[Sinatra, Frank. (1915–1998)] Quinlan, John.
Tips on Popular Singing by Frank Sinatra
New York: Embassy Music Corporation. 1941. 32 pp. Softcover, staple bound. Uncommon book of vocal exercises by the beloved singer, written in collaboration with his voice teacher, John Quinlan. Light wear to wrappers; pencil annotations at the head of each exercise throughout, showing the owner worked diligently through the exercises! Overall very good. 9 x 12 inches (22.8 x 30.4 cm).Elena Passarello writes in Better magazine: "Quinlan began by training Sinatra's body from feet to pelvis to neck to temples, remolding it as a reservoir for polished tone. His breath was inflated to accommodate long, smooth notes with constancy. The mouth that, in speech, wrenched itself into Joisey knots was reprogrammed into masks of widened, relaxed singing positions. These masks-a face for every phoneme-were cross-referenced with different modes and shifts in melody, which made all Sinatra's sounds blend into one another. By 1941, five years after his first Quinlan lesson, the Sinatra sound figure-skated out of the nation's radios, a presence you knew to be his at first note, a flood of lacquered sound. The thirty-two-page "Tips" claimed it could work similar magic on any interested body and face, for just seventy-five cents. [...] 'Tips' devotes most of its pages to sixteen chromatic passages, sung in fragments of near-gibberish, which the pupil is to repeat again and again, building the muscle memory of his breath, face, and chords. [...] This 'Tips' coaching aims for the exact delivery that shaped what is arguably America's longest singing career. It was a sound that was popular both for its refinement and for its ease: a girded, articulate, and balletic voice. And also, if we are to believe 'Tips' a teachable one." ("Teach Me Tonight," in Better, issue 1.) (17270)
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