I want you to listen to this song.
It's a 1926 recording of the song Always performed by musician Nick Lucas.
Now listen to this version by Frank Sinatra in 1947.
There are obvious differences between the two recordings.
First, Lucas is a tenor and Sinatra is a baritone.
Lucas transposed the song to the key of D so he could sing the melody higher.
The tempo of Sinatra's version is also much slower.
Lucas wasn't really a singer at all.
He started his career as a jazz guitarist.
But maybe the biggest difference of all is how Sinatra sings the song.
Sinatra famously said his instrument wasn't his voice but his microphone.
In the 1920's, electric microphone technology was just being
introduced into popular music but by the 40's,
Sinatra had mastered it.
Sinatra's rendition of always feels
timeless because he's using a microphone to create a feeling.
The microphone help cement the singers as
the center piece of pop music in the 20th century.
It actually changed the way we sing about love.
Being heard has always been important in performance.
The ancient Greeks built theaters with acoustics that allowed actors
to be heard all the way in the back and opera
singers used crazy vocal techniques to project
their voices at frequencies that could be heard over the orchestra.
Before, the microphones singing required a lot of training and talent.
For that reason, much of popular music recorded in
the early 20th century didn't feature a vocalist.
This was partially a matter of taste but it was
also because vocals were difficult to record.
Before the widespread adoption of the microphone in 1925,
music was recorded acoustically.
Musicians performed in front of
a big metal horn that funneled sound to a vibrating diaphragm.
The diaphragm caused a stylist to extra the recording onto a wax disc.
There was no tone controls.
For singers this meant running in front of the band to sing a part
directly into the horn and quickly moving away when they were done.
This analog process could only capture a limited range of audio frequencies for voices.
Baritones could be too low and sopranos ran the risk of being too high.
As a result, early recordings favored high tenors range.
The electric microphone was being tinkered with throughout the
20's but really took off with the radio broadcast.
The microphone allowed a voice to be converted into
an electrical signal and that signal could be amplified.
A singer with a mic didn't have to sing louder.
On the radio, his voice could travel much farther than the concert hall.
Before the microphone, Tenor Rudy Vallee,
sang through a megaphone,
a tough act to pull off when crowds would try to pitch pennies into the funnel.
It's no surprise then that he was one of the earliest singers to embrace the microphone.
Vallee felt at home in the radio studio mainly
because the mic helped bring out his soft sweet singing style.
Vallee was a crooner.
Crooning was a lullaby singing that took off in the late 20's.
Crooners had a signature warble of bouncing between notes in the melody,
like Vallee does here in his 1929 hit Honey.
This subtle vibrato wasn't really possible with
the lower fidelity acoustic recordings of a few years prior.
Singing softly into a microphone lets singers play with
inflection to paint a sweeter picture of the moonlight in the lovers on the bench,
and female listeners loved it.
Crooners were the first true American pop stars.
Vallee was appearing in Hollywood movies and being mobbed by adoring fans.
Suddenly, singers were in high demand.
Band leaders were pulling musicians off the bandstand to sing.
Russ Columbo was a violinist before hitting it big as a crooner in the 1930's.
Crooning was the new language of love as new singing superstar,
Bing Crosby, made clear.
The introduction of the ribbon microphone in
the 30's allowed for a much wider spectrum of
vocal frequencies and singers started to experiment with different styles and nuance.
Crosby was famous for his beautiful legato phrasing,
flowing effortlessly between notes.
It made songs like this into classics.
Billie Holiday was an innovator on the mic.
She developed a tone and rhythm that sounded like
she was speaking the lyrics instead of singing them.
Like, she was passing on a rumor or a secret.
The way she'd use the mic according to biographer,
Johns Wed, created a feeling of a live performance.
Like she was walking around a cabaret singing to
audience members as she passed by their tables.
Like I said earlier,
Sinatra was a master of the microphone.
He tailored his entire singing style to take full advantage of the technology.
He would tilt his head or move away from the mic to
remove the harsh sounds caused by semblance explosives.
The sharp s and percussive buh and puh sounds that
are voices make in mics are notorious for picking up.
Sinatra's mic only picked up the sounds he wanted it to.
His technique made the microphone dissolve,
giving his voice a disarming presence,
a lover whispering sweet nothings in your ear.
Singers like Crosby, Sinatra and Holiday realized early on the microphone was a tool,
one that could bring nuance and depth to their singing.
That's why we still listen to their recordings today and
the styles they pioneered still influence modern crooners.
Love is a complex spectrum of emotions and
the mic has just helped us hear them all as clearly as possible.
Who's your favorite crooner and what is your favorite love song?
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