Man, Ole Blue Eyes. It took me a long time to warm up to him. Now I can’t help but appreciate the man. This track called Dindi is off the “Frank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim” album. This widely known hard-ass from NJ, when he lets his facade down, is really a sensitive and flawed person. Its only if you stick around and catch him be that way, when you began to wonder why doesn’t he show this side more often? I think that’s what makes this time in his life more important. He recorded this track and the album during the decline of his popularity. His Reprise label was selling way more rock records than his pittance of sales were at that time. Rather than go back to his crooning past, he took a risk and gave someone whose sophisticated, meditative music was being forgotten the reins to produce this album.
Sinatra was roundly tested throughout the recording. I mean Tom Jobim, himself is a very quiet guy, a man of very few words…which made it even worse that he spoke so little English. Pairing him with Sinatra was an exercise in patience and gestures. Sinatra had to sing way softer now, to the point that he was surprised that he was still being recorded at times. However, Sinatra didn’t give up on Jobim, his arrangements were just too good. Simply full of great Brazilian standards, played in such a refined way, the album was released to great sales in spite of it showing a different side of Sinatra people were used to. It was a damn shame, that their followup album, also full of marvelous Brazilian standards, was less enthusiastically received. That followup allowed Sinatra, like us all can be, to put up that wall, and pull that album early rather than show failure at trying something that he so obviously enjoyed but was so unexpected to come from him. You can see glimpses of that facade coming down in future albums like “Watertown” but that specific era was sadly lost. For now, I’ll gladly to take this memory of him sung through this song.
Check out this video of them performing a medley of some of the tracks from the same album: