice

“Why don’t you steal the pattern out of Kenton’s ‘23 Degrees North, 82 Degrees West’?” the trombonist, an alumnus of Stan Kenton’s big band, said.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“He swung so hard, you could’ve turned him upside down and shaken every piece of change out of his pocket, and he would have never missed a beat.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“You can’t explain what it is about the sound of Sinatra’s voice,” Feinstein says. “I mean, you can try, and you can get very poetic in describing it. But there is something there that is transcendent, that simply exists in his instrument. He developed it, he honed it, he understood it himself, he knew what he could do, and he used it to his best advantage. That was something that people responded to.”
― James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice

“the writer said that when the music began and I started to sing, I was “honest.” That says it as I feel it. Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe. I’m honest. If you want to get an audience with you, there’s only one way. You have to reach out to them with total honesty and humility. This isn’t a grandstand play on my part; I’ve discovered—and you can see it in other entertainers—when they don’t reach out to the audience, nothing happens. You can be the most artistically perfect performer in the world, but an audience is like a broad—if you’re indifferent, endsville.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“One day on a break, we’re at the Three Deuces and Miles comes back and he’s cocky, you know. He goes up to Dizzy and says, “I can play anything you can play,” and Dizzy smiles and says, “Yeah, but an octave lower.”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“Ted Joans carried “a blackjack and a napkin filled with hot pepper to throw in their eyes in case I was attacked.” LeRoi Jones had a similar strategy”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“Francis, I’d play the Godfather for you,” he told the startled director. “I wouldn’t do it for those guys at Paramount, but I’d do it for you.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Miles, on the other hand, did just that, frequenting the Juilliard library and taking out scores by Stravinsky, Berg, and Prokofiev. I wanted to see what was going on in all of music. Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery, and I just couldn’t believe someone could be that close to freedom and not take advantage of it.”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“Knowledge is freedom and ignorance is slavery,”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“he liked to show his music students, who idolized Coltrane as the seminal figure of jazz saxophone, the photo from the Elate Club concert. “I say, ‘Well, if it started with Coltrane, what is he doin’ about to burn his hand lookin’ at Charlie Parker play, with his mouth open?’ ”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“I think [it represented] a break from when jazz players had to be entertainers. And especially bebop as exemplified by Charlie Parker, who used to stand up straight—he didn’t dance around and all that stuff. He played all this great music. And it sort of was a harbinger of things to come in the social world. All races of people appreciated what a great music bebop was. And with Charlie Parker especially—I think there was a sort of racial thing where it was trying to straighten up American society.”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“I ducked the party, lost the crowds, and took a walk,” he said years later. “Just me and Oscar! I think I relived my entire lifetime that night as I walked up and down the streets of Beverly Hills. Even when a cop stopped me, he couldn’t bring me down to earth. It was very nice of him, although I did have to wait until his partner came cruising to assure him that I was who I said I was and that I had not stolen the statue I was carrying.” But he had not stolen the statue. He was Frank Sinatra.”
― James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice

“Miles, on the other hand, did just that, frequenting the Juilliard library and taking out scores by Stravinsky, Berg, and Prokofiev.”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“Don’t you ever do that!” he shouted at the man. “You don’t throw things at a lady, you understand?” “It’s all right, Frank,” I said. “I’m not hurt—” “That’s beside the point! You bring the box, you creep, and you offer a Kleenex—you got that? You offer a Kleenex!” Frank let the man go and came over to me to be sure that I was all right. Often, over the years, whenever I pulled a Kleenex out of a box, I thought of Frank.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“She stopped me cold when she said, ‘What color is the wind?’ ”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“the Apollonian marvel of the piece”):”
― James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice

“Miles Davis got to sit in Buddy Anderson’s chair for the Eckstine band’s entire two-week stand at the Riviera—though the two weeks were more memorable to the eighteen-year-old than to anybody else. As Eckstine recalled, “Miles, you couldn’t even hear him past the reed section.”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“purse, and the word got back to him,” recalled the pianist Monty Alexander, who began playing at Jilly’s”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself. Miles”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool

“I hate cops. You're either a cop or a reporter. And I hate cops and newspapermen.”
― James Kaplan, Sinatra: The Chairman

“Well, if it started with Coltrane, what is he doin’ about to burn his hand lookin’ at Charlie Parker play, with his mouth open?’ ”
― James Kaplan, 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool