If You'd Only Listen

Today I happened to be playing through a chart I made years ago of a Sinatra deep cut, "Don't Cry, Joe" (which I once built a track on), and noticed what a deep-dish harmony it has on its main hook, which is surely what's always endeared it to me. I mean, it's irresistible:

Somehow that contrary, then complementary motion—melody leaping up while the chord slides down, melody tumbling back down as the chord slips down still further—somehow perfectly sets the push-pull tone of the song, a half-smile, half-shrug of commiseration with a broken-hearted friend who's lost a love, with the gentle but strong admonition to "let her go, let her go, let her go." You can almost see the barroom setting, but it's not the site of the lonely-hearts wee-hours despair that characterizes peak Sinatra but a slightly jollier, knockabout, aw-shucks, get-on-with-it mode. Unsurprisingly this recording dates from 1949; his 1961 retake is a louche big-band chart, and by then he sounds more like a sozzled Don Juan than a grinning Andy Hardy. (The song, incidentally, is by clarinetist Joe Marsala, who also wrote the words—so was he writing them to himself?) 

The later version drops the song's bonkers middle section, which has an almost free tempo feeling and cranks up modulations more insistently than Talking Heads' "Don't Worry About the Government," but with a similar purpose: This is straighten-your-back, dust-yourself-off music. (It starts at about 1:05.) When the main chorus returns, Sinatra is joined by backup singers the Pastels to really drive that chunky harmony home.

The only other thing I'd mention is a snarling turnaround arranger/conductor Hugo Winterhalter gives the saxes at about 2:32:

Coming right after a rather dainty glee-club harmony by the chorus, and leading into Sinatra's final plea to "take a look around and see just what you're missing," this figure sounds a bit like one last grab of the collar to hammer home the point to the listener—a way of saying, Snap out of it, man. "You'll feel much better once you've made your mind up," the song says a few times. It sure makes me feel much better every time I hear it.