SINATRA’S GREAT IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT
By Manuel Muñoz
(1983) For Quincy Jones any dream is possible. He has just produced the album “Thriller” for Michael Jackson and now wants to unite Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne, two of the brightest stars of the swing era, in a project. Doing things in a big way doesn’t come from now; Two decades ago he had directed Sinatra and Count Basie in two of the best jazz albums in history.
Citing Frank and Lena on a simple album of duets would have already been a tremendous contribution to music, but Jones lets himself be carried away by his inexhaustible enthusiasm and plans a multi-disc album in a deluxe edition, the definitive monument to the Great American Songbook, on the line from Frank’s “Trilogy” (1980).
He manages to recruit an orchestra that includes George Benson, Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock and Toots Thielemans. He contacts Lionel Richie to compose some original songs and Michael Jackson himself to accompany the protagonists in a song. Even Steven Spielberg is involved.
For all this he reserves a studio for a week. If “Thriller” caused shivers throughout the world, this work promises to dislodge jaws of all colors.
But misfortune is recreated with the project; The unexpected death of Don Costa, Frank’s arranger and personal friend, causes the first suspension on the roadmap. Later, it was Lena who had health problems, and the coup de grace was provided by Frank’s own commitments in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. The heat that drove the project dissipated and what could have been Sinatra’s most ambitious and spectacular work and one of the milestones of the decade remained a beautiful dream.
In 1984, with the remains of such a shipwreck, Quincy Jones and Frank Sinatra recorded “L.A. Is My Lady,” an album that gives us too little an idea of what we missed. And already in 1994 we were able to hear Frank and Lena together on “Embraceable You“, one of the songs on the album “Duets 2“.
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