A TOAST FOR THE BROKEN HEARTED
By Mahnuel Muñoz
The American sculptor Edward Kienholz (1927-1994) began his artistic career in Las Vegas in 1950. His first works were wooden figures in relief, to which he sometimes incorporated objects from junkyards. His work fuses psychologically strong content with social realism, representing sordid places in his country. “Roxy“, from 1961, recreates a Las Vegas brothel, while “The Beanery” (1965), his masterpiece, is the representation of a bar. It includes 17 characters, under dim lights, and sprayed with a mixture of food and cleaning product smells.
In the crude portraits that Kienholz made of the America of his time, Frank Sinatra could well have had a place, the epitome of the bar singer, incomparable narrator of stories of souls fractured by (dis)love, with the credential of having lived them on his skin. . His legendary “saloon albums“, which we could translate as “bar records” – recorded during the singer’s time working with Capitol Records, are shocking stories of love that is gone, heartbreak, loneliness and the search for light. at the bottom of a glass of Jack Daniel‘s, and in them is poured the bitter sentimental experience that the singer suffered with the great love of his life, the actress Ava Gardner. The masterful precision with which the feelings that invade us when the most solid pillar of our existence breaks are captured in these albums, through sincere and masterful interpretations of Frank Sinatra, and the exciting orchestral backgrounds of Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins made , immediately became classic titles of 20th century music, and inseparable traveling companions of many of us.
The sixties brought many changes to popular music. Early rock and roll was in clear decline, the faint voices of folk rose to stir consciences and from distant Liverpool four young musicians were preparing to change the score forever.
However, there was still room for Sinatra‘s old love songs, his beloved “bar songs.” In the city of bright lights, of electric vegetation, the city that welcomed Edward Kienholz and Frank Sinatra as artists at the same time and inspired them to grow, the city of fun and everything-is-possible, melodies like “Here’s That Rainy Day“, “When Your Lover Has Gone” and “You’re Nobody ‘Till Somebody Loves You” shine brightly as they always did, in the Voice that gave them their charter, like a beacon for the souls lost in the indifference of our present.
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