Anyone who’s watched Seth McFarlane’s “Family Guy” knows his love for both the Sinatra and Great American Songbooks runs deep. It also comes as no surprise that such a brilliant voiceover artist is one heck of a singer!
By Matt Silver
With his new album, Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements, Seth McFarlane walks the musical roads Sinatra left untaken, singing a dozen charts that were originally written for the Chairman — by Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Don Costa — but never recorded. Anyone who's ever watched Family Guy knows of McFarlane's abiding love for and encyclopedic knowledge of 20th century music and culture, most particularly popular song and dance. But, for as much recognition as he receives for brilliance as a producer, actor, illustrator, comedian, and voice actor — all of which is deserved — McFarlane might also reasonably be called one of the most astute pop cultural historians and commentators of our time.
One can only imagine the thrill McFarlane must have felt becoming the first inhabitant of musical worlds built for Sinatra. Some of these worlds were too daunting to tread gracefully through, even for Frank. Take Nelson Riddle's arrangement of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life," for example.
Sinatra made but ultimately aborted efforts to record it during the sessions that produced 1958's Only the Lonely. Riddle's arrangement is beautiful but full of potential pitfalls for all but the most risk-tolerant vocalists. McFarlane has the gumption to go where Sinatra had the mostly good sense not to...and the results are really, really impressive, considering the degree of difficulty. Of course, backing by a 70-piece orchestra expands a singer's margin for error almost infinitely. Which is exactly the most sane way for any Sinatra-phile with McFarlane's wherewithal to approach this material.
For as famous as McFarlane is for making fun of things, he treats these "lost" arrangements with the utmost humility and dignity, honoring not just Sinatra-the-singer but Sinatra the musician who keenly understood how an instrumental arrangement could elevate and totally transform a vocal presentation.
Don't miss Seth McFarlane's KSDS debut; he joins host Will Friedwald on SING! SING! Sing! Saturday morning, June 28, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. PT
