Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian immigrants, Sinatra began his musical career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the "bobby soxers". He released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, in 1946. Sinatra's professional career had stalled by the early 1950s, and he turned to Las Vegas, where he became one of its best known residency performers as part of The Rat Pack. His career was reborn in 1953 with the success of From Here to Eternity, with his performance subsequently winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. Sinatra released several critically lauded albums, including In the Wee Small Hours (1955), Songs for Swingin' Lovers! (1956), Come Fly with Me (1958), Only the Lonely (1958) and Nice 'n' Easy (1960).
Sinatra left Capitol in 1960 to start his own record label, Reprise Records, and released a string of successful albums. In 1965, he recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and released the tracks "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way". After releasing Sinatra at the Sands, recorded at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Vegas with frequent collaborator Count Basie in early 1966, the following year he recorded one of his most famous collaborations with Tom Jobim, the album Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim. It was followed by 1968's collaboration with Duke Ellington. Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971, but came out of retirement two years later and recorded several albums and resumed performing at Caesars Palace, and reached success in 1980 with "New York, New York". Using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally until a short time before his death in 1998.
Sinatra forged a highly successful career as a film actor. After winning an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and received critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). He appeared in various musicals such as On the Town (1949), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956), and Pal Joey (1957), winning another Golden Globe for the latter. Toward the end of his career, he became associated with playing detectives, including the title character in Tony Rome (1967). Sinatra would later receive the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1971. On television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on ABC in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Sinatra was also heavily involved with politics from the mid-1940s, and actively campaigned for presidents such as Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, though before Kennedy's death Sinatra's alleged Mafia connections led to his being snubbed.
While Sinatra never formally learned how to read music, he had an impressive understanding of it, and he worked very hard from a young age to improve his abilities in all aspects of music. A perfectionist, renowned for his dress sense and performing presence, he always insisted on recording live with his band. His bright blue eyes earned him the popular nickname "Ol' Blue Eyes". Sinatra led a colorful personal life, and was often involved in turbulent affairs with women, such as with his second wife Ava Gardner. He went on to marry Mia Farrow in 1966 and Barbara Marx in 1976. Sinatra had several violent confrontations, usually with journalists he felt had crossed him, or work bosses with whom he had disagreements. He was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. After his death, American music critic Robert Christgau called him "the greatest singer of the 20th century", and he continues to be seen as an iconic figure.
Sinatra died with his wife at his side at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 14, 1998, aged 82, after a heart attack. Sinatra had ill health during the last few years of his life, and was frequently hospitalized for heart and breathing problems, high blood pressure, pneumonia and bladder cancer. He was further diagnosed as having dementia. He had made no public appearances following a heart attack in February 1997. Sinatra's wife encouraged him to "fight" while attempts were made to stabilize him, and his final words were, "I'm losing." Sinatra's daughter, Tina, later wrote that she and her sister, Nancy, had not been notified of their father's final hospitalization, and it was her belief that "the omission was deliberate. Barbara would be the grieving widow alone at her husband's side." The night after Sinatra's death, the lights on the Empire State Building in New York City were turned blue, the lights at the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honor, and the casinos stopped spinning for a minute.
Sinatra's funeral was held at the Roman Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, California, on May 20, 1998, with 400 mourners in attendance and thousands of fans outside. Gregory Peck, Tony Bennett, and Sinatra's son, Frank Jr., addressed the mourners, who included many notable people from film and entertainment. Sinatra was buried in a blue business suit with mementos from family members—cherry-flavored Life Savers, Tootsie Rolls, a bottle of Jack Daniel's, a pack of Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, stuffed toys, a dog biscuit, and a roll of dimes that he always carried—next to his parents in section B-8 of Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.
His close friends Jilly Rizzo and Jimmy Van Heusen are buried nearby. The words "The Best Is Yet to Come", plus "Beloved Husband & Father" are imprinted on Sinatra's grave marker. Significant increases in recording sales worldwide were reported by Billboard in the month of his death.
South Of The Border
Frank Sinatra Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
That's where I fell in love, when the stars above, came out to play
And now as I wander, my thoughts ever stray
South of the border, down Mexico way
She was a picture, in old Spanish lace
Just for a tender while, I kissed a smile upon her face
'Cause it was fiesta, and we were so gay
Then she sight as she whispered mañana
Never dreaming that we were parting
And I lied as a whispered mañana
'Cause our tomorrow never came
South of the border, I jumped back one day
There in a veil of white, by the candle light, she knelt to pray
The mission bells told me that I musn't stay
South of the border, Mexico way
The mission bells told me (ding dong) that I must not stay
Stay south of the border, down Mexico way
In Frank Sinatra's song "South of the Border," the singer reminisces about a lost love that he met in Mexico. The first verse sets the scene, revealing that it was under the stars that he fell in love. As he wanders, his thoughts return to that moment in Mexico where he met this woman. The second verse details how beautiful she was, dressed in old Spanish lace. They were together during the fiesta, and everything was perfect. The lyrics suggest that they had a passionate and enjoyable time. The woman whispers mañana, and the singer responds in kind. However, they never imagined that they were parting forever.
In the last verse, the singer finds himself one day back in time, and he spies his love in a moment of prayer. He knows now that he must leave, and the mission bells confirm his decision. The song concludes with a poignant plea to stay south of the border.
Overall, the lyrics of "South of the Border" are about the pain of lost love and the memories that linger on. However, the song is not entirely sad; it is nostalgic and reflective. The lyrics take the listener to a specific place and time, evoking the joy and splendor of romantic love in Mexico.
Line by Line Meaning
South of the border, down Mexico way
I fell in love in Mexico
That's where I fell in love, when the stars above, came out to play
When I was in Mexico, I found love under the stars
And now as I wander, my thoughts ever stray
Even though I have left Mexico, my mind often wanders back there
She was a picture, in old Spanish lace
I remember her as a beautiful woman in a traditional Spanish outfit
Just for a tender while, I kissed a smile upon her face
We enjoyed a fleeting moment of happiness together
'Cause it was fiesta, and we were so gay
We were both caught up in the festive spirit of Mexico
Then she sighed as she whispered mañana
She sadly said 'tomorrow' in Spanish, not realizing we would never meet again
Never dreaming that we were parting
Neither of us knew it was the end of our relationship
And I lied as I whispered mañana
I pretended there would be a tomorrow, even though I knew it was a lie
'Cause our tomorrow never came
We never had another chance to be together
South of the border, I jumped back one day
I remember vividly returning to Mexico, but only in my memories
There in a veil of white, by the candle light, she knelt to pray
I remember seeing her one last time as she prayed in a white veil by candlelight
The mission bells told me that I musn't stay
The sound of the church bells reminded me that I had to leave Mexico and return home
Stay south of the border, down Mexico way
Despite everything, Mexico will always hold a special place in my heart
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, SHAPIRO BERNSTEIN & CO. INC.
Written by: JIMMY KENNEDY, MICHAEL CARR
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
DaveLombardo77
@El Espermatozoide Porque dices eso?
A ver cuenta.
Yo al escuchar esta canción neta como me lleva al pasado, cuando la vida en México era pacífica se sentía la paz y tranquilidad.
Visitar los pueblos con la familia, etc...
Por eso tú comentario me dejó así dudoso.
videosyoutube
South of the border, down Mexico way
That's where I fell in love, when the stars above, came out to play
And now as I wander, my thoughts ever stray
South of the border, down Mexico way
She was a picture, in old Spanish lace
Just for a tender while, I kissed a smile upon her face
'Cause it was fiesta, and we were so gay
South of the border, Mexico way
Then she sight as she whispered mañana
Never dreaming that we were parting
And I lied as a whispered mañana
'Cause our tomorrow never came
South of the border, I jumped back one day
There in a veil of white, by the candle light, she knelt to pray
The mission bells told me that I musn't stay
South of the border, Mexico way
The mission bells told me (ding dong) that I must not stay
Stay south of the border, down Mexico way
Michael McFeggan
South Of The Border
Sinatra Song of the Century #18
by Michael Carr and Jimmy Kennedy
Steyn's Song of the Week
March 16, 2015
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ImageSt Patrick's Day looms, and so a Sinatra Irish confection would seem to be appropriate. Unlike Peggy Lee, he never recorded "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"; unlike Rosie Clooney, he never recorded "Danny Boy". In the 1949 film Take Me Out To The Ball Game, he sang a song called "O'Brien To Ryan To Goldberg" - Gene Kelly, who was of Irish ancestry, played O'Brien; Jules Munshin, who was of Russian Jewish ancestry, played Goldberg; and Frank Sinatra, who was of Italian ancestry, played, er, Ryan.
But, with the best will in the world, "O'Brien To Ryan To Goldberg" can't be considered high on anyone's list of Sinatra classics. What then of the great Irish songwriters? Well, he made a terrific record with Duke Ellington of "Indian Summer", an old tune by Victor Herbert, who was born in Dublin but is really an American composer. And at the other end of the spectrum there was a concerted effort in the Seventies to get him to record Van Morrison's "Moondance". As WNYC disc-jockey Jonathan Schwartz once put it, "It never happened. There was no need for it."
So how about this? "South Of The Border" is a Frank classic from the Capitol years that's about as authentically Irish as the Sinatra catalogue gets - co-written by Jimmy Kennedy, who was born in Omagh but grew up in Portstewart on Ulster's beautiful north coast, and Michael Carr, who was born in Leeds but raised in Dublin. Throughout their careers, both men wrote both words and music, but in this case most of the lyric came from the guy north of the border, and most of the music from the fellow down south. And, as you can tell from the title, "South Of The Border" is a searing tale of love across the sectarian divide on a small island off the north-west coast of Europe:
South Of The Border
Down Mexico way...
Whoops, my mistake. Kennedy and Carr certainly wrote Irish numbers - "Did Your Mother Come From Ireland?" (to which question both men could answer yes) was a big song for Bing Crosby - but the bulk of their hits surveyed a broader horizon. Sinatra recorded Jimmy Kennedy's "Isle Of Capri" on Come Fly With Me, and, although he never got to Kennedy's "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", for a goofy novelty song it's attracted an amazing number of recordings by all kinds of other people. "April In Portugal" hasn't endured quite as well, and the wartime chin-up song "We're Going To Hang Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line" didn't work out as planned, but both testify to Jimmy Kennedy's propensity to roam far and wide lyrically. Nevertheless, Carr and Kennedy's great song of place is "South Of The Border", and in the early Fifties Sinatra's terrific record helped revitalize both his career and the fortunes of a semi-forgotten cowboy ballad.
Carr was born in 1905 to one of those much sung Irish mothers and a prizefighter called Cockney Cohen, who, post-boxing, had moved to Dublin and opened a restaurant. Kennedy was born three years earlier to his own Irish mother and a policeman in the Royal Irish Constabulary at Portstewart. One day Jimmy was sitting on the shore near the harbor and noticed a small yacht lazily sailing into the west as the sun met the horizon. So he wrote a song called "Red Sails In The Sunset", and it was a hit for Al Bowlly and Ray Noble. The yacht was called Kitty of Coleraine and, if you're ever in Portstewart, you can see a handsome memorial commemorating ship, song and writer, and find the yacht itself beautifully restored and on display in a local museum.
Michael Carr went Jimmy Kennedy one better. When he was 15, Maurice Cohen (as he then was) was down by the harbor at Dun Laoghaire, saw a ship, and decided to run away to sea. He wound up in America, where he spent a few years as a journalist and then, as "Michael Carr, a bit-player in Hollywood movies. In the early Thirties, he meandered back across the Atlantic and washed up in London's Tin Pan Alley - Denmark Street, the heart of the British music business just off the Charing Cross Road. The publisher Peter Maurice paired him with Jimmy Kennedy, and a very odd couple they made. In his entertaining autobiography of his father, JJ Kennedy describes Carr as "what the Irish would call a chancer". He was always broke and prone to implausible, improvised schemes to alleviate his skintness. Jimmy Kennedy, by contrast, was very businesslike. I met him toward the end of his life, and I recall him as an extremely dapper and organized man. The relationship with Carr was not easy. As Kennedy told his son:
Although Michael Carr was talented, he was crazy and difficult. We would start a song and then he would disappear. Then Jimmy Phillips would ask to see what we had produced and I would have to finish it myself. That would lead to a row for all kinds of obvious reasons, not least the fact that he would still get his share of the royalties, regardless of how little effort he put into it. Our professional relationship was quite different from the one I had with Will Grosz [the composer with whom Kennedy wrote his other Sinatra hit, "Isle Of Capri"] in that Grosz was first and foremost a musician but Carr and I both wrote words as well as music. Carr always wanted to produce the big line and so did I. Then he would want to get the tune right and I would find myself correcting it. So there was an endless battle going on. I think a fundamental reason why we were so successful was because our characters were so opposed, it made us determined to prove we were better than the other - and that spurred us on to better and better ideas.
One day, at the end of the Thirties, Carr showed up at the office and announced to Kennedy that he had a great tune for a western. He sat down at the piano and played the first few bars, and Jimmy didn't think it sounded that western. Notwithstanding that it has the same bass pattern – the one that serves as a useful musical shorthand for a cowpoke moseying along a sagebrush trail on his faithful ole paint –that you find in Michael Carr's other forays into the genre like "Sunset Trail" (written with Jimmy Kennedy) and "Ole Faithful" (written with Jimmy's brother, Hamilton Kennedy), Jimmy thought this one sounded less western than Spanish. Which reminded him of a postcard he'd received a few days earlier from his sister Nell halfway round the world in California. It began:
Today we've gone Mexican – we're south of the border…
Kennedy knew a hit title when he heard one. "What about," he suggested, "'South Of The Border'?" To which Carr responded immediately: "'Down Mexico way!'"
And they were off:
South Of The Border
Down Mexico way
That's where I fell in love
When stars above
Came out to play…
That afternoon, Kennedy wrote the middle section:
Then she sighed as she whispered, "Mañana"
Never dreaming that we were parting
And I lied as I whispered, "Mañana"
For our tomorrow never came…
That's Jimmy Kennedy, words and music. Presumably, Michael Carr never came back from the pub after lunch. It's very good, but, even before I knew it wasn't Carr's music, it always kinda sounded separate to me: not one of those releases that arises organically from the main theme, but something entirely different. (The "I saw your face and I ascended" bit in "Stranger In Paradise" always had the same effect on me, sounding very different from the main theme, adapted from Borodin's "Polovtsian Marches". Years later, Wright & Forrest told me, "We wrote that part ourselves. We'd run out of Borodin. There wasn't any left.")
Still, it sounded pretty good and, rounding things out with a few "Ay-ay-ays" just to underline the point, Kennedy & Carr had a song.
The only problem was that their boss, Jimmy Phillips, didn't care for it. His big hit that month was going to be "The Same Old Story" by Eric Maschwitz. A BBC radio producer who moonlighted as a songwriter, Maschwitz left us two great standards, "These Foolish Things (Remind Me Of You)" and "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square", both recorded by Sinatra. Compared to those gems, "The Same Old Story" was the same-old same-old.
Some weeks later, Kennedy & Carr noticed that Gene Autry was over on tour, and arranged to see him backstage in Dublin, where they pitched him "South Of The Border (Down Mexico Way)". Neither man had ever set foot in Mexico, and Autry might reasonably have wondered why he should have to have songs about his native terrain peddled to him by a couple of foreign opportunists. But for a pair of Irish Denmark Streeters these two had between them notched up an impressive number of hits in America, including stuff explicitly aimed at Autry's singing-cowboy beat such as "Roll Along, Covered Wagon". He listened to Kennedy & Carr's song and liked it. And so, while our 2915 St Patrick's song might not sound terribly Irish, unlike "When Irish Eyes" et al, with this one they actually sealed the deal in Ireland's capital city. And, when he got back to America, Autry went into the studio in Chicago and, over September 11th and 12th 1939, recorded half-a-dozen numbers, including "South Of The Border":
She was a picture
In old Spanish lace
Just for a tender while
I kissed the smile
Upon her face
For it was fiesta
And we were so gay
South Of The Border
Down Mexico way…
Republic Pictures liked it, too. They bought the film rights for a thousand bucks and built a Gene Autry movie around it. Autry's record was a hit, as were versions by Guy Lombardo & his Royal Canadians and Shep Fields & his Rippling Rhythm, and "Your Hit Parade" listeners voted it the best song of the year.
What was that date Gene Autry was in the studio in Chicago? September 11th and 12th 1939. On September 1st, Germany invaded Poland, and Britain declared war. Both Kennedy & Carr joined the army. Jimmy Kennedy had a good war – I don't mean just that he rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Artillery, but that, while in the army, he wound up composing one of the monster hits of the age: "The Cokey-Cokey", which semi-de-coked became a British wartime favorite as "The Hokey-Cokey" and then, for obscure reasons, got wholly de-coked for America as "The Hokey-Pokey".
For Michael Carr things sputtered along somewhat more fitfully during the war years, starting with what was undoubtedly the worst business decision he ever made. In 1939, he was, as usual, strapped for cash, and, needing a few quid to tide him over, sold his rights to "South Of The Border" to his publisher for a lump sum. That very first Gene Autry record alone sold three million copies. The sheet music was a million-seller. The song was never as big in Britain, although the Shadows got some mileage out of it in 1962, but in America it never stopped being sung and never stopped selling – Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Mel Tormé, Patsy Cline, Connie Francis, Herb Alpert, Chris Isaacs… And Michael Carr never saw a penny from any of it.
As for Frank Sinatra, he'd been singing "South Of The Border" since it was new, live and on the radio if not on record. Some day, some wily record exec is going to release a CD called Sinatra Exotica or some such, because there's a kind of song that's been present in his oeuvre since the beginning, since "On A Little Street In Singapore" with Harry James in 1939, and "Pale Moon", his very own Indian love call with Tommy Dorsey in 1940. That type of material went away for a while, as Sinatra went solo and focused on less over-ripe romance. But in 1953, starting out at a new record company, Frank was in the mood to indulge that exotic side. His first session at Capitol Records, with his longtime arranger Axel Stordahl, had been …okay. But the records hadn't sold, and the company thought the Sinatra style needed shaking up a bit if he was going to pull out of that early Fifties tailspin. A new arranger was the answer. So Sinatra's producer Voyle Gilmore called Billy May and offered him the gig. Unfortunately, Billy was on tour and had to say no, so Gilmore asked if he'd mind if they called in another arranger to arrange the songs in Billy May style. "Sure, go ahead," said May, as long as they gave him a percentage.
When I was at the BBC many years ago, one of my colleagues was the late Alan Dell – we shared a producer for a while, although no one ever really produced Alan. But before his broadcasting days he'd worked for various record companies, and in the early Fifties he was under secondment to Capitol in Los Angeles. And so he chanced to be running that second Sinatra session for Capitol on April 30th 1953. And this is how Alan told it to me at one ghastly BBC cocktail party in either the Chairman's or the Director-General's suite at Broadcasting House many Christmases ago. Frank walked into the studio expecting to see the luxuriantly-sized Billy May at the conductor's podium. Instead, there was a somewhat svelter figure. "Who's that?" asked Sinatra, who was used to being screwed over and inclined to suspicion. "Oh, he's just conducting," said Alan. "Don't worry, we've got the Billy May arrangements."
Frank relaxed. In those days, Sinatra liked to rough out the arrangement and even the general lie of the orchestration himself, and he'd based his view of "South Of The Border" on a version he'd done on the radio with Spike Jones in 1944. Great, said Capitol, and, as far as Frank was aware, they'd passed it along to Billy May to get cracking on it. And, when the fellow on the podium waved his stick and Frank started singing, he had to admit that Billy had done a helluva job on the chart. Those slurping saxes were great. And getting the band to ay-ay-ay along with him at the end – what a gasser! As always when he was having a ball, he took a few lyrical liberties in the reprise of the chorus. So south of the border, instead of riding back one day, Frank jumps back:
I jumped back one day
There in a veil of white
By candlelight
She knelt to pray
The mission bells told m
That I must not stay
South Of The Border
Down Mexico way!
Ay-ay-ay-ay
(Ay-ay-ay-ay…)
Etc. So one encounter with Frank drove this broad to become a nun, huh? "South Of The Border" was the song that taught Sinatra you could swing somewhat hokey scenarios and still produce something musically expressive and emotionally satisfying without taking things too seriously. Sinatra scholar Will Friedwald calls this part of the oeuvre a kind of "hard-swingin' heterosexual camp", which is as good as any other categorization. The record was released as "Frank Sinatra with Billy May & his Orchestra", got to Number Two, and set the singer up for all those other east-and-south-of-the-border things he would do with the real Billy May in the years ahead – "Granada", "Moonlight On The Ganges" and Jimmy Kennedy's own "Isle Of Capri", which, arrangement-wise, is very much a sequel to "South Of The Border".
It was a roomful of eminent musicians that day, a lot of whom – Sy Zentner, Pete Candoli, Tommy Peters – had worked with Billy May, and were convinced they were playing a new May chart. So who actually did that non-Billy May arrangement in the Billy May style? Well, it was a fellow called Nelson Riddle. And that April 30th 1953 session marked the first time Sinatra and Riddle had been in the studio together. "I got all the credit, but Nelson did all the work," said a rueful Billy May. But why would an already successful arranger ghost anonymously for some other fellow?
"He wanted to be there," said Frank's trombonist Milt Bernhart. That's to say, if this was his only shot at working with Sinatra, he'd take it. And how. Aside from "South Of The Border", that April 30th session turned out to be most consequential, as we'll discover in the weeks ahead.
It worked out for Jimmy Kennedy, too. As his son JJ Kennedy wrote, "My father said that Sinatra put a lot of bounce into the song, giving it the zip that most of the other versions did not."
"And I think it needed it," said his dad. "Frank's up-tempo version gave it a terrific fillip and I don't think it has ever looked back since then. And it was all due to Frank."
The Fifties was a good time for second-time-arounds in the Kennedy catalogue. Aside from Sinatra's "South Of The Border" and "Isle of Capri", Nat Cole revived "Red Sails In The Sunset" and the Platters had a big hit with "My Prayer". Jimmy Kennedy isn't exactly a household name, but he has the distinction of being the most successful British songwriter in America before Lennon & McCartney. Until the Beatles came along, Britain's pop industry was a small parochial thing reeling under a barrage of Yank imports, over-played, over-sexed and over here. The composers' professional body, the Performing Right Society, even called for severe protectionist measures, under which American songs could only have been played as part of an elaborate transatlantic-exchange musical-quota system, which would have been very economically disadvantageous to the Old Country once the Fab Four, the Stones, Elton John et al came along. Yet, for three decades in the mid-century heyday of the American standard song, Jimmy Kennedy was the British Isles' one-man exception that proved the general rule.
Which makes it somewhat surprising that in 1962, when Sinatra was in London making his only studio album to be recorded outside America, Frank included songs by Noel Coward, Eric Maschwitz, Ivor Novello and Ray Noble …but nothing by Jimmy Kennedy. You could point out that the album was called Great Songs From Great Britain, and, while Kennedy's beloved Portstewart is in the United Kingdom, it is not technically on the island of Great Britain. But, given that on his Great British album Sinatra defines Britishness to include the Maori Farewell Song from New Zealand, I doubt he was getting hung up on his gazetteer. Perhaps Kennedy was too good at writing "American". Still, I would have liked to have heard Sinatra sing "Harbour Lights", a Kennedy ballad inspired by seeing a friendly country pub's shingle through an English fog. Come to think of it, I'd quite like to have heard Frank sing one of Kennedy's earliest hits, "The Teddy Bears' Picnic", and put its peculiarly English tweeness into a death match with Billy May's slurping saxes. Toward the end of his life, Jimmy Kennedy wrote a cantata for peace in Northern Ireland, but it's hard to see what Sinatra LP that would fit on, except perhaps as a faintly surreal Gaelic diversion on the "Future" concept album of his Trilogy set.
As for Michael Carr, I never met him, but every old Denmark Streeter tells stories about him – including the one about how, broke as usual, he went to see his publisher one Friday afternoon in hopes of a fifty-quid advance to tide him over till Monday. As was his wont, he collapsed on the floor in reception and professed to be dying, and gasped through ever slower breaths from the carpet that his final wish was to see Jimmy Phillips one last time.
"You've got the wrong office," said Bill Martin (later the writer of the England 1970 World Cup Squad's UK Number One hit "Back Home" and the Bay City Rollers' US Number One hit "Saturday Night"). "This is Cyril Gee's office. Jimmy's office is next door."
Carr stood up, dusted himself off, went next door, and fell on the carpet all over again. He composed a couple of instrumental hits for the Shadows, and in 1968 wrote a blockbuster hit for "Jacky" - the great Jackie Lee, who sang back-up vocals for everyone from Engelbert Humperdinck, on "Release Me", to Jimi Hendrix, on "Hey, Joe". Carr's hit for her was "White Horses", the theme to a TV show that was the delight of every pony-loving schoolgirl for season after season. When Jacky's single of "White Horses" entered the Top Ten, Michael Carr sent her a congratulatory telegram:
Thanks to you and White Horses I've now paid 3 years outstanding rent. Love Michael Carr
He didn't have to worry about back rent for long. A couple of months later, he collapsed on the floor, this time for real. The chancer was all out of chances, and he'd never need a couple of fivers for the pub again.
Just for a tender while
I kissed the smile
Upon her face
For it was fiesta
And we were so gay…
Happy St Patrick's Day – or, as Keely Smith cheerily concludes "South Of The Border" on her hommage à Frank, "Olé, you muthas."
Ken Dufrene
Few men are blessed with a pure voice like Frank Sinatra had.
Kirk Barkley
You said that right!
Jorge Mario Rodas
Great voice really and he sang so well, this song was one of my late Dad's favorites, and mine too.
Bill Arsenic
“I don’t go down enough”
“That’s not what heard”
Καλήν Αντάμωση Στα Γουναράδικα.
how's bocca
ALAN GRANVILLE
Sinatra and Riddle must be one of the greatest collaborations in the history of music.
Tacitus
This is what I listen to when I'm whistling to the Wheatfield...
Doctor Sex
Bushman of the Kalahari
Juda Hamila
this is one of my favourite from the legendary Sinatra !! :')
TheBoomhahaha
This was on aty Grandpa's birthday party a whiiiiiile ago. All I remember is how happy he was that Sinatra was on, and how happy my Great Aunt was singing along to it 😊💙