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Come Fly With Me Frank Sinatra and Count Basie |
For this item you need to be able to stop for ten minutes.
We are often moving on to the next job, the next meeting, scrolling down social media, taking the next call ......'Time Out Ten' asks you to stop for ten minutes and listen to a particular piece of music; to find a time when you won't be interrupted, when you can put in/on your headphones and chill out. Ten minutes isn't long.
This month, take a few minutes out to listen carefully to Sinatra's recording of Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn's Come Fly With Me. This is a remastered edition where the lyrics are slightly different from the 1958 original recording with Billy May's Orchestra, but the essence remains - primarily Sinatra's phrasing and Billy May's arrangement. This recording is actually taken from the Sinatra At The Sands album with Count Basie's Orchestra. Sinatra's phrasing, grounded in his days with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra, is a reflection of his confidence in being able to use his voice in empathy with the orchestra. JazzLines says: "Without a doubt one of the signature entries in Frank Sinatra's discography, Billy May's arrangement of the title track from Sinatra's 1958 album "Come Fly With Me" is quite possibly as close to a perfect studio orchestra arrangement as you can get. From the beginning to the end, it is a perfect mix of creativity, accessibility, and relentless swing."
Listen to Come Fly With Me.
Come fly with me, let's fly, let's fly away Come fly with me, let's float down to Peru Once I get you up there Weather-wise, it's such a lovely day |
'It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a gentle sea.
A mile from shore a fishing boat churmed the water, and the word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another busy day beginning.
But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was practising. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a hard twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one ... single ... more ... inch ...of ... curve ... Then his feathers ruffled, he stalled and fell.
Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and it is dishonour.
But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve – slowing, slowing, and stalling once more – was no ordinary bird.
Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight – how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not the flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was 
not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly...........
........... As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within him. There’s no way around it. If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I’d have charts for brains. If I were meant to fly at speed, I’d have falcon’s short wings, and live on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this foolishness ....
By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practising again. From five thousand feet the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water, Breakfast Flock were a faint cloud of dust motes, circling.
He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his fear was under control. Then, without ceremony he hugged in his forewings, extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged directly towards the sea......
It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Jonathan Livingston Seagull fired directly through the Beakfast Flock, ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed .......’
From Jonathan Livingston Seagull, A Story, by Richard Bach
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